Page 160 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
Her shallow wheezes are the only answer, and it’s a thousand times worse in the darkness.
Sound amplifies. Every little noise carries.
Metal shrieks on rusted hinges.
The Lady of Shadows’ tongue tuts behind her teeth. “Ready to talk, are we?”
Wood shifts on the stone floor beneath us. Rope groans, and the hot sizzle of heating wires builds to a sharp buzz in the air.
Rock cracks, dust pattering down over my head. Sticking to the cuts down my cheeks, dripping with each drop of blood falling into my mouth.
“Get.Fucked,” Finn grunts, and something wet spatters again.
The Lady of Shadows hisses. I hear a cloak rustle, and there’s a slow, steady pad of boots on stone in the dark, toward where I think the table is.
Not again.
I can’t let them hurt Finn again.
“I’m the one you fucking want!” I scream, my throat too ragged from screaming to manage anything more.
“Then give me what I want,” the Lady of Shadows snarls.
I can’t give in. I can’t tell the Lady of Shadows what she wants. Any hope of saving whatever magic’s left in the Seven Wells, of protecting our very future, our freedom as a people—all of it dies if I betray Wolf and the Whisperers.
Everything it cost to get this far will have been for nothing if I break now.
But Old Ones, holding out feels impossible.
“Maeve,”Finn whispers, her voice thick.
A sob breaks free from me. Tears flood my eyes, and I taste salt. They pour down my cheeks, stinging in the cuts and mixing with dried blood and dirt and the places where Wolf once kissed me.
She’s going to ask me to break. I know it. Finn wants me to make it stop. Sheneedsfor it to stop, needs to know I’ll do whatever it takes. Just like when she was dying, and I saved her. I can save her again, right now. I can end this.
And if she says the words, Old Ones help me—I’ll do it.
I’ll fucking break.
Metal ticks, like a clamp pressurizing. Her breath heaves, and I swear I can see the familiar spark of her stubborn, fierce eyes even through the darkness.
“Don’t give in,”she wheezes.
My fingers reach for hers, straining against the shackles. The metal creaks, and for a heartbeat, there’s a groan like rope straining against taut muscle. “Finn—”
A spring releases in a sharp whistle of air.
There’s a sound like my blade makes every time it sinks into skin, and Finn’s breath snares in her throat. The heaving, wheezing sound stops.
In the darkness, there’s no light to fade out from her eyes.
But I hear the moment she stops breathing. The moment her chest stills, and her pain ends.
I feel the moment my soul, if I even still have one, splits apart.
My chest collapses. My lungs don’t work. There’s no feeling left in my skin. No pain. Nothing at all, except for the hollow swell of anguish crushing me alive. The air trapped behind my ribs explodes, and a ragged, guttural scream rips out of me.
It’s all that’s left of me in the darkness, and it’s not enough. Pressure builds unbearably inside me. Straining at the boundaries of my senses. My body can’t bear it. Can’t possibly survive it for one second longer.
