My head was still reeling as I was dragged out into the fresh air for the first time in what felt like forever. As a shifter, I wasn’t built to stay indoors for as long as I had and I should have enjoyed the cold, clear air on my skin – but all I could think about was Rissa, back in that cell, something close to a monster. I felt a twist of guilt for even thinking that about her, but it was the truth. There was nothing human left in the way she was now, except maybe her soul.

I blinked in the bright sunlight – it was still cold outside, but one of those snowy days where the sun glanced off the crisp whiteness all around and made it look almost like summer. But, strangely, I could hear singing and cheering from all around me. It took me a second to focus in on what was happening, but as soon as I did, I frowned in confusion. What the fuck was this about?

There were at least two or three dozen people in my eyeline, and all of them seemed to be celebrating something. In fact, it looked something like a wedding, like the people around me were having the time of their lives. But that wouldn’t have made a jot of sense. After all, why would they bring out someone looking like me into the middle of their celebration like this? It wouldn’t make any sense. I frowned and tried to tug away from the guard, but he held me firm. Well, it was worth a shot.

Now that I could see my body in the light, I noted that I was covered in blood and spackled with dirt. None of this made any sense. I could hear music, distantly, maybe coming from the keep they were leading me towards. What were they celebrating? A few of them glanced over at me and seemed filled with a joy that I couldn’t comprehend, grinning widely, one or two of them actually reaching out their hands to me to touch – I tugged myself away from them, not wanting to feel their fingers on me. I hadn’t had much in the way of bodily autonomy since I’d arrived, but I was going to cling to what little I still had left.

We continued towards the enormous keep and the crowds grew even denser – there were maybe two, three hundred people out here with me, all of them watching me as I drew closer to the keep. Suddenly, the crowd parted, growing silent, as though someone had flicked a switch within them. My heart dropped. Whatever was happening, I doubted that it was good news for me at all.

The guard pulled me forward and I let my feet drag on the ground behind me, not wanting to make this any easier for him than I already had. He pressed his lips together and glared at me, as though that would actually bother me. Pulling me through the space the crowd had left for us, he pushed me to my knees and I landed with a thump. And when I looked up, I realized that I was once more in the presence of the last man on Earth I wanted to see.

Rickland MacLaren.

I felt my heart sink in my chest and closed my eyes once more. So this is what they were celebrating. Their victory. Their chief. This man, who had beaten the shit out of me just a day before and left me to suffer in my own blood and filth.

Rickland looked down at me, his expression impassive, and I fought the urge to spit in his face. Looking up at him and knowing all that he had taken away from me, I felt a surge of rage that my father would have been proud of. Even that thought wasn’t enough to comfort me, because I knew he wouldn’t exactly be hurrying to help me in my time of need.

Next to him stood a boy that I recognized. James. The boy I’d freed a few weeks earlier, the one I’d released from the prison because I was sure that it was some kind of cruelty I couldn’t abide by to keep him there. Well, now he stood next to his father, looking down at me with the same cruelty in his eyes that his father had shown me, and I wondered if he even remembered who I was. If he recalled the small act of kindness I’d allowed him in this mess of a war.

“So,” Rickland got to his feet, looking down at me with nothing but contempt in his eyes. I glanced around, at all the people watching us, and wondered how many of them were scared of the man they bowed to. A few of them stumbled back a couple of steps when he moved, as though acting on instinct, as though afraid of what he might do to them if they didn’t show him deference.

“It seems like our friend here has been keeping a secret from us.” Rickland held his hands up, and the crowd reacted like they’d been trained – murmurs of interest and excitement swirled around me. I closed my eyes. I knew what this was going to be about.

“We knew that we had a Kellum.” He took a few steps down towards me, and I tried to pull away, but before I could, he had tucked a hand beneath my chin and tilted it up so I had no choice but to look him in the eyes. “But we didn’t know exactly which Kellum we had.”

The murmurs continued, the crowd curious.

“But it seems as though we’ve got Arianna Kellum!” he announced, raising his voice like he was delivering the best news of the year, and the crowd fell silent for a split second as the news sank in, before letting loose a cheer so deafening that I knew it would be ringing in my ears for days.

“I’m not who you think I am,” I snarled up at him. There was little point in lying now but I still had to try, to see if it might earn me a little leeway in the face of all of this. He shrugged. He didn’t seem to give much of a damn what I thought, what I said. He had made his mind up.

“My son believes differently.” He turned and looked in the direction of the boy who I had saved but a few weeks earlier, and I wondered how this child could, in good faith, turn me in like this. He must have known the misery that would have been due to him had it not been for me letting him out of that place. And now, he was forcing me to endure this in return?

“Tell us.” Rickland waved a hand, indicating for his son to begin talking. The boy looked down at me once more and I stared back up at him, pleading with my eyes for him to hold back, to let off, to allow me the anonymity that might save my life, but I knew that I was asking for something that he had already decided he wasn’t going to give me.

