given me a change of clothes, not even when I’d moved locations. In the past few months, I’d memorized every curve of the serpentine river just beyond the gate. Tonight, a heavy fog rolled off the water, pierced by warm lights from gas lamps. I could just about make out two figures walking along the bank.
An ache pierced my chest. Maybe I could be with another person soon …
How amazing that would be. It had been at least two months since I’d seen another person.
At least, I thought I’d been in here two months. It could just as well have been eleven years. It was hard to track time when loneliness clouded my thoughts like a sickness, making it hard to breathe. Every day, my meals arrived in a little dumbwaiter with a wooden door. It wasn’t large enough for me to fit in, though I’d definitely tried.
Before I’d been locked in here, Samael’s beautiful face had been the last I’d seen. Since then, I thought he might have forgotten I existed. Once, I’d caught a glimpse of him brooding by the River Walk, his cloak drawn up over his head. I stuck my head out the window, shouting and trying to get his attention. I longed for just a glimpse of those pale gray eyes, but it was like he couldn’t hear me at all. I desperately wanted him to look at me. No such luck.
But I supposed there were worse things than loneliness. I had, after all, tried to murder him with a bomb. In response, he’d locked me in a luxurious room stacked with books. I’d spent the time practicing reading on my own, sounding out words. Memorizing sounds and letters.
Another silver lining of my prison: it wasn’t anything like the dungeons of Castle Hades, where traitors had been tortured for thousands of years. I hadn’t lost skin, nor fingernails, nor eyeballs. Both my ears remained attached to my head, and not a single burning rod had been inserted into any of my orifices. I had no broken bones. I hadn’t been dipped in a vat of boiling oil, not even once.
And that was frankly bloody lucky, because Samael was the closest thing we had to a king, and I’d nearly murdered him. Regicides didn’t normally get a soft bed and three meals a day. They normally had their entrails ripped out before their eyes.
I should count my lucky stars in here.
There were, however, two teensy weensy problems with my current situation, which was why I was working on breaking out.
One, I had some vengeance to wreak, and my imprisonment was getting in my way. My former friend and my sister had brutally betrayed me, putting my life at risk. They were the reason I was locked up here.
And two, I was losing my ever-loving mind in isolation. There was no torture rack or Catherine wheel, but there was endless solitude. The closest thing I had to contact with another person was when I heard the squeaking of the dumbwaiter and knew someone was pulling it from the kitchens below. Three times a day, a delicious meal of meat and vegetables and a sinfully sweet red fruit with seeds that made my mouth water appeared—arranged on the tray by another person.
I was better fed than ever, but I’d never been alone before. I’d even shared a bed with my mum, since we just had the one.
At times, I was sure a phantom presence was watching me. A malign spirit seemed to linger in the shadows, waiting. Once, I’d even thought I’d seen a woman out of the corner of my eyes. Her dark hair waved around her head like she was underwater, her arms raised, wrists limp.
But mostly, I thought I was going mad.
The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I shuddered as I stared out the window. It was that feeling again, of being watched. It was almost like someone knew I wanted to escape.
Slowly, I turned, narrowing my eyes to survey the room. In the dead of night, moonlight spilled over the bookshelves, the wooden dresser. The wick on the lantern was nearly burned down, growing dim. For a moment, the shadows seemed to be shifting, darkness flitting from one corner to another.
But when I scanned the room more carefully, I saw everything as it should be: a four-poster bed; the stark silver and black banners hanging on either side, with the Angelic writing I couldn’t read. The mirror hung over the