Page 84 of Fuse

I battle to think around the pain, attempting to get in as much air while keeping my glower fixed on the damn harpy. “And yet…I share Reece Richards’s bed…every night.”

The incensed glare she returns to my stammer isn’t surprising. Who’s the predictable one now, Faline the Magnificent? I hang on to the gloat while watching more turbulence enter her eyes, and then there’s an incensed flare of her nostrils. If she can read the snark across my mind, I certainly haven’t helped my cause—but something tells me I could have been meditating about a Bob Ross painting framed in 3-D puppies and earned myself the same vitriol from the bitch.

So why not let it all fly now?

But by the time I unstick my pasty tongue from the back of my chalk-tastic teeth and think of a moment alluding to the night Reece and I spent on the Seine reenacting the Kama Sutra for about five hours, I’ve regained consciousness in another room. Hardly comprehending what landed me here—for a second or two. But then it starts to return in petrifying, torturing flashes.

Another flick of Faline’s wrist.

The henchmen lunging over, resembling flying monkeys in their speed and impact.

Their disconnected murmurs in my ears—sí, our queen—before Faline gives them more quiet orders and they’re grabbing me. Restraining me. Carrying me.

A hall. Another.

Around a curve. Through a locked door that buzzes and startles me—but not as much as new hands on me that belong to a trio of females in medical scrubs and face masks. I’m free again—but not. I’m unable to move anything now, even my mouth to protest how they efficiently strip me naked and then carry me again, laboratory Oompa-Loompa style, and roll me onto a steel table.

A steel table.

Where I am now.

Where I try to scream now.

And I do.

As loud as I can. As long as I can. An hour? Two? Three? What’s time in a world of nothing but white walls, steel equipment, and blaring lights? What are sounds if I’m the only one left to hear them?

What’s going on? What’s going on? What’s going on?

I trade the scream for a grateful sob when there’s suddenly another voice in the room. When there’s a shift on the air, probably belonging to the voice. I don’t even try to swivel my head, already having discovered that the Oompa Loompas secured me from the neck up in a steel collar contraption, rendering it impossible to shift anything other than my eyes.

A woman, also in scrubs and a mask—but with nearly black eyes I’ll never forget and will always be able to identify—steps into my view.

Her.

It’s her.

And I cry harder—because it doesn’t matter.

Because the white, endless solitude was worse.

Because even the hatred I have for her is like a miracle. A reminder that I’m still here. I’m still me. I’m still existing.

Oh, God.

I flinch, shocked to hear the words tumble intelligibly out of me. But I jolt even harder, filled with twice as much dread, as she dips closer to me, her black gaze spreading like ravens’ wings, annihilating everything I see.

“Ahhhh, no, chiquita. Just me.” She strokes her knuckles over my cheek. “How are you feeling?”

Fuck you.

If she picks up the thought from my head this time, she doesn’t show it. “The pain is better, sí?” she murmurs. “Almost gone?”

“Yes.”

Though I force civility into it, Faline pulls down her mask to give me a full view of her pinched scowl. “The proper address is, ‘Yes, my queen.’”

I tighten my glare. “Now you can really go fuck yourself.” And at once am rewarded with the pain of fifty drills in my belly, churning my internal organs until I’m amazed the bright-white lights aren’t shattering from my screams. “Yes, my queen!” I shriek. “Yes, my queen!”