Page 28 of To Cage a Wild Bird (Divided Fates #1)

I wondered if this was what dying was like.

Floating in a dark abyss, void of sound and sensation, not conscious of time or space.

Larch had dropped me, unceremoniously, into a dank hole in the basement that served as Endlock’s solitary confinement.

At first, I’d found the punishment laughable.

The worst he could offer was to leave me isolated with my thoughts, but I’d spent a lifetime alone with my burdens, sorrows,

and pain—unwilling to dump those feelings on Jed. I knew all my wretched and ugly parts. I didn’t have to like myself to live

with who I was.

For the first few hours, I saw the punishment as more reprieve than anything.

But then Larch had entered, Hyde at his side carrying something that looked like a toolbox.

I squinted against the harsh light of the corridor, staring unabashedly at the two of them.

“Miss me already?” I asked, not bothering to stand up.

Larch leaned down and backhanded me hard enough to send me sprawling onto my back. I sat up and spat a glob of blood onto

the floor. My head spun, my vision going blurry.

“Where’s the gun, 224?” he asked, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest.

Next to him, Hyde set the toolbox on the ground and got to work undoing the latches.

“The gun?” I asked, stalling, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

Hyde flipped open the top of the box, revealing all manner of horrify ing tools. Pliers like the pair that had been used to pry Torin’s teeth from his mouth. Rope and tweezers and knives of varying sizes.

My stomach churned.

“Don’t play coy with me, girl,” Larch sneered. “The gun the hunter brought out with him on the hunting grounds was never recovered.

Since you were the one who knocked him unconscious, it’s only reasonable that you would know the whereabouts of the missing

weapon.”

“I never saw a gun.” I swallowed against my dry throat, unable to look away from the toolbox.

Larch chuckled, kicking off the wall. “I’d hoped you’d say that. Now I can give Hyde permission to coax the truth out of you.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t take in enough air, my breath coming in short spurts as I clawed at the ground, trying to put some distance

between myself and Hyde.

“Yes, sir,” Hyde said, a grin widening his face. He plucked a small knife from the toolbox and stepped toward me, using the

blade to motion to the tattoos on his forearms. “You know what these are?”

I slid my hands along the floor, searching for something, anything , to use against him.

When I didn’t answer Hyde, he frowned, but it didn’t deter him. “In case you’re getting any ideas that I might go soft on

you, you should know that the lines are to keep track of the number of targets I’ve killed at Endlock.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. There were dozens of tallies.

“Don’t kill her,” Larch interjected. “Might as well get a few credits out of her first.”

He stepped toward the door but stopped at a sudden commotion on the other side. From the sound of it, two people were arguing.

It went on for a few more moments until Larch flung the door open.

“What are you half-wits shouting about?”

“Warden,” one of the guards answered, though I couldn’t see who it was. “I came to tell you that the weapon has been recovered.”

I strained, desperate not to miss a word she was saying.

“That can’t be,” Larch spluttered. “We’ve been looking since the hunt ended.”

“The latest patrol found it tangled in some underbrush near where the fight took place,” the guard explained.

My eyes narrowed. I hadn’t stowed the gun in the underbrush.

Larch stared out at the guard and then looked back at Hyde and commanded, “Come with me, Hyde. We’ve got things to do. You,

you stay here and guard the prisoner. She’s still owed a stint in solitary.”

This last part was directed at the guard in the hall.

“Yes, sir,” she said to Larch, and then he left with Hyde and slammed the door behind him, leaving me in the dark, with just

the barest hint of light trickling in from under the door.

A shadow traced its way along the bit of light, and I crawled closer to the door, just as a scrap of paper was pushed beneath

it, into the cell.

“Destroy it after you read it,” the guard said, her voice muffled.

Unease swept over me, but it couldn’t beat out my curiosity. I unfolded the paper and angled it into the dim light streaming

in beneath the door.

Familiar, annoying handwriting greeted me, in a secret code the two of us had developed when we were children. No one would know it was in code

if they weren’t looking for it: we swapped out each substantive word for an alternate one, so it made sense without revealing

the true meaning. Once I deciphered the letter, it read:

Thorne,

You’re lucky we were willing to replace the firearm you stole before the warden could permanently mar your pretty face. It

would’ve been a shame—it’s your only redeeming quality.

