Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
The mark.
I wondered if spending the entire night together, holding onto one another, had strengthened it even further.
We moved fast down the corridor before stopping at another locked doorway. Vasilios unlocked this one, too, with a quick spell. His magic filled the air, like a tingling at the back of my neck. I reached up to rub it, and his attention went to my hands.
“What happened to you?” he asked, his concerned gaze on my palms.
I glanced down and inhaled sharply. Everything had happened so fast that I barely had time to process, never mind notice the cuts on my hands from trying to strangle Lara. The roughly braided hemp rope must’ve sliced into my palms. My stomach sank at the memory. I’d been so feral, so unrelenting. Thanks to my vampire genes, the cuts were slowly healing, but they’d probably been a lot worse a few minutes ago.
“It’s nothing. I’ll tell you later.”
“Quick, we have to keep moving,” Sven ordered.
We hurried down a set of stairs before reaching two steel doors. They looked like the ones I’d passed through when I’d first entered the prison. There was a keypad next to them and a small rectangular window through which you could see an office area. A guard sat in front of several monitors showing CCTV footage.
“Won’t someone have seen us leaving the main part of the prison on one of the security cameras?” I asked quietly.
“No,” Vasilios replied. “I bespelled them to show a loop of old footage.”
“Smart,” I said, and he shot me a grin.
“Keep your voices down,” Sven complained. “We have to wait for this guard to leave his post, and then we can move through to the next section of the prison.”
Vasilios brought his attention back to me as he nodded to my hands. “Tell me what happened.”
“It was Lara,” I whispered. “She’s the one who’s been making me dream about the tree in the courtyard. She’s been influencing people all this time, making them take their own lives. It’s so completely fucked up. She gets into their heads and makes them believe they want to commit suicide. Then she provides them with a rope she makes using the hemp from Sarasin’s greenhouse.”
Vasilios’s eyes blazed with fury as I continued, “She got into my head the very first time she came to my cell and introduced herself. She decided I would be her next victim.”
“I’ll kill her,” Vasilios seethed.
“There’s no need, and it’s not like you can now anyway. Marcel walked into the courtyard and distracted her. It gave me enough time to get down from the tree and wrap the rope she’d intended me to hang myself with around her neck.”
“You killed her?” he asked quietly, his expression full of approval.
I shook my head. “No. I almost did, but Serg came in and pulled me off her. Marcel told him what she’s been doing, mentally influencing other prisoners, so Serg had his men bring her to the Spikes. I think that’s what they call the place where Mack locked you and me last night.”
“Good. She deserves to suffer,” Vasilios said, bringing his hand up to caress my cheek. “I almost lost you,” he continued in a whisper. His eyes held mine, and I saw his fear that I’d come so close to death. An unfamiliar feeling swept through me. I never imagined I’d enjoy him caring about my well-being.
“Okay, looks like he’s gone on a bathroom break. Let’s go,” Sven said, interrupting the moment. Vasilios cast a spell over the door entry system, and I watched as buttons pressed down on their own, magically keying in the code.
The doors slid open, and we passed through. My heart was in my throat because guards manned the area, and we could run into one at any moment. I mean, I wasn’t a real prisoner, so technically, I wasn’t really escaping. I was, however, allowing two actual prisoners to escape when I should’ve informed the warden of their plan as soon as I discovered it.
“It’s okay. Stay behind me,” Vasilios said, sensing my anxiety.
We reached what appeared to be a large laundry shaft. Sven pulled it open and prepared to climb in.
“Wait, we’re going in there?” I asked apprehensively.
“It’s a quick slide down,” Sven explained. “You’ll be landing in dirty prison guard uniforms, but I figured it was better than using the garbage chute.”
He was right. Dirty laundry was definitely preferable to that.
“I’ll go down first and catch you,” Vasilios said, climbing by Sven. He braced himself and then let go, disappearing down the chute. In the second it took him to reach the bottom, I prayed there was dirty laundry down there to break his fall.
Sven and I peered down before we heard Vasilios call back up to us. “All good!”
“You go now. I’ll follow you,” Sven said, and I climbed into the chute. Not wishing to prolong the anxiety, I quickly let my body drop, and seconds later, I crashed into Vasilios’ arms. He caught me before I could land in the laundry, and my breathing quickened when one of his hands lingered on the small of my back. His eyes went to my mouth a moment, but then he stepped away, and Sven sailed down.