Page 34 of Venomous Lies (Greywood Conservatory for the Arcane #2)

UNKNOWN

T he only light in the sky was the moon. The only company that didn’t hurt me was the shadows.

Those were two truths that I knew to always be true.

Until now.

I didn’t have the words for what my life was.

Didn’t know how to describe what they were doing to me.

But that’s what they wanted from me—silence and ignorance.

The liquid on my skin was drying, a clear blueish substance that they always poked and prodded out of me. Leaning down, I used my tongue to clean it up as I thought about what happened not too long ago.

This place wasn’t anything like where I was kept. Everything was bright and blindingly stark, nothing like the darkness that I was shoved into.

The noise level made my head hurt, and I flinched at each nearby sound and movement. A hand wrapped around my arm, squeezing hard enough that a hiss escaped my mouth, but I didn’t fight against them dragging me into a room to sit down.

There were others around me. Some were sitting on beds, while others were behind wired doors. I shivered as the hand let go of me, glad that at least the shadows I stayed in didn’t have caged walls.

People in white lab coats moved around the room, carrying small containers of bright-red liquid.

Blood.

That was what they called it.

Mine didn’t look like that though.

More proof that I was nothing but a failed experiment.

Whatever that meant.

“The last specimens weren’t what we were looking for,” a white coat with dark hair complained. “We need more samples to look at.”

Samples? Specimens?

There was no telling exactly what they were talking about, but I did know what that would mean for me.

They’d rip away this weakened form and put in the liquid that burned into my body. They’d tell me to go hunt, eat.

Then bring them back the leftovers.

Hopefully, I would be sent out soon.

I was so hungry… yet another thing they never cared about.

Another voice spoke up, this person had lighter hair. “Soon. We need to make sure the experiment works before we release it again.”

Sharp pokes and pain seared parts of my body until my mind blocked out what was happening.

But even through the blackness, I could sense something, a hint of the someone that made the powers in me come to attention even when my mind rebelled against it.

Isla Hallowes.

“Make it hurt.”

That was an order I had no issue following.

I licked my lips, tasting my blood. I was glad that my eyes weren’t burning now that I was back in the shadows of my own space.

My cage.

Searching through the beams of moonlight, I saw something that made my lips curl upward.

White, dull things lit up as the moon broke through the trees. A long broken nose sat on top of a skinny, incomplete body decorated by trails of red.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me that even after everything, I still hungered.

They considered me stupid, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have secrets.

One day, they’d realize that for themselves, but it would be too late to stop me.