I still heard it when Gil’s voice cut short again.
There was something more final about this silence. A terrified sob almost escaped me. I’d been around death enough times to recognize the subtle signs of its arrival, even as a human. A slight temperature drop. An inexplicable feeling of awareness. After a few seconds, my stomach lurched, and vomit surged up my throat. I fought to keep it down. It doesn’t mean he’s dead. It doesn’t mean he’s dead, I mentally chanted.
But the silence was loud in my ears, and it sounded like a thousand voices rising up to call me a liar. Gil was dead. Belanor had killed him. I was willing to bet on my life that it was a result of the spell.
My stomach gave another heave of warning. I launched for the toilet, making it just as a surge of vomit exploded from my throat.
For the next few minutes, I spit and gagged over the water, waiting for the nausea to subside before sitting up. Once I felt more clear-headed, I eased away from the padded bowl. Those screams echoed through my skull, the latest addition to a graveyard of haunted memories that existed there.
It was as if someone had been skinning Gil alive. Clawing him open from the inside.
And I vowed, right there and then, to kill myself before I ever let the Seelie Prince attempt his spell on me.
It felt like hours later when the door opened again.
Two Guardians entered carrying Gil between them. They tossed the Nightmare to the padded floor, and he hit it like a ragdoll, as if his body was made of string instead of flesh and bone. The leather jacket was gone, along with his shirt, revealing a body that was too thin and covered in tattoos. Gil let out a low, feeble moan that sent a lightning bolt of urgency through me. Holy shit, he’s alive.
While the guards took positions on either side of the doorway, I rushed over to him and dropped to my knees. I didn’t even consider taking advantage of the open door or wonder if Belanor was coming. There was no blood on Gil’s shirt, but I lifted it anyway, revealing a pale, smooth stomach. Every part of him was drenched in sweat. “What’s wrong, Gil? What did you do to him?”
This last part I snarled at the faeries. They just stared at the opposite wall, more stoic than The Queen’s Guard.
I refocused on Gil and instantly forgot about them. Worried that touching him would cause more pain, my hands hovered over his chest, where he was holding both of his. As though he were trying to staunch a wound. But as I tugged them away, whispering that I needed to see, he could let go, just let go, I saw there was nothing there either. No blood, no cuts, no bruises.
“Tell me what they did to you,” I urged. Maybe if I knew that, I’d know how to help him.
But Gil only made a mindless, gurgling sound, and then he went still.
Wait. Did he just stop breathing? I stared at him for a beat, blank with disbelief. Then I began whispering frantically, barely aware of what I was saying, “No. C’mon, Gil, don’t do this. Look at me.”
I pressed my ear against his chest, frantic to hear a heartbeat. When I couldn’t detect anything, I didn’t trust that my own panic was affecting me, and I shoved my fingers to Gil’s narrow throat. I waited, hardly daring to breathe, and… nothing.
Dead. The only other Nightmare I’d met outside of my family was dead.
His eyes were bleeding, I noted dimly, sinking back on my haunches. I’d seen it when they first brought him in, of course, but this was the first chance to think about it. If thinking was what I was doing. Reality had taken on hazy edges again. Slowly, I looked down at my hands. Some of Gil’s blood had gotten on me. I turned them over, staring at the red smears on my fingers.
What the hell had Belanor done to him? I mused silently. What kind of spell caused those kinds of sounds?
The first round of screams had been familiar, though. I’d made them myself when Fende held that sizzling piece of metal against my back. Following a numb impulse, I pushed Gil’s body slightly to the side, giving me access to the back of his shoulder. He was hot to the touch, and the skin was smooth and unblemished, save for a smattering of moles. Not that shoulder, then. I moved to his other side and pushed him again, already knowing what I’d find. I still needed to see it for myself.
And there it was—Gil now wore the same brand they’d burned onto me. The burn was so fresh that it must’ve been done minutes before his death. The skin around the symbol was an angry pink. I swallowed another surge of shock down. Shock and sorrow. I hadn’t known Gil, not really, but the Nightmare tattoo artist from London had started growing on me.
I also knew for certain now that he’d been telling the truth about everything. This was too vivid to be a trick or a hallucination.
“Pity.” Belanor’s voice sliced through the quiet. “He wasn’t powerful enough. I knew he wouldn’t be, of course, but I’m an optimist at heart. I allowed myself to hope.”
“Then I’ll allow myself to hope I get the chance to kill you with my bare hands,” I said through my teeth, shaking from adrenaline and rage. All the fear I’d felt last time I saw him had crumbled to ash in the wasteland of my hope.
Belanor’s gaze fastened to my face. Triumph shone in the depths of his gunmetal eyes. “Oh, good. You cared for him. I suspected you would, if I gave you enough time together. Ruler of the Unseelie Court, and you didn’t learn that caring gives you a weakness. No wonder you gave the throne away. Are you angry, Nightmare? Does your brethren’s painful death make you long for the power you threw away?”
My hands clenched into trembling fists. I knew, if my power was to return in that moment, I’d use it to tear Belanor’s mind into ribbons.
But there was no fear in the faerie’s expression. Not a single trace of it. He was truly willing to die, I realized, if it meant that I would regain my abilities. Belanor wasn’t just evil, he was a fanatic. I wasn’t sure there was any worse combination. Whatever his cause—whatever the reason he needed a Nightmare—Belanor considered it worth the life of a faerie king.
So I did nothing.
“You lose,” I said with sweet venom, all of my blind fury rushing into the serene smile I pasted on. Hiding in plain sight. I knew regaining control would be the best way to piss Belanor off; he thrived off reactions and attention. Shoving the knife in deeper, I turned away from him and sat down against the wall, as if Belanor was nothing to me. His presence, inconsequential.
It didn’t bode well for me that his voice remained pleasant. “Fortunately, I’ve scheduled an entire day’s worth of engagements for you, Miss Sworn,” he said. “We’ll get you sorted out, fear not. Although that’s not quite the right thing to say, is it? Fear is exactly what you need.”
With those ominous words, Belanor turned and left the room, his cloak flaring behind him like a red smile.
None of the Guardians moved toward Gil’s body. I couldn’t stop myself from going rigid when it became clear they had no intention of taking it with them. One by one, they went through the door. It slammed down at the same moment I made a ragged sound of distress.
Sealing me inside a padded cell with a corpse.
I started Dad’s breathing techniques. Deep inhale, hold, long exhale. Calm ebbed back, second by second. I had to keep the emotions locked away. I had to be smart. When it came to Belanor, losing control could literally get me killed. What remained of Gil still rested at my feet, a constant reminder of the fate that awaited if one of Belanor’s plans worked. For now, staying human meant staying alive.