After Kristina has been and gone with more juice, another newspaper, eggs and a mug of coffee, Merle picks up the book again. It's still open at the picture of her parents. She fell asleep staring at it the night before.
But now she turns over and reads on.
Cole was massing an army to storm the castle of the Black Emerald Clan. This castle. The army marched by night and were incredibly vulnerable to human attack during daylight hours if their whereabouts was known.
Somehow Cole was captured when he left the march to travel alone to London. After sometime in captivity, Cole revealed the whereabouts of his army. Betrayed them. They were all killed by a Cobalt team and Cole publicly denounced his previously held beliefs in Righteous Power.
No one knew why Cole had done it. What was he promised in return for his soldiers' lives? His release, perhaps? Mercy? He certainly wasn't shown any. He was handed over to the Black Emerald Clan and sentenced to live by the Clan Council. This – the book makes clear – is the most severe punishment the council had at its disposal.
Merle looks around the little dark cell where she's sitting. Twenty-five years. It's impossible to imagine. And if everything Oberon told her was true: the solitary confinement, the starvation. The chains had started to hurt her wrists after less than a day. What would it have felt like after twenty-five years?
'Now you see how hard they had to work to break me?'
'Darius?'
'Hello, Merle.' She looks up from her book and he's standing right in front of her. Looming. His hair and clothes and eyes so dark in the gloom of the cell that his white skin seems to glow. She has to force her eyes away from his mesmerising face. But when she lowers her eyeline, she finds the dark fabric of his crotch is right in front of her face.
So it's a relief when Darius drops into a crouch in front of her and smiles earnestly. 'You see what they did to me? Do you understand? Forced me to turn traitor. Made me renounce a set of beliefs they'd invented for me. Public humiliation. Sentenced to live. They did everything they could think of to make me suffer. Everything vicious and cruel. They wanted me to suffer forever. Why do you think they were so scared of me?'
His face is so elegantly pretty and perfectly nasty. She hates him. She knows she needs to keep remembering that. She takes a sharp breath and narrows her eyes. 'Because you were a murdering bastard. Because you are a murdering bastard. You're killing my father right now.'
'I know. It's very hard for me that that was what I had to do. I am sorry. Even after everything Charles Cobalt helped to do to me I know that now he is just a weakened old man now. I wish there had been another way.'
'There is. Let me go. Give me the antidote and leave them alone.'
'Leave them alone? Maybe I could do that. But leave you alone? Never.'
Again, she has to force herself to look away from him. She looks down at her dirty jeans. 'Why? What do you want with me if it isn't about them?' She pauses as a nasty thought catches her by surprise. 'I'm not a ... not a virgin or anything. If it's that. If that's what you want. Well, I'm not.' And that's it – thinking about Cole wanting to take her virginity, which means thinking about him having sex with her – she's blushing. Hard. She hates the way her skin always betrays her at the most crucial moments. She tries to slow her breathing – an anti-blushing technique she read in a magazine once – but it's no use. Her face is getting hotter and hotter. And that just embarrasses her even more.
Suddenly – moving quick and sharp – Cole reaches out and catches hold of her chin. He runs the pad of his thumb slowly over her heated cheek. When he speaks his voice is slightly thick. He's very clearly and very suddenly aroused. Not bothering to try and hide it. 'God, oh. I love that you do that.'
She tries to pull away, but his grip on her is incredibly strong. 'Do what? Don't. Stop it.' She puts one palm flat on his chest in an attempt to push him away.
But he doesn't seem to notice her protests. He strokes her cheek again, mesmerised. His touch is deliriously cool where she feels most heated. His voice is dark, slow and heavy. 'I love that you blush. It means I can see your blood. Under your skin. Do you blush anywhere else? Let me see. I want to see you. So beautiful. I want to see your skin, your pink.' He shoves her and she's forced back hard against the wall. He traps her there with his body and starts pulling at her T-shirt, yanking it up.
'No! No! Stop.' Somehow she wrenches herself out of his grip and pulls her T-shirt back down.
Cole meets her eyes and seems to suddenly hear what she's saying. He takes his hands off her and stands up, taking a couple of stumbling steps backwards. He's shaking his head. 'Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Your blood, it made me ...' he says, backing away from her. 'It's just so difficult to ... Oh.'
He bites his plump bottom lip and turns away.
She wants to tell him to wait, but she forces herself not to by scratching at the sore patches the chains made on her wrists.