She tried to puzzle out what to say. It all felt confused. “Don’t fuck me over. I know I deserve it. For what happened. I’m sorry.”

She heard him on the other side. When he spoke, it sounded like he had pressed himself against the door.

“I know how you died. You were coming to the house to warn me. You were just…” And his voice caught.

“I was too late,” she said. She saw Eshe burning.

“I have to go,” he said.

He went.

Nyx slid to the floor. Put her head in her hands. Her fingers touched the end of her poisoned needles.

Poison.

She raised her head, and gazed across Khatijah’s body to the far wall.

Nyx pulled a needle from her hair and jabbed it into the pulsing wall. Then she took the second and third and jabbed them into the section as well, making a perfect triangle in the spongy tissue.

She wasn’t even sure it would work, but the idea of sitting around waiting for Rhys to figure something out scared the shit out of her.

Nyx waited. After a time, black tendrils of rot began to appear, like cracks, from the wounds around the needles.

It took a good two hours to peel away the dead tissue. She worried the infection wasn’t going to do the right kind of damage. Finally, she got a hole big enough that she thought she could wiggle through. On the other side was another nondescript corridor. She wondered how anyone navigated in this fucking place.

She pulled herself into the narrow hole. Her shoulders didn’t quite fit. For the first time, she wished she was a lean, scrappy type like Anneke, or even Kage. She rested her elbows just inside the hole, squeezing as best she could into the tiny space. She got her head through and gazed down either side of the corridor. She imagined the wall repairing itself, growing smaller and smaller until it cut her head off.

It would be fitting.

Nyx expelled the air from her lungs and twisted her torso sharply to the right. She got her left arm free. Stretched it out into the open air. Her head was out next. She braced herself against the outside wall with her free arm—and pushed.

Her body moved a hand’s length further through the hole—and her right shoulder jammed up against the inside wall. She tried to suck in a breath. She was stuck so tight her chest hurt. One more shallow breath—then she exhaled hard a second time and kicked her way free.

Nyx scrambled into the corridor, pressing herself hard against the wall. She had no idea what to do next. She had no weapons. No sense of where she was.