“Ple-e-e-he-ease.” My eyes shut tight. “Please let me go. I can’t do this. I can’t take this.”

“But you will,” he soothed, his lips against my brow. “You will surprise even yourself, my dear.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to know what I can survive. Just kill me. Please. You loved me. You told me you cared for me. There has to have been some truth to that. Jason!” I called angrily when he disappeared from sight. “Jason, don’t leave me like this.” I shook violently against my confines, tearing at the skin on my wrists. But it didn’t matter. If I could break free, I’d take the pain, I’d rip my entire arm off to get out of here. Anything. I don’t care. “Jason!” My voice came back so high-pitched, laced with raw fear, like a mother screaming for a child walking toward the road.

All I could do was cry, louder and more broken than I’d ever cried before, and even that wouldn’t save me.

He left me, and in the rotation of time passing, the weight of everything to come bared down on me, the fear of pain to come making the room feel open, full of things I couldn’t imagine. Once I was on the other side, once he’d cut me or struck me, I’d know how bad it could get, but now, like this, just waiting, I had no idea.

The worst pain I could remember was when I broke my arm falling off Dad’s roof. Everything Jason did to me at the masquerade had somehow escaped me; I couldn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t recall what it felt like, no matter how hard I tried. I remembered the emotion, the fear, the feeling that so much was lost—more than just my life. I remember that, but not the pain.

With my arms bound to the chair, outstretched, and my legs tied, sitting slightly apart, I felt too exposed, as if waiting for a sack of flour to drop on my midsection. There was no way to cover myself, to block whatever he might think to do to me. I just wanted to roll over and hug my knees to my chest.

“Finished your little temper tantrum?”

I looked across the room to Jason, one foot tucked up where he leaned on the wall, his arms folded, a smug grin warming his face.

“Not if it means you stay over there.”

He appeared beside me. “There will come a point where I will be obliged to do my job, tantrums or none.”

I studied his face, unable to see any sign of the monster that tortured me last year. “I don’t think you can hurt me, Jason.”

Releasing a sigh, his whole demeanour changed. “Wow, you are naive, aren’t you?”

“I hope not.” I focused on his eyes, on the dark green ring encircling the bright colour, hoping somewhere in there he might realise how, in all his pretending, maybe he really did love me.

He pressed a fist to hide his laughter, looking away. “You know I can read all those thoughts, don’t you?”

“So?”

“Okay. Fine—you’re not getting it. I’ll show you.”

The urge to break free tightened my collarbones as Jason reached into the realm of the unknown, behind me, grabbed a stool and sat by my side, flipping a pair of pliers in the air.

“I’ve been given permission to perform any number of tortures on you. Of course—” he shrugged, taking my fingertips in his, “—I have a list I must follow, but this—” He rested the pliers to my fingernail. “This one I’ll throw in for free.”

My throat knotted with realisation. “Please,” I cried, my weary voice trembling. “Jase? Don’t?”

He shook his head, smiling down at my hand; “You just don’t get it, do you?”

Each breath came from my lungs, voiced with the sobbing despair of fact; he’s got to be kidding. He can’t do this. People don’t just go around pulling out other people’s nails. The pliers clamped and a rush of liquid lead flooded my arms.

“Don’t. Don’t.” I curled my fingers, wishing to pull away.

He inched the pliers further under the rim of my nail, sending tears out over my unblinking lashes. Please. You can’t really be doing this. This isn’t real.

“Oh, but it is.” He leaned over my hand, his head blocking my view. A hot rush of panic rose up inside me with a sharp, tight stinging under the nail bed—pulsing then numbing as he tugged downward. My hand seized up, locked, wide eyes bulging as the shaking in my elbow spread out, dragging a searing vein of agony behind it.

I screamed, ploughing my elbow into the arm of the chair. He only gripped tighter, kept wriggling those damn pliers from side to side, the tugging sensation coming from somewhere bone deep.

“Please. Please stop!”

Jason released his hold, leaving my nail attached. Cold blood rushed through, throbbing in the tip of my finger, threatening to push the dislodged nail out.

It is real. All of it. It’s real. He lied to me. He really lied. He trapped me, and I’m stupid for believing him.

The pain seared, pulsing around my elbow and my pinkie, of all places. My finger involuntarily straightened, shaking on its own.

I just want the pain to stop. I just want to feel normal again.

“It’s not going to stop, Ara. There is much, much worse to come.” He sat back down and stroked his fingers over my arm. I couldn’t feel his touch under the pain, only see him doing it. “This is what torture is. Now, it’s time for another round.”

No! No more—I can’t take it. My mouth gaped; a wavering sound of desperation curdled in the back of my throat as Jason lifted the throbbing finger and rested the pliers to it. My lips pressed together, trying to form a word, but a spluttering mess of spit and tears only came out instead.

Please, my mind managed, Please, no more.

“Oh, we get it now, do we?” he asked and pulled the pliers away.

The shaking of my shoulders masked my nodding head, but he knew. How could he not know I agreed to his terms? No more. No more.

“So, there will be no more of this hoping-I’ll-rescue-you business, no more believing I loved you?”

No. No more. I breathed heavily, shaking, cold all over. No more.

The pliers clinked on the tinny-sounding thing behind me, and my mind focused only on the sear through the bone of my finger as it vibrated up my arm, making the raw burn around my wrists and ankles, probably torn from kicking against the cuffs, throb.

“Stop crying,” he said apathetically, “you brought this upon yourself.