“I’ve brought the che…” Eric cleared his throat. “The tool with me.”

“Good.” Silence hovered over the darkness. “How is our victim, today?”

Another pause. I could feel Eric’s breath near my face. “She’s pale. I’ve never seen her like this.”

“I think it suits her,” Jason muttered, his voice light, filled with humour. “She looks rather fetching as a corpse, wouldn’t you agree?”

“She looks sick.”

“She is,” Jason said pragmatically. “She’s been through several stages of delusion, too. Had to postpone most of my research. Is she lucid now?”

“Jason?” Eric said. “You don’t have to do this, man. You know the Lilithians will prote—”

“What’s that, Eric?” Jason’s voice moved away. “Please don’t tell me you care what happens to a Lilithian.” He spat the last word. “Where are your loyalties?”

“With the king.” Eric said humbly. “But she was my friend.”

Was?

“I know,” Jason said more softly and a hand wrapped my ankle, making me jump involuntarily. “She was my friend, too. But she lied to us. We could’ve been disciplined along with David, Eric. Think yourself lucky that I decided your punishment.”

“I am most gracious.”

“Now—” Jason’s voice trailed up, less business more pleasure. “We will begin. She needn’t be awake for this.”

“Why did you need a chest clamp?” Eric’s voice shook. His warm hand landed on my brow, familiar, like my mum checking on me when I was home sick from school.

“The king needs to know how long a Lilithian can live without a heart.”

Eric gasped. My eyes flashed open.

“I’ll put it back,” Jason said, as if he was borrowing a twenty from his dad’s wallet. “I’m not done with her just yet.”

Eric closed his eyes and stepped away from Jason, pressing his palms together in front of his lips.

“Come now, de la Rose, you know she won’t die unless I leave her in pieces.”

“What?” I screeched.

“Ah, there she is.” Jason stood over me. He looked scruffy today, unshaven, his hair longer, messier. “Have a pleasant sleep, my lady?”

“Eric?” I muttered, looking past Jason. “Eric don’t let him do this, I—”

“Shut up, Ara,” Jason cut in. “He’s here to help me. He doesn’t care about you anymore, don’t you get that? When you lie and betray your friends, they stop caring.”

Jason moved away, and I looked at Eric, who turned his gaze from mine.

That’s not true. Please, Jason. Please don’t let me believe Eric hates me too—not if it’s not true.

“He told you to pretend to sleep, didn’t he?” Jason murmured.

You knew that?

“Ara, I know everything that goes on in this room.” We both looked up at the camera—its light green.

I rolled my head back and closed my eyes as Jason grabbed a pair of scissors and pressed them to my chest, just too damn exhausted to be afraid anymore.

I knew I’d scream; he knew I’d scream. I’d save my energy for that. But exhaustion didn’t weaken my mind, couldn’t curb imagination or the ability to conjure images; my white skin, my ribs, a thick trail of blood following a scalpel, bleeding over my pale flesh like red paint from a tube, staining the chair under my ribs. With the clipping sound of metal chafing metal, my eyes jolted open again. I watched Jason tailor my no-longer-pretty dress down the middle, cringing as he pulled the fabric apart, exposing my chest.

Eric reached out to cover me slightly. “What the hell did you do to her?” I couldn’t see Jason, but knew Eric was looking at him.

“What was ordered of me.”

Eric paled. “What if you’re wrong, man? I mean, if she is Lilithian, she should’ve healed by now.”

“She’s weak,” Jason stated factually, with little care. “Don’t worry, they don’t plan to keep her any longer than few months. She’ll get her death soon.”

“It’s not death, and you know it.”

“Yes, but it’s an end to physical suffering. I think our princess will agree it’s more pleasant than what the scientists will put her through.”

“Or what you’ve put her through. You monster!”

“Tut, tut.” Jason wagged a finger then pointed to the camera. “Remember your allegiance.”

Eric backed down.

“Eric?” I looked up at him. “What’s he talking about?”

He shook his head at half a turn.

“Please? Tell me?”

“I can’t, Amara. I’m not allowed.”

“Oh, go on.” Jason exhaled. “Just tell her.”

Eric swallowed and glared at Jason, his jaw stiff.

“Fine. Don’t. I will. I do love a little pre-torture, bad guy monologue.” Jason tilted his head as he looked at me, magically making me feel small, like a butterfly in a glass case. “Lilithians don’t technically die. You will be lost in a permanent state of sleep when they take you apart and put you in jars for eternity. But you won’t be dead.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I believe my brother said it quite perfectly once.” He touched a finger to his chin. “There is no death, no peace, only an eternity of solitude and mourning.”

“Will I be conscious?”

“Ara—” he laughed, “—you’ll be in pieces. It will merely be your spirit, in the dark, for eternity.”

“Is it the same for vampires, when they die by a Lilithian bite?” Will it be the same for David, for the boy you made me kill?

“No,” he said. “That is death.”

“Then why isn’t there a way for me to die?”

“I never said there wasn’t a way.”

“You said I don’t die.”

“Sorry. You won’t,” he said. “And technically, you don’t. It takes an awful lot to sever the connection of a Lilithian spirit to the realm of life.”

“Why—why won’t being sorted into jars kill me?”

“Same reason a stake won’t kill me—we’re immortal, Ara. There was once a way for your kind to die, same as how Lilithians were death for vampires, but Lilith destroyed the serum of which could bring her descendants mortality.”