Abbee heard the prison’s name and heaved herself into a crouch. Mote wisped from her wrists as her gift began its work, healing her broken wrist. A twinge in her side declared broken or bruised ribs too. Another cinch of pain in her shoulder spoke of a fractured clavicle, and probably a concussion. She’d be back to normal in ten seconds. Abbee didn’t think she had that kind of time.
The pit cut back underneath the guard platform, leaving Abbee no wall to back into. More faces in the shadows. At least two dozen men surrounded her on all sides. They were all dressed in mismatched clothes in various states of ruin. Abbee guessed the only clothes in the prison were what people had been wearing when they’d arrived. Some were half-naked, indicating that holding on to one’s clothes wasn’t guaranteed. The men were of all sizes, but all of them were bigger than Abbee. The closest one, straight ahead, was shirtless and had only torn trousers held on with patchwork rope. A thick scar ran up over his shoulder and down his chest. An old wound. He crouched, ready to spring. Lips pulled back to show broken teeth. His dark eyes flared in greed.
“She’s so young,” the scarred man whispered.
“Here, pretty,” a brute to her left crooned.
“No, she’s mine,” another hissed on her right. “You can have her after.”
“Pretty, pretty.”
Fear pierced Abbee. Wolf whistles and hoots and dark whispers chased Abbee’s anxiety higher. She couldn’t fight them all. There were too many. Nowhere to hide, no place to control how many came at her at once.
A giant of a man lumbered into the torchlight directly in front of Abbee. He was huge. Bigger than her father. Meaner. The man’s sleeveless shirt appeared to be stitched together from multiple cloth fragments. His bare arms were covered with scars, and his forearm was thicker than Abbee’s thigh.
“I’m first,” he rumbled.
He lunged forward, far faster than Abbee thought possible. She tried to dodge, but he slapped her down. It was like getting hit by a wall. She struck the ground on her half-healed wrist. Abbee cried out. Twisted and turned, trying to get away, but all she managed to do was get onto her back. The giant straddled her, locking her arms at her sides. He stank of urine and sweat and blood. Abbee kicked her legs and bucked, but it was no use. She was pinned.
The giant leered at her and reached down into his trousers.
Abbee saw the guards overhead. The man with the broken nose, Crom, looked triumphant. Abbee couldn’t believe this was happening. It felt like a terrible, twisted nightmare. This morning she had woken up in a bed, hearing the sounds of the city, feeling the promise of a new beginning. All lies. Everyone had lied to her. Everyone in this city had turned on her. Everyone she’d ever known had turned on her in the end. Her father, Ipsu, Sammy and Mith, Chella abandoning her with the chickens, Gerro in Lencoe, Parn and his promises and plans, Carver and Perci with their cold advice, even Whimsy, selling her out to an unscrupulous empath—they’d all contributed to this moment. Abbee gritted her teeth and focused all her rage on the people she had thought she could trust. She blamed them all.
A tingle rippled over Abbee’s body from head to toe.
The giant atop her paused with his hand down his trousers. His eyes widened, and he sucked in a short gasp as a sharp jolt zinged through Abbee’s limbs. Another. Another and another, coming faster now. Abbee recognized it as the same sensation she’d touched at Baylor’s.
She didn’t try to stop. Abbee leaned into it, wanting it, until she felt like she was going to explode. For a brief instant, her awareness dropped into a sunless space, a soundless space, where a dark heart thrummed in a powerful rhythm. It was close enough to touch. Abbee reached out in her mind. I’m right here. She reached for the darkness. Grabbed it, pulled it close, feeling at home in herself for the first time in her life. The heart ripped open like overripe fruit. Darkness spilled out and splashed her face and hands. It was hot and went everywhere and bathed her in slippery exultation.
She heard a distant, roaring scream.
Her scream.
She felt her limbs move, shadows dance and power and fury, and above it all, a thrilling song of freedom and rage. It was chaos and magic and glorious. Energy coursed through her body, and she felt more alive than ever before. Thought fell away. Fear fell away. All her pain and anxieties vanished amid a torrent of sizzling energy. It tasted incredible, and Abbee wanted more.
More.
MORE!
The rushing energy ebbed from Abbee. She snarled in frustration. She wanted more, not less. But it kept slipping from her fingers. The vibrating darkness around her faded, replaced by ruddy torchlight. All at once, her awareness snapped back to the pit.
