“No. You’re just a monster,” I whimpered.

“Yes,” he said, and sighed. “I tried to tell you this, but you just see the good in everything, don’t you?”

“Why?” I asked with a jagged inhalation. “Why did you lie to me—” why did you kiss me, hold me, save me?

“The wicked games we play with our prey.” He took my hand in his; the numbing under the tip of my sore finger pulsed like a bulbous cyst. “I expect David never demonstrated the hunt.”

I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. Waves of heat, thrashing in bursts of contempt and malice, rolled through me. Games. I was just a game? That’s not fair!

With a tight breath through my teeth, I turned my head to look at him. Let me go! You let me go, now. You have no right to do this.

“It needs no justification, Ara. We do this because we can, because you don’t belong in this world. You were never supposed to exist. I’m just doing my job.”

“Choice,” I said, throwing the full weight of definition behind it.

He smiled simply. “Yes. I was given a choice. I chose to do this. I chose to be your torturer.”

The orange glow of light flickered across the room, making dancing shadows on the round roof. I looked to the stairs, knowing that, through the arch, up, all the way up, they led to another world; bright, airy, open, free. I imagined myself breaking the cuffs, stowing my sore hand against my chest as I scampered up those stairs—away. Away from all this.

“Is that the worst?” I asked.

“What?”

“Is that...the worst pain?”

He laughed. “Oh, Ara. So naive.” Jason dropped my hand, and the burn in my finger eased. “No. It’s not. I have tests to perform. They will hurt. And when I’m done with you, the Council gets to play with you for a while. Once they finish—you go to Drake.”

Dread tightened my chest. “Will he really use that thing on me?”

Jason looked down at me. Despite him being the enemy, despite his hatred for me, I still knew him and he still knew me. Familiarity was safe in this room. I could pretend, as we talked, that he still cared. Pretend, if nothing else.

“I don’t know what he’ll do to you, Ara.” There was something hidden in his tone, a kind of softness, pity maybe. “I only go on experience and stories. And we all know what rumours are like.”

I smiled incredulously. “Well, I really don’t think he’ll be sitting down to have a cup of frickin tea with me.”

Jason nodded, the sympathy I thought I heard in his voice showing in his eyes. He patted my hand and wandered away. “Okay. Let’s get things started.”

I relaxed back, forced by exhaustion. Seconds spread out to minutes. I counted in my head when it felt like he’d been gone for too long, doing who knows what behind me. But each shift or clank of a tool was only a few seconds apart, despite feeling longer.

I closed my eyes. Cold. So cold. Like opening a freezer and digging around to get the ice-cream at the back. The frost is something that stays with you your whole life. That first time you went to the snow, or the coldest winter day you can remember. But when you look back, think about the icy chill around your knees and the way the air made your cheeks even feel pink, you can smile. It was good to remember being cold, to remember the feeling of going home and putting on dry socks or pulling my hair off my face and snuggling up somewhere comfy. Good memories.

At only seventeen, I had already made more bad memories than good. Two years later, that hadn’t changed. It seemed almost as if my mind were designed to focus on things that, when I looked back, only brought a pang of dread or that wake-in-the night feeling of being trapped, unable to escape.

When I look back on my first day in the snow, I see my dad and my mum. I see them carefully sliding my blue glove off my pink little hand. They placed a small ball of hard, icy, wet stuff there, and stood back to watch my face. I hated it. I dropped it and wiped my hand on my leg. Good memory.

But as soon as a smile entered, Dad and Mum fizzled away, and the cold crept up, causing goosebumps I didn’t want, forcing me to remember where I was and how the cold got so bitter my body actually gave up shaking for periods of time, too tired to even save its own life.

The squeaky, rickety wobbling of a wheel rolled across stone, and a sound like pebbles on a tin roof rattled as Jason positioned a table beside me. My eyes shifted first, then my head, to look at it.

Oh God. I looked away, shutting my eyes instantly.

A knot twisted from my leg to my stomach, as a flash image remained; all I recognised on that tray of sharp, twisty objects were scissors, a scalpel and a needle. The rest, I’d never seen before, but had a sickening feeling I’d find out exactly what they all do.

“Jase?”

“Stop talking.”

I fought for my breath, keeping my eyes closed. “I know you hate me. But surely, after all the time we spent together, surely you don’t want to do this. Surely—” I looked back over the memory of soft Jason, his kind touch, his lips, his kiss. “Surely you had to have felt something for me.”

“I said stop talking.”

The odd tone in his voice forced my eyes open. “Jase?”

He sighed and placed his hands on the sides of the cart, rolling it closer to the chair. My heart broke at the sight of the smooth skin, golden, covering fingertips that had gently tickled my spine, tracing over my collarbones, smoothing over my hips as his lips, his teeth, gently caressed my neck, kissing me in curved lines around my face. My betrayal to David went so much deeper than just the actions I took with this man, because in those dreams, despite denying it, I felt for him—felt for Jason, and I know, I just know he felt for me.

I looked up from the cart into Jason’s tightly-shut eyes. He turned his head away, his brow furrowed so deeply.

“Jase?” I said again, hope filling my voice.

His eyes flashed open, the bright colour I love faded away to a dense, murky green.

“Please? Just tell me it’s not true. Tell me you weren’t pretending the whole time.” I watched him move back to the tray. “I promise, I won’t scream if you tell me the truth.”

“You won’t scream.” He smiled coldly. “Because I’ll cut out your voice box if you do.”

“What are you doing with that?” I watched him wipe an old, rusted syringe—the needle as long as a finger.