My throat closed up. Much as I hated this creature, I had good reason to fear him. I recalled his merciless face in the dark chapel, when he’d stood over me and drawn on my aura. Auras were as vital to voyants as blood or water. Without one, I would go into spirit shock and end up dead or insane, wandering around with no connection to the æther.

He approached the drapes and pulled them back, revealing the little door beyond them was ajar. “The amaurotics have cleared the upper floor for you. Unless I say otherwise, you are to keep to it at all times.” He paused. “You should also know it is forbidden for the two of us to make direct physical contact, except in training. Even with gloves.”

“So if you were to come into this room injured,” I said, “I would leave you to die?”

“Yes.”

Liar. I didn’t bite the next words off my tongue quite fast enough: “That’s one order I’m happy to obey.”

Warden just looked at me. It almost made me angry, how little notice he took of my disrespect. He had to have a pressure point. All he did was reach into the drawer and hold out my pills.

“Take them.”

I knew there was no point in arguing. I took the pills.

“Drink this.” He handed me a glass. “Go to your quarters. You will need to be well rested for tomorrow.”

My right hand drew into a fist. I was sick of his orders. I should have left him to bleed out. Why the hell had I bandaged his wound? What kind of criminal was I, patching up my enemies? Jax would have laughed himself stupid if he’d seen me. Honeybee, he would have said, you just don’t have the sting in you. And maybe I didn’t. Yet.

I was careful to avoid any contact with Warden when I passed him. I caught his gaze before I stepped into the dark passage. He locked the door behind me.

Another winding staircase took me to the upper floor of the tower. I looked at my new abode: a large, bare room. It reminded me of the Detainment Facility, with a damp floor and barred windows. A paraffin lamp burned on the windowsill, giving little light and even less heat. Beside it was a bed, the type with rails and a lumpy mattress. The sheets were prudish in comparison to the luscious velvet mantles of Warden’s four-poster; in fact, the whole room smacked of human inferiority—but anything was better than sharing.

I checked every corner and crevice of the room, as I had with the lower floor. No way out, of course, but there was a bathroom. In it was a toilet, a sink, and a few hygiene supplies.