Abbee stood on her own two feet in the gloom. She looked down and saw dark streaks on the floor. Her wounds had healed. Her wrist was healed. Glimmermote caked her hands, along with … Is that blood? Abbee looked at her arms. She was covered in gore. She licked her lips and tasted the metallic tinge of blood.
Moans reached Abbee’s ears. All around her. She turned and blinked. It was hard to figure out what she was looking at. The crowd that had surrounded her was gone. Everywhere around her, Abbee saw broken and sundered bodies. None moved. A wet sheen covered the floor, growing wider as thick liquid pooled and spread. Blood. The big brute, the one who’d knocked her down and straddled her, lay on his back nearby. The bottom half of him was missing. His guts stretched behind him for several paces, as if he’d been torn from his legs and flung. A chunk of flesh was missing from his chest. No, there was a big hole in it. Abbee saw bone. His ribs. She leaned over to see. Something had punched through and crushed his heart and lungs. Dread licked at Abbee. Some creature had done this. She knew it, but even as she looked around, seeking out the golden glint of eyes in the dark, she knew she’d not find any. Deep down, she knew what had done this. Who had done this.
Shouts above. Panicked. Abbee looked up and saw four men standing at the top of the pit, staring down in abject horror. None of them had a broken nose. She didn’t recognize any of them. Abbee thought she saw an arm hanging over the edge of the pit. She squinted. A weathered hand poked out of black cloth. Yes, that’s an arm.
“What happened?” a man shouted. “What’s going on? Why are these guards …? Wait, is he dead? Are they all dead? What happened?” A fifth man pushed his way to the edge of the pit. Looked down. Blinked. “What the …? Where is everyone? What—” The man turned and pulled a torch from the wall. He tossed it down into the pit. The flaming brand clattered onto the floor.
Abbee got a better look at the carnage. Dozens of bodies strewn around her. Most looked shriveled and dry. Their tattered clothes were spattered with blood and worse. Abbee saw what looked like the scarred man’s trousers on a body, but the sight didn’t make much sense to Abbee. The man lay face down, arms splayed out. He was missing a leg. White bone poked out of a bloody stump. The skin around the wound looked torn. Abbee recognized the damage. She’d seen it in the woods plenty of times, the leavings of wolves and bears. The man’s wrecked leg looked gnawed upon. She ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth. Caught debris. Abbee spat it out onto the floor. Something heavy and wet. She reached into her mouth and fished out a hard chip. She held it up in the light. Bone. Abbee knew that it wasn’t hers.
I didn’t … I couldn’t—
Bile rose in her throat, and Abbee threw up onto the floor. Hardly anything came up. She hadn’t eaten since Perci’s leftovers in the gatehouse. Abbee almost whimpered in relief. No shards of leg in her vomit. She hadn’t eaten that man’s leg. Her shock didn’t wane and only grew stronger. What happened to me?
“Is that a woman down there?” the fifth man demanded. “My word! Look at the … This is—” He swore and shook himself. “Get her out of there. Clean her up, and get her to a holding cell until we—don’t go down there, you idiot! Put that ladder back. Get a mover.”
“Our mover’s here, sir,” a man said, nudging one of the bodies at the top of the pit. “Dead. He looks like a raisin.”
“Thunderation. Fetch Sergeant Ludd. Not a word to anyone else, or it’ll be us down in that pit. Move!”
***
A mover arrived and pulled Abbee from the pit. Sergeant Ludd. She was thin and had the sallow face of someone who rarely sees the sun. Ludd raised Abbee up from the pit and carried her through rough-cut tunnels. Angry and fearful shouts chased Abbee through the murk. Ludd wasn’t careful. She banged Abbee off walls, scraped her against torch holders, and dragged her on the floor. Abbee couldn’t tell if the woman was doing it on purpose or if she was shaken from the scene in the pit. Probably both.
Abbee ended up in a small cell with a heavy steel door. Ludd held her against the wall with bands of pressure. “You’re up,” Ludd said.
Abbee wondered what she meant. She looked over her shoulder and saw another man appear in the doorway. Younger. No uniform. He wore a dirty linen smock, and his eyes were fearful when he looked at Abbee. He raised his hand, and water roared out of nowhere and blasted Abbee in the face. A spout. Water scoured her whole body from head to toe. The torrent lasted several seconds, spraying water all over the place.
