Page 16 of Claim the Twilight
Panic gripped my chest like a vise.
It’s the only way.
I knew that voice… “Ingrid?” I glanced about the room to find it empty.
I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here, and I need you to come back to me. To come back to us.
Her voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
I don’t have much time, so I need you to listen to me. You must find your way out.
“I don’t…I don’t understand. I’m hurt. Healing.”
No, Orina, youwerehurt, but you healed, and now if you don’t wake up, you’ll be trapped.
The tightness in my chest grew worse. “What happened to me?”
You must remember that yourself.
“I’m trying, but I can’t.” It was suddenly harder to breathe. “It was bad, wasn’t it?”
Yes.
“So…so I’m blocking it out?”
We believe so.
My gaze flicked to the door. A door that didn’t belong here. Doors usually led places, but this door led somewhere my senses seemed to have an aversion to. Somewhere that evoked panic and fear.
A shadow passed over the room, and my pulse spiked. “Ingrid?”
Her reply was a distant whisper.Take control…
“Ingrid!” There was no answer. She was gone. “Dammit.” Ingrid communicating with me meant that for some reason Ezekiel couldn’t. My gut told me that the reason was me. I’d somehow subconsciously ejected him, and the only reason I could think of was the door.
The door that led to whatever it was I’d subconsciously decided to bury.
I took several calming breaths and wrapped my hand around the doorknob. Dread pooled in my belly, and I knew I was on the right track.
It was time to face the truth.
I opened the door.
Darkness swallowed me,then spat me out in a vast stone chamber with a domed ceiling and a cage dangling from it. There was a strange stone plinth to my far left, but the area beyond the plinth was a blur, and no matter how hard I strained my eyes, I couldn’t see past it. My chest fluttered, pulse quickening as the conviction that I knew this place bloomed inside me.
I’d been here before. The walls…People had been pinned to the walls, and the empty cage had held…someone.
Movement in my periphery had my head whipping round, gaze dropping to the chair in the center of the room. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. That chair…not a normal chair now but a contraption with spikes. Ice flooded my veins.
I took an instinctive step away from it, pulse humming in my throat.
The chair was bad.
Fingers dug into my skull, pressing through bone and penetrating my brain with images and emotions. Christian’s smug voice and Micah’s apologetic one. Screams that weren’t mine followed by one that was.
Pleading.
Begging.
