When the humans had cast the spell to turn themselves into Moroi, it’d led to a fucked-up reproductive cycle. Every four months, anyone with a uterus would experience the joy of excruciating pain and bleeding. It only lasted for two or three days, but those days were absolute agony. Once that funness was over, my sex drive would go wild. That partwasusually fun—almost made up for the three days of suffering—but given my current situation, it was a problem.
I wouldn’t be completely out of my mind with lust, but thinking coherently would be difficult. So I was basically looking at almost a week of limited cognitive function. Wonderful. As if my situation weren’t fucked enough already.
It wasn’t as if the woman that I’d respected, looked up to, and absolutely idolized had betrayed me. And not a little betrayal. Alied to me and manipulated me for years, tortured and imprisoned the man I loved, and had me thrown in a moonsdamned dungeontype of betrayal.
I rubbed the empty space on my finger where the ring Cali had gifted me should’ve been. Demetri had been the one to take it off—gleefully. When we’d been married, I’d regularly used it to communicate with Cali and Rynn. He probably knew how much my two best friends didn’t like him and took great joy in making sure I couldn’t reach out to them.
Rynn was with the Alpha Pack now. No doubt she wasn’t happy about that, but at least she was safe. Those assholes would protect her—whether she wanted that protection or not.
It was Cali I was worried about. All Furies had a bit of a short fuse. Cali was pretty good about controlling her temper—unless Rynn or I were threatened, then all bets were off.
The fact that she wasn’t already here raining down blood and fury had me worried. My fingers curled inwards until my claws pressed into my skin just shy of drawing blood. I hated Carmilla for imprisoning me and keeping me from helping my friends put out the fires that seemed to be popping up everywhere.
The only person I hated more than her right now was Vail, because he was the reason I was in this mess. When I wasn’t trading barbs with Demetri, I was screaming at him. At least, I had been for the first five days. Lately, I’d switched to ignoring his presence because that seemed to hurt him more, based on how his eyes would bleed silver after a few minutes.
I didn’t give the slightest fuck about Vail’s feelings right now though. He’d betrayed me—after he’d fucked me.
He could rot in a shallow grave right next to Demetri for all I cared.
Demetri’s hazel eyes hardened the longer he looked at me, light green flecks starting to expand into the brown as his temper and bloodlust rose. For a second, another pair of hazel eyes surfaced in my mind. But Roth’s eyes were far prettier. Their secondary eye color was more of a burnt orange, like little sparks that would flare in their eyes. Compared to my sharp-tongued love, Demetri was nothing.
Less than nothing.
I’d find a way out of here. Back to all of them. Ideally before my lovers tried something insane like breaking into the Sovereign House.
Yeah, because breaking out is a much saner idea.
Shut up, brain. Nobody asked you.
Fuck.I might be losing it.
My stomach churned as the pain of my cramps reached a new level. I was going to hurl up my meager breakfast all over this floor if I didn’t lie down soon. A bead of sweat formed at my hairline. It was bad enough that I was sitting while he was here, but standing wasn’t an option. I settled for keeping my spine ramrod straight while I sat and didn’t let my feral smile falter.
“Fine,” Demetri finally said, brushing a hand through his hair as if he weren’t monumentally frustrated with me. “I’ll take my leave for now.” His eyes glinted with a slyness I didn’t like one bit. “Perhaps I’ll pay the fallen prince a visit and test out my new iron-tipped spear. Maybe I’ll get him to scream loud enough that you’ll be able to hear him all the way up here.”
My mask cracked and then shattered into a thousand pieces. In a second, I was on my feet at the front of the cell, wrapping my fingers around the bars that separated us.
“Touch him, and I’ll rip out your spine and beat you to death with it!” I snarled and shook the bars even as they burned my skin. All of the bars in the dungeon had a high level of iron because they’d been built by the Fae. Why the Fae had felt the need to imprison their own kind, I had no idea.
Just like I had no idea why I had a reaction to the iron. It felt revolting against my skin.
“Pretty sure he’d already be dead at that point,” Vail said from where he still casually leaned against the wall, sharpening one of his knives. “But I’ve never really tested Moroi healing abilities in that way. Could be a fun little experiment.”
“Nobody fucking asked you,” I snapped at Vail before mentally slapping myself. Well, he’d finally gotten me to speak to him.
Demetri gave Vail a cool look. “You were told to stay away. I’ll be informing Carmilla of this.”
Vail shrugged, eying his dagger for a moment before continuing to sharpen it. “Seems like a poor choice.”
“And why is that?”
The Marshal of House Harker finally looked up to meet Demetri’s gaze, thick silver cracks weaving through his dark grey eyes. “Because then I’d be forced to rip out your tongue for being a sniveling little tattletale.”
Demetri’s eyes flashed green for a moment before his cool and collected facade snapped back into place. There was a conniving wickedness to Demetri that I’d never seen in all the years we’d been married. Either it was new or he’d done an excellent job of hiding it. I suspected the latter, which irked me because I hadn’t seen through hislazy but mostly harmlessact for all that time.
“Fine. Stay here as long as you want.” A knowing smile spread across his lips. “She’ll never forgive you. Samara never loved me, but the way she stares at you when you’re not looking”—he sucked in a harsh breath—“that’s definitely love. The fallout of it anyway. Did you know, Vail? When you agreed to betray her, did you know she loved you? What about when you parted those deliciously thick thighs and fu?—”
Faster than I could track, Vail had his hand wrapped around Demetri’s throat as he slammed him against the bars of my cell, causing me to jump back. He flung the other Moroi to the floor and took one step towards him before halting and spinning around to pace to the other side of the dungeon.