All at once the water cut off, and the bands of pressure left Abbee’s body. The door slammed shut. She heard a thick thump as a lock slid home on the other side. Abbee stood at the wall, stunned and dripping. No window. She saw a tiny sliver of light through a crack in the doorframe, where it met the surrounding rock. Not enough to see anything in the cell. The light was more of a diffuse glow, taunting Abbee instead of giving her hope.
She felt around the space with her feet and hands. The cell was about two meters square. The ceiling was too far away for Abbee to touch, even when jumping, and the floor was too slimy for her to want to touch at all. The rough stone seemed to have a slope to it and led to a small grate in the corner. No pallet or even any straw. Abbee had slept in plenty of uncomfortable places, but this cell would be the worst.
She strained to hear the sounds of the prison, but it was dead quiet in her cell. She put her ear to the cold steel door. Some low grinding sound, coming from somewhere. Rhythmic. A few seconds on, a few seconds off, over and over. Abbee had no idea what it could be.
She paced the cell. Abbee was used to wide-open spaces with trees, grass, dirt, and blue sky in every direction. She wasn’t used to this tiny cell. She worried that she’d go crazy if she was stuck in here for long.
Crazy like the pit. Abbee shied away from the memory of spurting blood and flailing limbs. She didn’t know what had happened to her. It had felt incredible in the moment, but the aftermath had been horrifying.
Did I turn into an animal? I chewed on them. What am I?
Baylor had been right. There was a darkness in her. Abbee had thought it the ramblings of a con man, trying to frighten her. She hadn’t believed him then. She did now.
A vibration started in her shoulders. Abbee didn’t know what it was. She realized she was clenching her shoulder blades. Clenching all over. She released her muscles. It was as if she had opened a dam. Abbee began shaking and crying. She sobbed. Pressed her back against the wall and put her hands on her knees. More sobs.
What am I?
Had the darkness always been there, and Joor had simply unlocked it, or had the gray wizard put this darkness in her? She suspected the former but didn’t want to think about the implications. Abbee hugged herself and sank into a corner. She tucked her knees under her chin and faced the door, worrying that the darkness within her was far deeper than this sightless cell.
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***
Abbee lost track of time. Hours. The only marker of time was how long it took for her muscles to grow stiff in any one position, and the rumblings of her stomach. She grew hungrier and hungrier. There was no slot in the door, no room to toss food in. She wondered if they were going to let her starve to death in here.
Voices. Abbee heard voices. No, it was her imagination. She strained to listen, turning her head this way and that. There it was again. A woman’s voice. Somewhere below. Abbee scooted across the slimy floor, listening for the voice. She got to the door and put her ear against it. Heard the grinding deep below, and over it, a woman’s voice. Abbee didn’t recognize it. The woman seemed agitated.
A second voice. A man. “… weren’t going to tell me, were you?” he asked, sounding alarmed.
Abbee gasped. She recognized that voice. She’d heard it last in a clearing south of Akken. Heard it in a dank basement in Joor. Abbee couldn’t believe it. The gray wizard.
She heard only snatches of the woman’s response. “… because of how you’re reacting now. I haven’t even done anything, so—”
“And don’t,” the gray wizard said. “She’s off-limits.”
“What? Why? She presented the night of the golems.” Silence. “You knew. Wait, how long …”
Their voices turned unintelligible. Abbee strained to hear at the door.
“… he can’t know about her,” the gray wizard said.
“He already knows,” the woman declared. “Everyone does. They’re calling her the Butcher after what happened. The Butcher of Graywall.”
“What? Why?”
“You didn’t hear? Some idiot guards put her in the pit. She went berserk. Nobody lived to say what happened, but she killed fifteen people. The snuffer they gave her might as well have been lemonade. Didn’t work. Did you know that she metabolizes snuffer? You did. Of course you did. Look, as far as I can tell, she tore them apart with her bare hands. I have some theories about her latent, and I want to run some tests.”
Abbee remembered the blood in her mouth. The bone chip. She had done more than use her hands, and bile rose in her throat again at the hazy memory. Abbee was happy she couldn’t remember much.
