And then he retreated to the shadows, melting into the silky darkness as he eased back, drifting completely away before reappearing on the other side of the glass.
Pandora clenched her fists, wanting to wring his neck just a little. But she knew he was right. The titan prison was more fortified than anything she’d tried to break into or out of before. She needed to become stronger, more powerful, and she needed to do it fast. Because she’d been trapped for three days already, and the clock was winding down—it was only a matter of time before her father made good on his word, before the titans decided to kill her, before whatever moment they were waiting for finally arrived.
Against her will, Pandora’s gaze traveled down ever so slowly, eyes fighting her instincts until they landed on Jax and stayed there, stuck.
This was the third time she’d woken up to find him asleep outside her cell, body pressed to the glass as though he could somehow osmose his way inside. It was the third time she’d retreated into the shadows, refusing to speak to him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of waking up to find her watching him. Because she wasn’t quite sure which expression her gaze held—pure fury or pure agony? The gaping tear in her heart hinted at the latter, as much as she wished it weren’t true, and there was no way she’d let Jax know just how easily, just how hard she’d fallen once again.
Pandora knelt, reaching for Jax’s face—his perfect, backstabbing face.
Her hand hovered above his cheek, and she held it there, uncertain. The heat from his skin drifted up, melting into her palm, making her wince. Part of her still yearned to brush the hair from his forehead, to tuck it safely behind his ear, to lie down and let him wrap his arms around her and tell her he was sorry, tell her that everything would work out in the end. And the other part of her? The furious, spewing, nearly volcanic part of her? Well, that part yearned to wrap her fingers around his throat just to show him she didn’t give a damn, to show him the titans hadn’t won yet.
Her thumb twitched, curling inward.
Jax sighed, rolling onto his back, neck straining toward her as though he’d heard her thoughts and was offering himself up for judgment. Pandora paused. Had he noticed her presence somehow? Had he felt her soul aching deep within the shadows, a place where only he and Sam had ever been able to sense her?
“Dory?” The words came out as a puff of air, a sleepy sigh lured to life from whatever scene played behind his closed eyes. The edges of his mouth curved up. A sound passed through his slightly parted lips, a humming purr, satisfied and happy—the stuff of dreams.
His entire body froze.
Pandora snatched her hand back and hugged her wayward fingers to her chest.
Jax’s eyes shot open.
“Dory?”
She jumped away and pulled the shadows tighter.
Jax rolled to his feet, staring into her cell, expression sharp as a thousand different emotions passed over his face, fluttering like bright lights in the depths of his eyes. He pressed his hands to the glass, aggressive and frustrated, fists clenched as he saw her cell was empty—a sure indication that she was still hiding from him, still unwilling to talk. And just as fast, all of that gave way to utter hopelessness. He dropped his head between his raised hands, shoulders bending in as his back hunched, as his muscles all gave out, barely having the strength to hold him upright. He directed his gaze to the floor, ashamed, unable to look at the empty space where she might be standing. A silent sob shuddered through him.
And then he paused, head tilting as though he’d heard something strange.
Or sensed something strange, maybe.
Ever so slowly, his gaze shifted, rolling over the floor, lifting up, up, up, and landing on the exact spot where she stood hidden, completely invisible on the wrong side of her cell.
His brows drew together, his expression curious.
He took an uncertain step toward her.
Pandora dove into the shadows, plunging into the darkness, knowing it would be there for her, knowing it was the one thing that had never abandoned her—not as a titan, not as a vampire. The shadows had always been there in her deepest, darkest moments, sheltering her, saving her, protecting her when no one and nothing else would. She trusted these ebony tendrils more than anything else in the world—more than her own mind, definitely more than her heart.
Unseeing, unfeeling, letting her power lead her, Pandora walked.
Five steps.
Not a long distance.
But when she opened her eyes, she was on the other side of the glass, back in her cell but no longer trapped, no longer a prisoner. Now there by choice, biding her time, emboldened by the sudden advantage she’d earned—something the titans would never see coming.
Jax was forgotten behind her. Wherever he moved or whatever he said was blocked by the soundproof wall at her back, and she didn’t care to turn around. Because when she looked up, hungry cerulean eyes held her captive. She was lost for a moment in the pleasure and elation sparkling like the sun across the deep sea in his gaze.
Sam’s lips twitched into a grin for the barest moment, and then he nodded, signaling that he’d never doubted her and had always known she could do it. “Good work.”
Pandora lifted a teasing brow, high on her own bursting confidence. “Good work? That’s all I get?”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as a bright light flashed across them. “What else do you want?”
The suggestive undercurrent in his voice, smooth and controlled, made her pulse quicken. But she forced the attraction down, forced her mind to clear. “I want answers. How have you known me for a thousand years? How have I done this before? Who are you? Who am I? What’s going on?”
Sam dropped his gaze with a sigh, shaking his head. “Those aren’t the right questions.”
“Then what are?” she pressed.
He took a step closer, lifting his hands so his palms cupped her cheeks, whispering against her skin like fluttering silk, there but not there—always teasing, always elusive. He tilted her head so she looked up at him, realizing how much taller he was—just the right height to make her want to stretch onto her tippy-toes, wrap her arms around his shoulders, and close the gap.
