92: Phoenix's POV

Ada and I had spent the rest of the afternoon in silence. At around eight, Darius had knocked on the door to her room. He’d invited us to join him and Nik in our private living room for an evening of ‘quality time.’ She’d agreed before I’d had time to turn to look at my older brother. I’d followed them with a sigh, limping along behind them.

The fact was that I didn’t have enough energy for this. Even though we weren’t doing anything other than sitting around talking, I was too exhausted to stay focused. Well, exhausted and paranoid. I was doing my best to keep everyone sheltered from the storm that was raging within me, but I had felt my mask slip a few times while I was with Ada. I needed to be more careful with my brothers. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t tolerate any weakness. Both of them were tolerant men and would be understanding of the anxiety that was pounding in my chest. It was more that I couldn’t stand them seeing me that way. As their younger brother, they tended to baby me— to make excuses and shelter me.

I didn’t need that on top of everything else right now.

Nik had changed into his usual gray sweatpants and black t-shirt and had donned his glasses. As per usual, some tattered book was in his hand. The sultry smirk on his face told me that Ada was looking at him— and that he knew it. Sure enough, Ada’s eyes were grazing over his body. It wasn’t sensual this time. Her brows were furrowed, and she was chewing on her bottom lip as she looked at him. Our earlier conversation was very obviously weighing on her.

She was barely paying attention to Darius, who was animatedly speaking with her. He was going on about some play that they were going to be putting on in town, talking about the first time he’d seen it in a neighboring kingdom. Her smile was forced, her eyes lingering on Nik. I felt for her. It had to be an incredibly hard thing to know that you would end up killing someone you loved so totally.

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the back of the soft chair I was in. The thing was that she didn’t even know how totally she loved him. Darius and I could see it, just like we could see that there was affection there for us, but not love. Not yet. It only sucked because she had gotten me through the last couple of weeks, and I couldn’t even tell her that.

She wouldn’t understand. None of them would. Being taken by an unknown enemy, tortured for days, then suddenly being released without so much as a word? They hadn’t asked me any questions, hadn’t tried for any information. My return didn’t bring relief. If anything, it brought more questions and more paranoia. Why had I been taken? What was the purpose of torturing me, if not for information? I had endured nearly three weeks of hearing only my own voice and the sounds of my own screams echoing against the walls of the dark room they kept me in.

All of my ties to my brothers, my mate, and my people had been temporarily severed. There had been no hope for help. I hadn’t even begged to be let go, because I could only assume they were using me as bait. I wouldn’t be used to get to her.

But now I was struggling. I felt my expression falter and forced a smile. Weeks. They’d held me, cut me, electrified me, beat me, and so much more for *weeks*, and I had no idea who any of them were. It was safe to assume it was most likely someone from the Midnight Pack and the rebellion forming, but there was no way of knowing. For all I knew, they’d released me and brought me back to Oberon Castle and were here themselves. It could be anyone. A servant in the hall. A stable boy. One of the gardeners, perhaps. I had no way of knowing.

The only thing I was certain of was that Ada, Nik, and Darius weren’t involved. It felt good to be around them. I could relax a bit more, breathe a bit easier. But I couldn’t let the mask fall. I couldn’t let them see how unsure I was.

As my eyes shut, a flash of ropes doused in wolfsbane tied around my wrists popped into my mind. Suddenly, I could smell the dampness of the room where I was held. Hear the *drip-drop* of water falling from some unseen pipe. Taste the bitter liquid forced down my throat at near-exact intervals of every four hours. The liquid always came right as I started to feel Ada. I could feel her anxiety, almost hear her in my mind. Then the drink would come, and the feeling would go away.

All I had been left with was the ghost of her. I focused my mind on her. Her laugh, her smile, her eyes, her body, and the way it felt against mine. It was all I could hold onto as strips of my flesh were taken, as the inside of my mouth was burned, as water was poured over my face to the point that I couldn’t breathe. Knives were stabbed into my legs. Claws were taken to the bottoms of my feet. Needles shoved beneath my fingernails.

“Phoenix,” Nik stressed, and I realized my brother was kneeling in front of me, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Hey. You alright?”

A shadow was snaking around my ankle and up my leg, and I caught Ada’s eye from across the room. Her shadows felt different than Nik’s. Warmer. Smoother. I gave my head a light shake and smiled weakly, “I’m good, I’m good. What happened?”

Nik stood, narrowing his eyes. His black-metal rimmed glasses were framing his onyx eyes perfectly, making his gaze even sharper than usual. Ada was the one who spoke while Nik studied me, “You were screaming.”

“What?” I blinked, running a shaking hand through my hair.

Her shadows pulled away. I sucked in a few slow breaths, trying to regulate my heart rate a bit more. The three of them were staring at me, all of them stock-still. I rolled my shoulders back and did a little stretch, huffing out a laugh. With a shrug, I waved them off:

“It was only a little nightmare. Don’t worry about it.”