The woman asked a question Abbee didn’t catch, and neither did she hear the wizard’s response. They went back and forth a few times, and none of it made sense to Abbee. The woman’s voice became clear.
“… managed to keep the more pertinent details quiet. Anyone who saw her in the pit is either dead or can’t remember. It’s …”
More arguing. Their voices rose and fell. Sounded like they were getting closer, then further away. Abbee pressed her ear to the door so hard it hurt.
The woman again. “… safe to …”
More murmuring.
“… hadn’t imagined the Butcher incident. It’s too …” the wizard said.
“Wait, you know what it is—her latent. How it works.”
The gray wizard said something Abbee couldn’t hear. “… Kai tried something similar, and it didn’t go so well for him.”
“I’m smarter,” the woman said. “Have you found him yet?”
“No.” The gray wizard swore. “It’s too soon.”
“Too soon for what?” the woman asked.
More arguing.
“… no tests,” the gray wizard said. “Keep her away from your brother.”
Abbee needed the woman to say the wizard’s name. All this talking and no name. Abbee wanted to know who this wizard was, and why he seemed to know so much about her. And who was this woman? What brother?
Their voices suddenly became clear.
“Hang on,” the woman said. “This sounds a lot like I’m protecting her now. I am, aren’t I? What do I get for it?”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“Isn’t everything? I’m a very curious person, you know. Lots of things can happen in Graywall.”
“Lots of things can happen everywhere,” the gray wizard warned. “But don’t ever say that I’m not generous. No tests, and your supply of mental-protection chips will never run out.”
“And truth-seeking,” the woman prompted. “Science is hard without objective information.”
“Fine.”
“Where are you getting them? The chips.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Fine, don’t tell me. And yes, we have a deal.”
“And none of your—”
“Yes, yes,” the woman said. “She’ll be completely free from meddling, from all parties. I give you my word.”
“Good. I’ll take my leave, then.”
Their voices faded. “Wait, while you’re here,” the woman said, “do you mind looking at the …”
They were gone.
Abbee let out an explosive breath. Who was this wizard? Whoever the wizard was, he had access to a cache of artifact chips. He must be from the Tower. How had he escaped? And he was collaborating with some woman who seemed to have free range of the prison. Who was she?
Abbee stood up and paced, cursing herself for not pounding on the door. For not asking questions. Demanding the truth. Even if they hadn’t told her, she could’ve gotten something. Something more than eavesdropping and feeling like she knew even less than she had when she’d gotten dragged in here. Abbee felt like she was standing at the edge of a precipice. No matter which way she fell, she’d hit the truth, but she was blind and frozen in place in this stupid cell.
***
Abbee heard a thump behind the door. The heavy steel panel swung open, and bright torchlight stabbed at Abbee’s eyes. She brought up her arm to shield her face. Made out two people outside her cell. Guards, looked like. Abbee felt uncomfortable bands of pressure all over her. A mover again. Maybe Sergeant Ludd. Abbee assumed it was Ludd.
The bands of pressure didn’t cover Abbee’s mouth, and she asked questions this time. “Where are you taking me?”
“No talking,” Ludd snapped.
Ludd didn’t scrape Abbee across every available surface this time. She carried Abbee through dim halls, bright halls, up flights of stairs, down flights of stairs, and at one point, they transited a curious round room with glowing crystal spikes embedded in the walls. Not once did Abbee see another prisoner. “Where are we?”
Something cuffed Abbee on her head. “I said no talking.”
“We forgot the bag,” the other guard muttered.
“It’s not going to matter,” Ludd said.
Abbee waited for them to expound on why no bag wouldn’t matter, but all she got was another roughhewn stone tunnel with torches along the walls. “Why won’t it matter?”
“Shut up.”
“Who lights all the torches in here? Must take all day.”
Abbee swung close to the wall, brushed it, scraped across an iron sconce with her shoulder, and bounced away.
“I said shut up,” Ludd warned. “Next time, it’ll be a lot worse.”
Abbee wanted to continue needling Ludd, but all the woman had to do was squeeze with her gift and break both Abbee’s arms, and maybe all her ribs. Abbee kept her mouth shut.
They rounded a corner and came upon another stairwell, heading up. Ludd carried Abbee up six flights of stairs, to a single metal door at the end of a short tunnel. Ludd held Abbee aside while the other guard pounded on the door.
