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There’s no sign of Antonio. Every passing moment I don’t see him, my pulse jumps higher, until it feels more like a hummingbird’s wings than a heartbeat.

I wanted people to feel like they could get lost in Bow & Arrow. The hallways are dim and twisting, all glittering dark marble with gold and silver veins. The sconces on the walls cast low, warm light on the floor in shallow half-circles.

There are too many people here. The music is too loud.

I haven’t seen a single person I recognize—and that’s shocking. I know a lot of people, both from years owning Bow & Arrow or from attending Olympus religiously.

The hallways, while somewhat of a maze, always lead back to the main dance floor.

Some of the halls split off into smaller rooms. Quiet ones.

Although they’re regularly patrolled to make sure nothing bad happens in them—like wandering hands, for example—now they’re filled with writhing, naked bodies.

I shudder and turn away instead of trying to stop it.

I’m picking my battles.

Gabriel appears in front of me.

A flicker of fear skips like a stone across my body. He appraises me, his head cocked.

There’s a pause in the music. The end of one song, and a breath before the beginning of another.

“You don’t look so hot, Artemis,” he says in the quiet. His solemn expression suddenly cracks, a grin splitting his lips. “I’ve missed your visits. You’ve been so, so strong. That’s got to be tough, don’t you think?”

I grit my teeth. “I’m fine.”

The next song begins.

“ Fine is a boring word. How do you feel?”

I can barely hear him. Wordless music, a heavy electronic beat, scrapes at my brain and vibrates in my chest. It makes me feel worse, honestly, but I can’t do anything to stop it. I won’t show weakness in front of Gabriel.

He inches closer, until his mouth is at my ear. “Do you want to climb out of your skin? Have you been able to keep food down? Pesky nausea. It’s okay to be in this position. It’s okay to fail.”

“What happened to you, Gabriel?” I exhale. “How did you become this?”

His lips move at my ear. “I blame you for what happened, but it was the waiting that killed me. Can you imagine that? Just lingering on the edge of living for years , to no avail? I like to think I didn’t waste them—it was a good cause.

But when I finally woke up, I was angry.

At you, at Antonio, at everyone who let Terror remain.

I simply found someone who understood—and fed—my anger. ”

Who?

He crowds me back against a wall, just as a group of men and women come rushing down the hall. Only one man does a double-take but quickly averts his eyes at Gabriel’s bared-teeth hiss. I force myself to meet Gabriel’s gaze when his attention returns to me.

The unfortunate part is that he’s attractive. Dark hair that’s starting to grow out a bit, so it falls into his piercing blue eyes. Pale skin with just a glimmer of a tan. My heart hurts, knowing what he went through.

Not just in Terror, but out of it. Because his trauma clearly didn’t end. Of course it didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him over the music. “It doesn’t make it better?—”

“It doesn’t.” He withdraws a syringe from his pocket. “This, though? It makes me feel a little better to watch you deconstruct.”

I’m not going to take it. I don’t even focus on it, the amber liquid somehow magnified and illuminated in the dark hallway—or maybe it’s just my imagination. And my fixation.

Shit .

“I’m going to get better,” I tell him. “And then what?”

“You’ll get better when you hit rock bottom.

Which is what, exactly? What does rock bottom look like for the most independent, fearless woman I’ve ever met?

” He reaches out and traces the capped point down the side of my face.

“It looks like fear. It looks like loneliness. It looks like your lies isolating you to the point where you don’t think you can tell a single person the truth. ”

He exhales.

“It looks,” he continues, “like shame. Your shame is so colorful, Artemis. You’ve overcome so much. You were sold to the highest bidder time and again. You were dressed in gold chains they called lingerie, and you don’t seem to care that one of your rapists has been living under your roof.”

I stiffen. “Reese?—”

“Say it with me.” Gabriel leans down. “He fucked you and didn’t give you a choice.”

“He didn’t have one either.”

“That’s what I told myself, too. Those times when I just really wanted to disappear into the moment and pretend it was normal.

” His eyes are cold. He’s so far removed from this conversation, I don’t think he even cares about the buttons he’s pressing.

He just wants it to hurt in any way possible.

“Did you fall for Reese as a fifteen-year-old? Develop an unhealthy attachment?”

