Calla’s POV
My consciousness returned in fragments—cold concrete beneath me, the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, and a splitting headache that felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull.
I forced my eyes open, blinking against the dim light filtering through what looked like a single bare bulb hanging from a ceiling somewhere above me. The room was small, maybe eight by ten feet, all concrete walls and steel bars. A cell. I was in an actual goddamn cell.
The air tasted wrong, like damp earth mixed with something organic and awful that I didn’t want to identify. It was blood, probably. Old blood that had soaked into concrete and never fully washed away.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it as pain exploded through my ribs. Right. The backhand from earlier, plu