“I have a question, one I’ve wondered for many years, many lifetimes,” he murmured, gaze flicking over her shoulder to the man possibly still standing outside her cell, wondering if she’d ever speak to him again. Pandora knew the answer to that question—no.
Sam brought his attention back to her and brushed his thumb adoringly across her cheek, as though she were fragile, precious. Her focus was completely on him when he continued in an open voice, one laid bare, vulnerable.
“What is worse?” he said simply, with an undeniable undercurrent of despair. “Is it worse to love someone with your entire being and have that love stripped away, realizing it exists only in your heart? To carry that love from afar, never being able to hold her, to touch her, to comfort her? To watch her die a thousand lonely deaths or survive a thousand broken hearts, knowing you can never save her, knowing that even with all your strength and force and invincibility, you are powerless in the one area that means the most to you? Or is it worse to love someone with your entire being and have that love stripped away, forgetting that it existed in the first place? To live a thousand lives with the unyielding sensation that a part of you is missing, that a part of you is empty and wrong, the part you gave him but have now lost? To be always searching for someone just out of reach, stumbling through life utterly alone? Which is worse, do you think, Pandora? To know love, to feel love, and to lose it over and over in an unending cycle you can’t break? Or to forget your love ever existed in the first place?”
Pandora couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t move.
Deep down, her soul felt suffocated by his words, was choking on his heartbreak, struggling to find an answer she had lost so long ago, one she couldn’t remember.
Still gently caressing her cheek, Sam disappeared into the shadows.
One moment he was there, watching her with the weight of a history she didn’t understand, and the next he’d faded from sight, slipping deep into the darkness, gone.
Pandora stumbled on shaky feet, a boat abandoned by her anchor, floating without a tether, off balance and unsure.
Damn you, she thought, annoyance acute as the fog his presence created suddenly cleared.
“That wasn’t an answer!” she shouted into the emptiness of her barren cell, listening as her voice reverberated across the stone, bouncing from wall to wall, filling the small space. “You still owe me! You promised!”
For a moment, there was nothing.
Pandora’s gaze raced across the stone walls, up to the ceiling and down to the floor, passing over the glass wall just long enough to notice that Jax had disappeared.
And then she sensed it.
Laughter rippling through the shadows. Pure, untainted amusement that washed over her in a crashing wave, dispersing the darkness and piercing through her. And despite her best efforts, the response brought a frustrated yet somehow honest, somehow joyful smile to her lips.
Men, she huffed, wondering how to retaliate.
But at the same moment, the smell of hot oatmeal drifted to her nose, and she turned just in time to see a little tray of food pass through the hidden door in the glass. Her stomach grumbled as the opening snapped shut, sealing her breakfast into the cell. Just like always, there were no utensils, no knives. The bowl was plastic and the cup was paper, nothing sharp, nothing breakable.
Pandora’s grin only deepened.
If they thought a concrete cell and dull dinnerware were enough to stop her, they had another think coming. Because now that she’d walked through walls once, she was sure she could do it again. So it was only a matter of time before she waltzed her adorable, invisible behind out their front door, escaping right beneath their noses.
The answers could come after she was free.
Because no matter how intriguing, how sexy, how slyly evasive he was, Pandora had no intention of letting Sam off the hook so easily. One way or another, she’d steal the secrets hiding in his smile.
She did, after all, have an uncanny knack for thieving.
Chapter Two
Pandora spent the rest of the day practicing. Well, what she thought was the day. With no windows and no sunlight, it was a bit hard to tell. But she’d passed out shortly after her dinner tray had come sliding under the door, and she could only assume she’d slept long enough for dawn to be stretching across the sky somewhere far above her head.
For the first time since her arrival at the jail, Jax was nowhere in sight when she slowly cracked her eyelids open, hesitant and unsure. A flash of disappointment passed through her, sudden and intense and gone before she even had the chance to fight it. Because it was better this way, better if she didn’t have to look into his remorseful, ashamed face, better to pretend he was a heartless, hardened man who was nothing like the sweet boy she remembered. It made it easier to hate him, made it easier to fight.
Pandora sank into the shadows as she stood and stepped easily through the glass wall in front of her. One day was all she’d needed to perfect the skill. But like Sam had said, it would definitely take more to escape this place. Looking to her left and to her right, Pandora searched the barren hallway. There were no windows. Just two doors about fifty feet away on either side—both made of unyielding metal, opened by some sort of digital keycard. The blisters on her fingers were proof that even titan-enhanced strength wasn’t enough to break the locks. Four cells lined the wall to her right, with five others to her left. There were cameras pointed toward each chamber, carefully moving and constantly refocusing on their targets. Four other cameras were aimed at the hallway itself, leaving no part of this seemingly small corner of the prison unwatched.
Was the entire place like this?
And how deep underground was she?
And how many doors actually blocked her path to freedom?
Pandora sighed. Looking down at her hand, she gently curved her fingers, watching as the inky blackness rippled, disturbed by her movement.
Would her shadows be enough?