“When I escaped from the Kellum lair,” he began, his voice a little shaky, as though he wasn’t used to talking in front of this many people at once. “I saw her. I saw her with her father, and I know for a fact that she is his most precious prize…”

“That’s not how it happened!” I yelled over him, even though I knew it was useless – who were they going to believe, a prisoner covered in blood and attached to the name of their mortal enemies, or the son of their leader? I didn’t stand a chance. The guard who had been so nervous before, caught me by the hair and pulled my head back so that I had no choice but to look my captors in the eyes. I wondered if he was as scared as I was. He had certainly seemed that way when he had come to pick me up a few moments before.

“Don’t lie to us,” Rickland snarled, taking his seat back on the throne and glaring down at me. “We know what liars the lot of you are. We don’t want to have to hurt you again…”

“Please, listen to me,” I begged, staring up at Rickland and struggling to find a shred of humanity left in him, something I could appeal to in order to get this to stop. Or at least to get him to listen to my side of the story. “I know how this sounds, but…”

“This kind of disrespect won’t stand.” He shook his head and got to his feet. “Guard, step away from her.”

My entire body tensed in preparation for another attack, and I closed my eyes and bent my head down in the hopes of protecting myself from the worst of it. Rickland didn’t say anything else, but he must have made a signal of some kind because moments later, a large, half-rotted tomato landed just in front of me. I lifted my head to look at it, confused, and then a hailstorm of disgusting old fruit and vegetables pelted down on me, courtesy of the crowds surrounding me. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my head and tried to keep as much of it as I could off me, but it was useless – it was all over me, in my hair, smeared across my skin, and judging by the jeers of the crowd, they seemed to be enjoying my obvious discomfort.

“We have the crown jewel in the Kellum clan right here!” Rickland yelled over the sound of the crowd, glee in his voice that he couldn’t restrain. “She’s ours!”

There was another cheer and I did my best to keep my composure as I lay there on the ground, my body covered in disgusting rotted fruit. A slimy piece of mushy apple slid down the back of my neck and I felt tears prick my eyes. This wasn’t right. Yes, both sides had done bad in the midst of this clan war, but surely this…surely they could see that this was too much. This was too cruel. I couldn’t imagine my father allowing this. I couldn’t imagine anyone in the Kellum clan allowing anything as profoundly horrible as this. I was humiliated as it was, beaten and bloody and raw and taken from everything that I held dear to me, and now they were treating me like I was some kind of common criminal when my only crime was to be part of a family that they didn’t care for. I couldn’t believe that this boy was selling me out like this. I had probably saved his life, and yet this was how he repaid me for it? Was it just that he couldn’t allow his father to think that he had required the help of a girl to get himself free? Maybe he wanted to be seen as the brave and wily creature his father clearly viewed him as. I wouldn’t blame him.

Slowly, the crowd let up and parted, and I found myself lifting my head once more and looking around – and saw suddenly that there was another prisoner beside me. My heart stopped. Who else had they dragged in here and forced to endure the same torment they were putting me through? It looked like a woman, around my age, her hair streaked with dirt and blood and her face practically obscured with the same. I frowned for a moment, ignoring the crowd around me, trying to place her – I knew her from somewhere, from something that felt like long ago…

And then it hit me. Like a ton of bricks.

“Cora,” I breathed, and somehow she heard me. She lifted her head and looked at me and I felt my heart practically stop in my chest. It couldn’t be. There was no way. And yet, I would have known those bright blue eyes anywhere in the world. I didn’t forget a best friend as easily as that.

“What have they done to you?” I scrambled towards her, but it took her a second for her eyes to focus on me. Enough time that the guard had time to roughly tug me away. Comprehension passed across her face in a shock, and she reached out a hand for me – I tried to do the same, tried to take it, but the guard had thrust me back onto the ground behind me and dumped me down.

“We won’t need that one for leverage,” Rickland announced coldly from behind me. “Put her in the cell with the male and begin testing.”

Cora’s face cleared and I could see stone cold panic written all over it. I scrambled to my feet with the last of my strength.

“No!” I screamed as they pulled her to her feet. I raced towards her, moving so fast I was able to break free of my captors for a second – Cora reached a hand out to me, silent, as though speaking would somehow make this harder, and our fingers touched for the briefest of split seconds before I was yanked back onto the ground again.

“Make her submit,” Rickland sneered, and I felt another strike to the back of my head, this one meant to incapacitate. I groaned as I hit the ground, and tried to scramble back towards Cora once more.

“Take a good look,” he announced. “It’ll be the last you see of her. Like this, at any rate.”

Cora seemed to finally take note of what they were saying, and her lips parted to form a cavern of terror as she began to scream. I stared after her helplessly for another second before the blows started raining down once more, the guards laying in to me like they enjoyed doing it. And the last thing I remembered, before the blackness took me again, wasn’t the sound of the crowd around me, or the blows to my body, or the fear in my veins. No, it was the sound of Cora’s screaming, as she was dragged off to a fate far worse than death.