You’re running out of time. The North Settlement is giving you two months to escape before they rescind their deal.

Stop fucking around.

—G

Graylin.

I stuffed the note into my mouth, swallowing without bothering to read it a second time.

How had he managed to get a letter through to me before I’d been promoted to the Upper level? Obviously, the guard on the

other side of the door was one of the people Aggie had been referencing when she said the Collective had people on the inside.

I hadn’t expected her power to extend to guards .

I wished I had been able to see the guard’s face, at the very least. No matter what Aggie said, knowing who you could trust

was worth the risk.

The dark was torturous.

The weight of it pressed against me from all sides, a velvet blanket so thick it felt tangible as it slipped along my skin.

It was impossible to tell how long I’d been locked away.

I’d known hunger before the prison and had gone days without eating during some of the worst winters. But this hunger was

deep and grating, eating away at my very soul for lack of alternate sustenance.

The thick steel door that isolated me from the rest of Endlock never budged. While that meant I wasn’t fed, it also came as

a relief—it meant Hyde hadn’t returned with his box of torture instruments.

Things were not going well if the lack of torture was the one positive I could come up with to keep my mind from lingering

on scarier thoughts—like how Jed might die in a hunt before I was released.

My fingers explored every inch of the cell in the dark, scraping against the grit-covered floor. There was no cot to sleep

on or blanket for warmth. A flaking tap stood sentinel in one corner, begrudgingly offering droplets of iron-tainted water

if I wrestled with the rusted knob long enough.

It would keep me alive. And I had to stay alive long enough to get out and find Jed.

For hours or days, I sprawled on the frigid stone beneath me.

I should’ve used the time alone to formulate a foolproof escape plan, adhering to Gray’s instructions to stop fucking around . Instead, I fell into a state where I wasn’t entirely within Endlock but suspended in living nightmares.

I watched Torin die a thousand deaths, knowing I could have stopped it. I could have saved him. Why hadn’t I saved him?

I relived all the arrests I’d made over the years with a more thorough understanding of what would befall my bounties at Endlock.

Worst of all, I recalled my parents and the night they’d left. How they’d died horrifying deaths and how it’d been my fault

they were sent to Endlock.

Aggie had asked us to house a man and a woman, fugitives, until she could find a more permanent situation to keep them safe.

They’d been with us a few days when our rations began to dwindle. My parents could hardly afford to feed Jed and me, let alone

the extra mouths.

At school, my friend Aysa had asked where my food was. I had replied, without thinking, that we had people staying with us

and had to share.

Family friends , I’d lied, when she’d pushed for more information.

I’d thought nothing of telling her. It hadn’t been until much later that I’d thought of her sick mother and her expensive

medication. Of the extra credits Aysa would receive if she gave the guards information that led to the arrest of a criminal.

By then, it was too late.

I was in a dead sleep when the pounding came.

Jed snuggled into my side, using my warmth to fend off the gusts of wind that crept through the single-paned window in my

room. Raindrops beat against the glass.

At first, when I heard the sound, I thought it was distant thunder rumbling through the clouds.

But when I woke fully and could comprehend the voices hollering on the other side of our front door, I knew the guards had

come for us.

I yanked Jed from the bed and half dragged him to where our parents were stumbling from their room, wearing their nightclothes.

I gripped my mother by the shoulders, tugging her until my lips met her ear.

“The fire escape,” I whispered fiercely, referencing the rusted metal staircase outside the kitchen window. “If you and Father

go now, I can take the blame. I’ll tell them I hid the fugitive in my room and kept it a secret from you. They’ll give me

a strike. It will be fine. You can hide with Aggie. Take Jed.”

I found that the prospect of a strike didn’t scare me. Not at all. Not compared to the life-altering thought of losing my

parents to Endlock.

My mother shook her head, tears glinting in her soft eyes. She pulled me into a hug as she whispered, “There’s no time, my

brave girl. I love you.”

It was as if someone had run my heart through with a freshly sharpened blade.

She was accepting her death. Because that’s what it was. It was imprisonment with an expiration date.

“Please,” I begged, tears streaming freely down my heated cheeks.

But she tore her mother’s locket from her neck and pressed it into my hand as the guards burst through the door, and my scream

collided with Jed’s until it was the only thing I could hear.

“Raven.”

I sat up with a start, my throat constricting in panic.