Did this little walking-through-glass trick extend to walking through stone and steel?
Only one way to find out, she thought with a mental shrug. Pandora turned, marched to the door, and pressed her hands against the cool metal. Taking a deep breath, she called upon the shadows, and—
“Wait.”
Pandora flinched, stomach jumping into her throat at the sound of that voice.
I’m going to kill him, she thought, ready with a curse and a reprimand on her lips. Why the hell does he always need to be so freaking mysterious?
But the words died on her lips as a sound filtered into her ear.
Buzzing.
But not quite, more like—
Pandora’s gaze shot up and stared into the camera above her head, the one currently pointed right at her, lens shifting, opening and closing, trying to focus.
Crap!
How had it located her?
How had it sensed her?
The titans couldn’t find out she’d managed to escape her cell—they’d lock her up with chains. They’d put her in a straitjacket. They’d, well, she didn’t know what they’d do, but whatever it was, it’d be bad. And it’d make getting out of here even more impossible than it already was. She couldn’t lose this one advantage, this one small win.
Pandora wrapped the shadows closer, letting the fluorescent lights dim as the darkness thickened, creating a veil between her body and the world around her. The camera continued to hum, shifting slightly, searching for a target it knew was there but couldn’t find.
She stepped back slowly, eyes unblinking as she watched the camera.
But it didn’t move.
Pandora shuffled farther and farther down the hall, back toward her cell, back to the glass. The camera didn’t shift. It remained angled down toward the area directly in front of the door. It didn’t follow her. It didn’t see her.
But it had.
For a moment, it had.
And she knew exactly who to blame.
“You almost blew my cover!” she accused the second she slipped through the glass, back into the confines of her cell, where Sam was waiting, watching. “You’ve got to stop it with these ridiculous dramatic entrances.”
“Believe it or not, that wasn’t for dramatic effect,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Pandora lifted a very pointed brow. “Could’ve fooled me.”
But Sam pressed on, voice firm. “Have you ever seen what happens to a body that rematerializes in the center of a metal door?”
She chewed her lower lip for a moment, searching for a snappy comeback, but all she got was a forcibly sassy, “No.”
“Well, you don’t want to. Trust me.”
Trust you? she thought, ready to retort with those very same words. Had he done anything yet to prove he could be trusted? No. Not to her broken, feeble heart—a heart she was afraid would never trust anyone or anything again.
Pandora looked away, holding her tongue. She wasn’t ready to go down that road, not right now. Not when there were more pressing concerns, like escape. Sorting out her feelings could wait until later.
“How’d the camera pick up on my location?” she asked instead, eyes flicking to the empty hall on the other side of her cell and the camera blinking in her direction. “I was holding on to the shadows the entire time. I’m positive I never went visible.”
Sam came to stand next to her, gaze lingering on her face before following her stare. “My guess would be some sort of thermal imaging scan. When I told you to wait, your body flared up with the surprise. The flash of heat might have pushed through the shadows even if your actual body didn’t. I’m sure it looked like little more than a glitch in the system.”
Pandora narrowed her eyes. Of course, thermal imaging. Why didn’t I think of that before? Freaking things are probably equipped wi
th night vision, and hell, maybe x-ray too. But her mind stopped when she felt the brush of warm fingers against her hand, barely more than a whisper, a swift, sudden breeze.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, words as soft as a lullaby. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I promise, this time, it wasn’t on purpose. I just—” Sam sighed, dropping his hand and tightening it into a fist before turning away from her.
Pandora moved with him, pulled by an invisible string as her body followed, tugged by curiosity and maybe a little something else. “You just what?”
He glanced over his shoulder, blue eyes hooded and tortured, unable to meet her gaze. “I just couldn’t watch you die, not again, not when we’re the closest we’ve ever been. Not when I can finally, after so many years, talk to you, teach you…touch you, almost.” Soundlessly, his shoulders loosened and his fist fell open as he returned his gaze to the concrete wall on the left side of her cell. He cleared his throat once before continuing. “Walking through something opaque is much more difficult than something like glass, because I haven’t been completely honest about the process. I wanted you to know you could do it before telling you everything. I was worried I’d just make you doubt yourself even more than you already do.”
Pandora stepped up next to him, careful not to get too close, careful to keep their conversation strictly business. “I’m ready. Lay it on me.”
He lifted the corner of his lip, her amused Sam once more. And deep within her chest, part of her glowed, happy for the briefest instant that she put that expression on his face.
“When I said I could teach you how to walk through walls, I didn’t mean walk exactly,” he started, tone somewhat apologetic. “It’s more like teleportation. You move your body into the shadow world entirely, and since you’ve entered a completely different realm of reality, you can sort of spit yourself back out wherever you want. It’s how I can always get to you so fast—I’m not actually stalking you, contrary to what you might believe. But when I hear you through the shadows, all I have to do is picture your face, and I can bring myself here, to you. Our shadow world, it exists separate from time and space, separate from the confines of this world. The laws of physics, the laws of science, they don’t apply. Not if you teach yourself to look beyond them.”
Freeze (Midnight Ice Book Two) Page 2