Page 169 of Eyes Never Lie

“I’m beginning to notice a pattern.” I bumped my shoulder lightly against hers.

Her mouth tightened. “Rafael stopped me before I reached the kitchen. He said the guards might seal the cellar instead of abandoning it, or the fire could spread below while you were still chained.”

“He was right.”

“I know. It was a terrible plan.”

“The plan was terrible,” I agreed. “The instinct was impressive.”

That surprised her.

I turned her hand over and cleaned another dark streak from her wrist.

“I hated standing there doing nothing,” she said. “I’ve spent my entire life listening while people suffered beneath me, and then when it was you—” Her head dipped as she chewed on her lip in the dim light.

“If you had gone into that dungeon while she still had three armed men with her, they would have taken you.”

“I might have distracted them by telling them I had a message from Ciro.”

“She would have used you against me.”

Isabella fell silent.

“I could survive whatever she did while it was only me in that chair,” I continued. “Watching her put her hands on you because you tried to save me would have cut deeper than anything she’d done to me.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. “You barely knew me.”

“I knew enough.”

She held my stare for a long moment.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

It wasn’t a question about whether I could keep walking. She wanted to know what Isabeast had left behind when the screaming stopped.

“The shaking is the fight leaving my body,” I said. “It’ll pass. She hurt me, and one day I’ll kill her for it. But she didn’t get what she wanted.”

“What did she want?”