“Open up,” he called. “We’ve got your special transfer.”
The door clicked and swung open, revealing another hallway. Smooth walls and a polished stone floor, with oil lamps instead of torches. The air tasted cleaner here. The hall had corridors branching off every few meters, in an alternating pattern. They reminded Abbee of the alternating holding cells in the Yard District Precinct. Abbee peered down one corridor as she passed, and spied a heavy door set into a metal frame. Another door in the next corridor. Strange runes were carved into each door. It must have been a trick of the light, because Abbee thought she spotted them glowing a pale blue hue.
Ludd swung Abbee into the last corridor on the right. The door was open. Abbee saw a room on the other side with a cot in it. Ludd pushed Abbee into the room, which had no other doors. Another cell. Better accommodations, at least. It was twice as big as her old cell, and there was a window of sorts in the ceiling, bringing in daylight. Abbee deduced that it was done with mirrors, because she didn’t feel any air movement. A stool sat beneath a small writing desk. No paper or quills. The stone floor was smooth and clean. A slot in the door, presumably for food, none of which Abbee had received yet. All in all, things looked on the up-and-up. Still, that grate in the corner, though.
The door closed, and the bands of pressure left Abbee’s body. She managed to get her feet planted without stumbling. She went to the door and pressed her ear against it. No sound. No footsteps. Not even that steady grinding rhythm through the ground. Total silence.
Abbee sat down on the cot. Much better than the slimy stone floor in the last cell. She leaned back against the wall and hugged her knees. Wondered what Ludd had meant, what she’d said about the bag. Abbee wondered how long she’d be in here. She wondered if there were other people in the other cells. Most of all, she wondered when they’d feed her.
***
The slot in the door opened, and someone tossed a thin metal bowl through. It skittered across the floor, splashing out opaque yellowish liquid. A hunk of dark bread rolled off the lip and toward the corner grate. Abbee snatched it up just in time. The slot slammed shut.
Abbee had wanted to ask where she was. She sniffed the contents of the bowl. Some sort of stew. She poked at it with her finger and decided it was more broth than stew. She produced three peas and a couple of shards of sliced carrot. No meat. The bread was stale. But it was food, and Abbee was starving, and she inhaled all of it. She licked the bowl when she was done and wished she had four more just like it.
An hour after the bowl had arrived, the light through the overhead window flicked off, plunging Abbee into darkness. The light hadn’t dimmed. No sunset. Abbee found the cot with her hands and sat down. She thought about her day. The promises. The lies. Hoger. The fight atop the bank cart. Parn’s rage. The pit. The gray wizard and the unknown woman, bartering over Abbee’s fate. Now this cell.
Abbee remembered the pit most of all. The screaming. Her screams. Despair washed over her in a sudden torrent. Tears leaked down her face, and Abbee cried herself to sleep.
***
Abbee tracked the days by the unwavering light through the ceiling. It flicked on and off at regular intervals. Food came twice a day. An hour after the light came on and an hour before it flicked off, the slot opened, and someone tossed a bowl in. Same broth, same bread. No one spoke to her when the food slot opened. Abbee asked plenty of questions. No answers. She had a stack of bowls after seven days, on the writing desk. No one answered when she asked about the bowls either. She wondered if anyone would take the bowls, or if people eventually died when there was no room left to move in the cell. Just the prisoner and thousands of bowls.
She amused herself with the bowls. Made a game out of tossing a bowl across the room and landing it on the stool without the bowl falling off. When she’d mastered that, she flipped the stool upside down and tried to hook a bowl on a leg instead.
On the tenth day, the slot opened at breakfast. No bowl appeared. Instead, a man ordered, “Back up and face the far wall.”
Abbee didn’t recognize his voice. She backed up to the wall but didn’t turn around. She watched the slot, trying to see who was on the other side.
“I said, face the wall.” The stool tipped over by itself. “You have three seconds before I bounce you off the ceiling.”
A mover. Abbee faced the wall. The door opened. Abbee looked over her shoulder and saw a man dressed in the black uniform of a Graywall guard. He had a stern face and a gray beard. No obvious weapons, but the bands of pressure that suddenly glued Abbee to the wall said he didn’t need them. The bowls rose up off the table and floated out of the room.
“Your turn,” the guard said.
