Chapter 10 · Put On My Name

The scream inside the ring cut off so hard my teeth snapped together.

One second I was on that stone floor with my mother kneeling under moonlight. The next, I was on my knees in Vera Sane's ballroom with blood under my fingernails and Ronan's hand locked around my wrist.

"Quinn. Look at me."

I couldn't.

My eyes kept seeing her.

My mother.

Alive.

Not dead in some alley after a bad deal. Not gone before I was old enough to ask why she smelled like smoke and rain whenever she kissed my forehead.

Alive. Crying. Begging somebody not to make me pay.

The ring burned around my finger.

I clawed at it with my free hand. "Get it off. Get it the hell off me."

Ronan caught both my wrists before I could rip skin open. His face was gray under the ballroom lights. Blood ran from the cut on his thumb, down over his palm, and dripped onto the black marble.

"Don't pull it," he said.

"It just showed me my mother tied to an altar. I am way past taking your advice calmly."

"Quinn.