WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 54

Iris

If not for the chain that attaches both of her wrists to the wall, one would think that she's just sleeping.

In the great room beneath the tunnels, I watch her while her chest rises and falls, and Cal stares at her too, eyeing the girl from his chair by the fireplace. His foot taps against the floor, once for every time that she breathes. I think that the fire in the sconces pulses with her breathing, too.

Everything, all of our little schemes and tricks have worked too well. Skill, luck, or Jon, I'm not sure, nor am I sure if I'd like to know.

The walk back from that desolate hallway was silent, as Evangeline and I walked behind Cal, watching as he never faltered, never flinched in holding her unconscious form, no matter how many steps he carried her down, turns in the passages that he made certain to keep her head from hitting.

There aren't actual cells in the safe house beneath the tunnels, but Cal's found other methods of... imprisonment. The word leaves a stain on my tongue, though I haven't said it. She rests on her side against the stone wall, hands bound behind her back with chained manacles-he got in the weapons room-attached to a circular anchor poking out from the stone. Upon closer inspection, they're all over the place, little but infinitely strong pieces of metal, infused with Silent Stone.

Just like the hatch leading out of here, so that any Whispers or Bloodhounds couldn't sense us, but not strong enough for them to notice when walking past. Another flawless part in the flawless design.

And oh, yes. How she's going to scream at him, cry, perhaps when she wakes up, realizing what he's put around her wrists. Though she did the exact same to us, caging us in stone cages for ten days, put those same manacles around our wrists when we went to Davidson for negotiation.

With gleaming and wet platinum hair, Evangeline comes out of hallway leading to the bathing room and bedrooms, though her usual arrogance is replaced with something else. Now dressed in basic fighting gear, she bears a grim face, gloved hands scrunched up in contemplation. Usually she wears heaps of metal with her armor. And tonight is no different. She just hasn't found the right metal yet.

"It's dawned on me that my brother is more than likely gone from the dungeons and moved to a separate holding unit."

"More than likely, yes," I say.

"But I imagine she knows," Evangeline says, nodding to Mare. "Let me talk to her before Iris and I leave. You have all night to play with her." She watches Cal with glimmering eyes.

Cal's face contorts into a cringe before he wipes his hand down his face. Firelight hits his profile as he shifts, watching a section of the wall that Mare isn't chained to now. He's tired. Like me, though the nights have been harder on him than they have on the rest of us. Still, he looks handsome in the fire and shadows, like a Haven with their abilities to look perfect in any light. Almost like the fire favors him in that sense, never allowing him to look anything short of masterfully handsome.

"You want to torture her? No," he says.

"You're not hurting her," I say quietly, remembering the words she said in Cal's room. "It's two against one, so find another way to get Ptolemus's location. She wouldn't answer you anyway, no matter how much pain you may inflict. It would probably be a relief," I say, loud now.

Cal turns his head to us with dulls eyes, propping a foot on his chair. "We're not talking about what she said to Maven in my room, or what he said to her. I don't want to hear it from either of you."

I swallow, glancing at her again. Still limp, eyes firmly shut. Before I pinched the nerve in her neck, I had never rendered somebody unconscious that way before.