Abbee looked and saw the young man in the linen smock. The spout. She knew what was coming and braced herself. She squeezed her eyes shut as water blasted her from head to toe.
All at once the water cut off, and the bands of pressure left Abbee’s body. The door slammed shut. Another bowl of broth and bread bounced through the food slot.
She had her answer on what they did with the bowls.
***
Abbee called the two men the washers. Every ten days, they showed up, doused Abbee, and took her bowls. The washers never spoke beyond ordering her against the wall. The man in the smock seemed afraid of Abbee. Less so of the guard. But Abbee got the impression he was terrified whenever he soaked her. Neither of them ever answered any of her questions.
Two months after Abbee had arrived in Graywall, the slot opened on the door on wash day. She sighed and went to the wall. The door opened. Footsteps entered the room. Halted. “Abbee?”
Abbee turned. Whimsy stood inside her cell. She was wearing her constable uniform and looked at Abbee in worried astonishment.
The Graywall guard with the stern face and the beard stood outside. “You’ve got five minutes,” he said. The door thumped shut.
Whimsy stared at Abbee, and Abbee stared at Whimsy.
Abbee spoke first. “Where have—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence before Whimsy swept forward and hugged her. Another human’s touch startled Abbee, and she burst into tears at how good it felt.
Whimsy pulled away first. “I’m sorry it took me so long. Nobody told me what happened to you. Parn made it sound like you’d left the city after your first day.” Her face clouded in anger. “That coward. Wouldn’t even tell me he’d sacked you.” She frowned. “Did you really hijack a bank cart?”
“No,” Abbee said, shaking her head. “Hoger sent the crowd at me.”
“What? That’s … He was a Class Three.”
“I saw him drink something right before. From a vial. I told Parn, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ve never heard of anything that can boost a talented,” Whimsy said. “If we had something like that, they’d be giving it to me all day long.”
“I don’t think it agreed with him,” Abbee said. “What killed him? I never touched him.”
“Dunno,” Whimsy said. “Baylor had him cremated. He was really distraught about it. Baylor, I mean. And a little scared, actually. He stopped talking to me, and a week after you disappeared, he did too. Closed up shop and sold his house.”
“How did you find out I was here?”
Whimsy pointed with her thumb at the door. “The guards. One of them transferred to the constables a couple weeks ago. He was telling stories, trying to impress the rookies, and mentioned that he’d seen the famed Butcher of Graywall. Nobody believed him when he said it was a woman. I didn’t either, until he described you.” Her face wrinkled. “They really put you in the pit? That’s for killers and worse.”
Abbee nodded. “I don’t think they knew about my talent. And yeah, something happened. Remember what Baylor said that day? That I had a darkness in me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think it came out. Saved my life, but … yeah. The Butcher thing is true.”
“Abbee, I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’ve got better accommodation now. Food’s not great, but at least they didn’t leave me in the pit.” Abbee frowned. “Wait, you said that guard transferred two weeks ago. Then why—”
“It took me that long to convince Parn to let me see you,” Whimsy said. “He tried to lie first.”
“Figures. How’s his jaw?”
“Still has a scar,” Whimsy said. “The healer they had in the building at the time isn’t as good as me. Though if I’d been there, he wouldn’t have just one scar.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he sent you to Graywall.”
The slot opened. “One minute,” the guard said.
“Who’s the warden here?” Abbee asked. “Is it a woman?”
“What?” Whimsy asked. “No. It’s definitely a man, and a real piece of work too. I doubt you’d see him. I hear he doesn’t actually spend a lot of time here. The real person in charge is the captain of the guard. Captain Vicher. I’ve not met him in person, but Parn says he’s tough. Fair, though. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” Abbee said. She was about to talk about the mysterious woman and the gray wizard but kept them to herself. She’d have to explain the wizard, which meant explaining Joor, and Abbee wasn’t telling Whimsy that she’d murdered children in a basement. “How long is His Majesty, the first constable, planning on keeping me in here?”
Whimsy’s expression lost its light. She looked away.
“C’mon, Whimsy,” Abbee prodded. “You’re sleeping with him.”
“Not anymore,” Whimsy said in a dark tone. “Not after this.”
“You still know, right? Tell me.”
Whimsy pursed her lips and sighed.
“Whimsy.”
Whimsy told her.
Abbee felt the bottom of her world drop out.