A chill bit into my skin.
And as I descended the tower to the ballroom, I sighed.
I felt ancient and weary, burning alive with hate and revenge.
Yet now my home was infested with rats, and the games were about to begin.
Chapter Seven
“KEEP IT TOGETHER. YOU’VE GOT THIS. See, you’re fine.”
Giving myself a pep talk, I ran straight for the wall barricading us in this nightmare. The broken glass at the top twinkled and that nasty wire said it was probably electrified but I had to try.
Pressing myself against the wall, I fumbled with my backpack and yanked out my cell phone. Looking around furtively, I turned it on and waited with a pounding skull as it booted up, whirred to life, and...no signal.
Of course.
Holding it aloft like an idiot, I walked a few metres, begging the bars to glow with reception.
And nothing.
Fine.
I’d never relied on that stupid device anyway. And my bodyguard, Dillon, had enough experience tracking me down without it. How many times had he found me in some obscure place in the rice paddies of Ubud or on a river cruise through Europe? I mean, I wasn’t exactly incognito with using my credit card, but still...he would find me.
Eventually.
Shoving my phone back into my rucksack, I slung it onto my shoulders and eyed the wall.
I’d already yanked on the gate and found, just as I suspected, it was locked.
I staggered a little as my heart skipped a few beats, driving me closer to burnout.
I either needed to be far, far away from this place or to find a bed where I could rest because I was swiftly running out of time.
Dashing to one of the baby oak trees, I launched myself at it and managed to grab the closest branch. Scrambling in my ridiculous flip-flops and scratching my thighs on its bark, I hauled myself high enough to look over the wall.
And...nothing.
The G-wagons were gone.
No men in sight.
It was as if the selection process and wellness lie were all made up in my head.
“Please get down from the tree and join the others in the ballroom.”
I flinched in shock, looking around. “Who—?”
A drone dropped to eye level, repeating its message from whoever watched me on the other end of the camera. “Please join the others. That is not a request.”
My pounding head turned my vision hazy again. Clinging to the trunk with one hand, I rubbed my eyes with the other.
“Please join the others.”
I ignored it, wishing I was normal. Wishing I could handle panic and worry or be one of those lucky people who found they became superhuman the minute they suffered a little bit of anxiety.
Instead, I clenched my teeth against the very real possibility of throwing up.
“You leave me with no choice.” The drone made a high-pitched noise before a blast of electricity drilled through me.
It seized my muscles.
It blazed my bones.
Every ligament locked and I tumbled headfirst to the grass below.
I landed hard, winded and gasping, my limbs thrashing like a broken puppet.
As quickly as the drone shocked me, it stopped. Hovering over me, no doubt taking celebratory photos of me flat on my back, it announced, “You have two minutes to join the others, or you will be shocked again.”
I gave up.
I went back.
And the damn thing trailed me the entire journey.
* * * * *
Following the murmur of feminine voices, I made myself as small as possible and tiptoed through the palace. I didn’t even know if that word was correct for a home in the meadows of Britain, but it certainly helped encompass the grandeur.
Vaulted ceilings soared like the nave of a cathedral, yet instead of saints in stained glass, the arched windows were patterned with flowering lotuses and flying phoenixes. Light poured through them in fractured rainbows, painting the black stone floors with shifting mosaics.
Silk scrolls of cranes and misty mountains hung between marble busts of long-dead kings. European portraits of whiskered men glowered at me, while huge banners of Chinese calligraphy hung beside them.
It seemed as if two civilisations had collided and combined, blending East and West with paper lanterns dangling from wrought-iron chandeliers, and potted bamboo growing against baroque wallpapered walls.
By the time I reached the threshold of the ballroom, my head spun with too much beauty.
The group of women huddled together in the heart of the cavernous room, the lights turned down to mimic a false gloaming—thanks to the black velvet draping most of the huge windows. The carved panels on the walls glittered with mother-of-pearl and tarnished mirrors, reflecting the flicker of low-burning lamps and thirty pairs of worried eyes.
Coming to a stop, I glanced around, peering into the shadows for signs of the panther.
I’d begun to think I’d lost my sanity on the bus here and everything that’d happened since was a strange kind of dream.
“What’s everyone doing?” I whispered to the girl standing close by. “Why are they waiting here?”
She glanced at me, her features fighting courage and panic. “We’re waiting for him to grace us with his presence, of course.”
“Lucien Ashfall?” I watched her carefully. Was she one of the women who’d come here, knowing the free spa weekend was a lie, or was she like me and cursing herself for being so dumb?
“Yes.” She pursed her lips, glancing at the rest of the women. “He’s in here somewhere...hunting us.” Glancing at the pinprick on her fingertip, from where they’d drawn her blood, she frowned. “My trainer never mentioned admittance would be based on DNA.” Her eyes met mine. “Why do you think they—”
“It’s to see if your body is compatible with his, you idiot,” a girl beside her replied. “And that you’re not on birth control.”
“Eww.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t need to be compatible with him. I have no intention of sleeping with him. I merely want to—”
“Kill him?” Another girl, who I thought was called Serena, muttered under her breath. “Your side won’t win. They say he’s unkillable. Might as well join our side instead.”
Wait...what?
There are sides now?
“Yes, well, he’s still human, isn’t he?” the brown-haired girl who’d spoken first said quietly. “And he’s only one man. There’s at least sixteen of us who got in who want him dead.”
“You’re so short-sighted.” Serena huffed, fluffing out her blonde hair. “It’s better to seduce him and get pregnant. Then you’ll carry his bloodline and want for nothing.”
“If you think they’d worship you for having his bastard you’re more delusional than us.”
I looked to the front of the ballroom, trying to hear past the whispers of the women as they divided themselves into seducers and assassins. Tension gathered the longer time ticked, pulling tight as corset strings, making it hard to breathe.
The lamps scattered around the ballroom suddenly dimmed as if something sucked the meagre light from the room. Shadows lengthened across the jade-inlaid floor as the midnight-pelted panther stalked past.
The crowd cracked down the middle, women reeling back and gasping as the giant predator nonchalantly prowled to the dais at the top of the room. Its huge paws padded up the three stone steps before it turned around, glowered at all of us, and threw itself down in a lazy sprawl.
No one moved or spoke.
My eyes danced around the space, trying to see—