As Jim lay on Devina’s table, he doubted that. Very sincerely doubted that.

Besides, at this point, vision was probably a no-go.

Nothing hurt anymore, which made shit so much easier. The trade-off for that blissful numbness, however, was that his consciousness had receded into a dim corner of his inner house. It hadn’t quite put its head down for a nap, but it was getting there: Hearing had hit the cotton-wool stage where everything was muffled, and things were pretty fucking cold inside his skin.

The classic signs of shock made him wonder if she did in fact have the ability to kill him.

She hadn’t finished off Adrian, but had that been a whim of affection?

“I’ll just leave you two to get acquainted.”

Devina’s satisfaction was not good news, considering she’d done everything inhumanly possible to break him down for the last . . . how long? Hours? Had to be.

Footfalls. Retreating.

A door. Shut.

Silence.

Something was with him, though. He could sense the presence to the left of him.

From behind his closed lids, he knew two things for sure: Devina couldn’t have gone far, and whatever she’d locked him in with was close by.

The breathing was the first thing he noticed. Soft, hitched. The kind you drew when you were in recovery mode. Maybe it was his breath?

Nope. Rhythm was different.

He turned his head carefully toward the thing and drooled, his mouth clearing of what he couldn’t swallow because of the wire around his neck.

Whatever was with him let out another hitch of breath. And then he heard a subtle clicking.

What the fuck was that?

Curiosity eventually got the best of him and he cracked one of his lids . . . or gave that a shot, as it were. Took two tries and he had to push his eyebrows all the way up into his forehead before the fucker opened—

At first, Jim couldn’t fathom what he was looking at. But the blond hair couldn’t be denied . . . that long blond hair that fell to fragile shoulders.

Last time he’d seen it had been just days ago. In Devina’s bathroom.

It had been streaked with blood.

The girl who had been sacrificed to protect Devina’s mirror was dressed in a stained sheath, her thin arms covering her breasts, a small hand protecting the juncture of her thighs. She appeared to be miraculously unmarked, but the trauma was there: Her eyes were wide and horrified. . . .

Except they were not on the room. They were on him . . . on his body and the glossy, sticky remnants of everything that had been done to him.

“Don’t . . .” His voice was too damn weak, so he forced more air through that wire roadblock at his throat. “Don’t look . . . at me. Turn away . . . for God’s sake, turn away. . . .”

Shit, he needed more oxygen. He needed to make her—