“No—”

“No,” he repeats. “I don’t believe you, Artemis.”

Did I?

I press my hands to the wall to keep from snatching the syringe from his hand.

“He was the only one to offer you kindness, wasn’t he?

Outstretched hand, a smile. And then, even if he said he didn’t want to, he fucked you.

” He shakes his head. “I’ve been there, Artemis, remember?

I know exactly what kind of sick games these people will play to get inside your head.

Fucking a shell of a woman isn’t enough. Stealing our virginity wasn’t enough.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m right ,” he counters. “But you don’t have to let that betrayal crush you. It’s all stuck in your head now, isn’t it? Every time his parents brought him to Terror, every time they watched from the corner—how twisted was it that they watched their son fuck a girl they bought?”

“Stop saying that.” I inch past him.

“And now he’s getting the milk for free,” he says.

I freeze.

My relationship with Reese now has no bearing on our past.

The biggest lie I’ve ever told .

“He still calls his mother,” Gabriel adds.

I know that.

I saw the records myself, passed from the sheriff to Kade… and then to Gabriel? I don’t care that Reese still talks to his mother. I don’t care that he didn’t immediately cut them off once he could support himself.

There’s a reason I never asked about his parents. Their judgmental gazes burning down on us. The so-called lessons he was supposed to learn in Terror, with me.

But all those reasons seem to pale in the face of his continued relationship with his mother.

I should’ve asked.

I still can.

But I won’t. Opening that can of worms might give him the idea that he can pry right back. And then I’ll have to explain about my parents. Or worse.

“Why are you doing this?” I finally ask Gabriel.

He makes a face. “I want you to reach out and take this.” He taps the syringe against my forehead.

“I want you to give in to your baser instincts and feel wild with the need to inject this into your blood. Does everything hurt? Do you have a headache no amount of aspirin can shake? Do your bones feel like they’re grinding together? ”

I grit my teeth.

The answer is yes . I’ve been withdrawing from heroin for what seems like ages, and I still haven’t shaken the symptoms.

“No one noticed.” He reaches out and curls a lock of my hair around his fingers.

“No one noticed when you were high. They didn’t say anything when you were struggling.

They don’t see that you’ve been losing weight, not eating, disappearing for hours to come find me and shoot up.

Why has not a single person in your life said anything about it? ”

My eyes burn.

Damn it.

I blink rapidly, but my chest is too tight. Panic claws at me.

“You’re probably wondering how I am so right,” he guesses. “And you’re thinking to yourself—why is it that the people who claim to care are so fucking ignorant? Maybe it’s because they don’t actually care at all.”

I think of Reese holding up the empty syringe in Emerald Cove, his worries fading as he accepted my lies about Gabriel planting evidence. Kade lifting me out of the bath, then letting me walk out.

Saint, not asking a single question about me when I burned down Kade’s house. Not noticing the track marks on my arms when I was bare-chested in front of him for hours. Not seeing me, not caring enough to not tattoo the guy conspiring with Gabriel .

My brother has let me avoid his calls. Hasn’t gone through Saint.

Antonio let me stay away, even though he, of all people, would know immediately.

Tears drip down my cheeks.

“There.” Gabriel leans in and licks them away.

I shudder, but I don’t move. Not until he offers up the syringe on an open palm.

“It’ll make it hurt less.”

I take it.

I hate myself.

He steps away, but I’m already moving. Rushing . Down the dark hall, into the women’s bathroom.

My hands shake. I stumble into the last stall and sit on the toilet. I use the hair tie around my wrist as a tourniquet, sliding it up my arm. Every breath comes fast and shallow.

I can barely see through my tears, but there’s something else.

Excitement?

I’m going to be sick.

I tap the vein and bite the cap off the syringe. The needle is exposed, gleaming in the low light. The bathroom aesthetic matches the rest of the club. It’s supposed to be moody. Black marble walls, a chandelier over the sinks. Recessed lights over each stall.

It’s by that light that I slide the needle into my skin.

My heart skips at the sting of it, and I pause. It’s almost as good as the rush I know is coming. I pull back on the plunger, and a thread of red blood is dragged into the chamber. It tells me I successfully hit the vein.

Wait .

For no other reason to prove that I can.

Three.

Two.

I hit the plunger before I can think one .