Right now, his head swam and his empty stomach churned so much that he feared he might vomit again—something that made the muzzle tear into his throat and choke him with blood and bile. Worse, it produced a severe drowning sensation, like being waterboarded.

The pain and deprivation, as well as the fever he’d been burning, caused him to hallucinate. Sometimes he thought he saw his father. Or his uncle.

His friends.

But the two people who haunted him most were Maris and Zarya. They drifted in and out of the room like ghosts who tormented him with memories of better days. Of the happy future he’d thought to have.

Sometimes the loss of that dream was even harder to bear than the torture.

The only truth he knew for certain was that he was starving, aching, and woefully alone.

No one had come for him. Even though he had a tracking chip encoded in his body that Arturo had used to find him over and over again when Darling hadn’t wanted him to, no one came.

So what’s new?

Stop it. They were looking for him. They were. This wasn’t the same as when he was in a mental institution and his friends couldn’t get him out without a court order or his uncle’s permission. He was in a secure facility that would block his chip from transmitting to an outside source. That was the only reason they hadn’t found him.

It had to be.

Nykyrian had known that he would be bringing Lise to his home. The minute Nyk caught word of her death and of Darling’s kidnapping, he and the rest of the Sentella would be out scouring space for him.

So would Maris.

His friends wouldn’t betray him.

Only Zarya had done that. And what cut him deepest were the times when he heard her voice through the door as she walked past it. Especially when she was laughing with the very people who tortured him.

He’d been willing to give her the universe.

She couldn’t even give him the time of day. How could she, as the Resistance leader, not come in here and see what they were doing to their prisoner? Did she know or did she just not care what they did?

How could she not know? his mind kept asking. The rebels constantly bragged about it to others—another thing he’d heard outside his room at all hours. They thought his humiliation and torture were funny, and they mocked him for it. That was what ate at him constantly.

How could he have so misjudged the people he’d been willing to die for?

How could he have ever trusted Zarya?

All men and women lie. But never lie to yourself. That had been one of the primary rules his father had forced him to memorize as a boy. Never be deceived by others.

And never deceive yourself.

Yet his love for Zarya had blinded him to her real nature. She was every bit as apathetic to the suffering of others as Arturo. She didn’t care enough about her prisoner to even open the door. Or click on the cameras that were pointed at him.