I cupped her cheek. “You told me the reason they sent you here was because you got in trouble?”
She nodded. “I was caught sinning with the High Priest’s son.”
I remembered the way she looked at me earlier as she’d told me what that meant. “Did you… want to?”
“I uh…” She trailed off, but I saw the truth in her eyes. “I mean… it was me that seduced him.”
“What does that mean?”
She shrank in my arms. “We were all touch starved—at the Convent, I mean, and our golden eyes could be difficult for the alphas to resist. So going to services we had to put on a glove and a blindfold and wait for someone to lead us down.”
I frowned, something cold creeping up my spine.
They had to do…what?
“It’s not normally alphas who come, but the High Priest’s son came. And then when we were going into the pews, I tripped and touched him.” She glanced up at me as if unsure. “It set him off. When we got back to my room, he lost himself. It was… was my fault.”
Lost himself? I almost growled. “When I came back into our cell when we first found you, Karma had taken you into the shower, discovered his scent match, and gone feral. Still didn’t find him hurting you.”
Her lips parted for a moment, then closed. “I…”
“And I think you did more than touch Karma…” I added.
She wrinkled her nose, giving me a cute, narrow-eyed look. “I licked him, actually.”
I tried to fight a smile at the brattiness in her tone—given the rather unpleasant weight of this conversation. Sure enough, it was only seconds before the tiny spark in her eyes that had lit at Karma’s name, faded.
“They’re different back there,” she whispered, but I could see by her frown she wasn’t convinced.
“Weaker?” I asked.
She paused, a tiny flicker of satisfaction in her eyes as she looked at me. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“Is that reallywhythey sent you down here?”
“I corrupted their son. The High Priest himself brought me here… he was so angry…”
That, I thought, was onepowerfulChurch. Or cult.
I felt my fingers tighten where they were resting in her hair and had to force myself to relax.
His son had attacked her, and then he’d thrown her into Anarchy as punishment?
“Did they know you were so close to heat?”
I remember little of before, but when I’d been tossed down here, it had been impassioned. Out of reasons to continuerunning experiments on me, I was thrown down here like used-up trash.
For Crescent, it had been vindictive.
“No—” she cut off, lip trembling. “I just mean…” Suddenly she couldn’t meet my eyes. “The High Priest injected me with something before he put me in.”
He… what?
The words took a moment to untangle themselves in my mind, and when they did, I almost lost it. My heart was beating out of control, a storm surge of fury in my veins.
It didn’t settle.
One moment, I could see her, then my vision was fading for crimson. I felt like violence was trying to burst from my chest, demanding an outlet?—