Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“M ore ,” I growled as the torturer jammed a hot poker into my side, the iron shackles holding my wrists and ankles weakening me to the point of nausea.
I was strapped to a wooden cross, my arms and legs spread across it and my body stripped to nothing but some underwear to cover my modesty.
Sweat was beading on my chest and my muscles strained with every wound he offered me, the need in me to kill this man coiling up inside my heart like a venomous snake.
This was akin to visiting Hellravia, the underworld for sinful souls that was guarded by the nether ravens, birds as big as men with beaks as sharp as razors, ready to cut the flesh from your bones the moment you crossed the Bridge of Bones.
Or hell, as it was called for short. If it existed, I had no idea.
Perhaps it once had, when the gods of old had ruled the land, the dark, twisted god of death and ruin, Herdat, its terrifying ruler.
It was perhaps just a story now, or maybe I was headed there very soon.
I would not let this fucker break me easily though, so I'd settled on pretending I liked his violent games instead, encouraging every strike of his whip and bite of his torture implements.
It pissed him off to no end while making me feel far more in control of the situation.
But frankly, I was fucked whether I went down with a fake smile on my face or not.
“I’ve broken bigger men than you,” he purred, withdrawing the poker and moving to heat it in the fire which was making this room stifling hot.
“I’ve made men as big as horses weep and beg for their mammys.
You’ll be no different, mark my words.” He chuckled and I hung my head while I caught my breath, letting the tension run from my body as I worked to shut out the pain scoring through my side.
The first thing I’d learned in the Royal Guard were the words I am made of steel.
My captain had made me repeat that phrase over and over.
I wrote it in the sand a thousand times, I screamed it until I lost my voice, I even cut it into my skin once upon command.
And eventually, I believed those words as surely as if they really were true.
I am number two hundred and eighty-seven, and I am made of steel. I am a warrior for Osaria. I cannot be broken.
“Stop pretending you want this, you dirty little traitor,” the torturer growled. His face was covered by a leather mask and his emotionless eyes wheeled from my wound to my expression beneath it as he approached me with the poker glowing red at one end. “I know you hate it.”
“I. Love. It,” I panted. Fuck, I didn't love it. But I would not break. “Especially the poker. Drive it into me again. Go on, little man. I dare you.”
I am made of steel.
He tossed the poker across the dark room with a bellow of rage and a dull clunk, clunk, clunk sounded as it bounced on the concrete, his eyes flashing with irritation. The place was full of wooden racks and torture devices I hadn’t yet had the pleasure of enduring, but I had no doubt I would soon.
“Fine. You want to play with the big toys? I can introduce you to my worst horrors then,” he said with a grin lighting his eyes behind the mask.
Pain continued to sear through my side from the burn and I ground my teeth, angry with myself for what I’d done to land myself here, but most of all I was angry with Magdor.
I didn't know how, I didn't know why, but I knew for sure that damned woman was controlling the emperor.
My emperor. The ruler of the kingdom. And that conniving bitch had him snared in her claws.
I knew I would be declared insane if I ever voiced my suspicions about her, but I believed, somehow, Magdor was able to wield magic like the Fae of old.
I wasn’t a fool; I didn’t make assumptions like that on a whim.
After many years of observing her, it simply seemed like the only logical conclusion to draw, because ever since the emperor had married her, every good thing he had been planning to do in Osaria had fallen to the wayside, and the kingdom I loved had slowly sunk into chaos.
“I could gouge out your eyes,” my torturer said, moving across the room and picking up something which looked suspiciously like a rusty spoon. Trepidation slithered down my spine, but I refused to let it show.
I am made of steel.
So they were going to take my eyes for what I'd seen, were they? Well, I supposed it was a punishment that fitted the crime.
The short glimpse I'd had of the princess's face had been, in all fairness, an accident. But it had also potentially been the most thrilling moment of my life. Which was rather pathetic when I thought on that. I’d trained vigorously for a place in the Royal Guard since I could hold a sword and now, at thirty years old, I was the emperor’s primary personal guard.
To achieve that position, I’d had to make many sacrifices, given up endless opportunities, pleasures and dreams. I had sworn an oath to my kingdom and now I was owned by it, body and soul.
I lived for it with every beat of my heart, and I would die for it.
I knew how to obey the rules. By the Fallen, I was the rules.
I was a royal guard for Osaria’s sake. That meant rising before the sun, training my body like my life depended on it, then protecting the palace for a sixteen-hour shift before doing it all over again.
Day in, day out. That was my existence. Any other urges, wishes and desires I’d once possessed had long since been cut out of me.
So what had it all been for? My entire adult life given to the guard, but what had it given me in return?
I was imprisoned and tortured, awaiting a death that would be public and drawn out.
I’d likely die in a pool of my own blood while the sound of cheers carried from the royals I’d served so loyally.
It would likely be the most bitter of punishments I could imagine.
It was my fault though. No man looked at the princess until her Unveiling.
It wasn't even a rule, it was more of an outright fact.
The princess only walked around with her veil on when she left her quarters, and yes, I had known I was entering her quarters at the time.
But I'd been fairly sure I was moments away from catching Magdor casting some freakish spell on the emperor.
Wasn't it my duty to protect him? Protect all of the Lunarelle royals?
I'd been too filled with rage and determination to consider the fact that the princess might have been in there, unveiled in all her earth-shattering beauty, so I hadn't intended to break the law.
I took an oath never to break the fucking law. But what good did that do me now?
The torturer approached and I held onto the image of the princess’s face in a sweet kind of defiance. She was more beautiful than every rumour that had ever been weaved about her, more captivating than all the goddesses who had abandoned us here in this land.
Her skin was a deliciously warm shade of brown, and the light caught on her flesh as if it had been hand painted there to enhance the slant of her cheekbones.
Her hair was unlike any hair I’d ever seen before, molten silver painted strand by strand by the gods themselves.
But it was her eyes that had surprised me most. They weren’t a sunrise like the tales said, they were a sunset, a thousand dusks taking place at once, leaving me bereft in the face of the endless pain I had witnessed within them.
For a single moment of madness, I had ached to grab that girl and steal her away from the palace before the pageant allowed another man to claim her as his.
Because a depraved part of me had momentarily awoken and it wanted a taste of the forbidden.
And the worst part about that was…it wasn’t the first time.
It was the hottest day in Osaria since the Battle of the Haloed Sun.
Despite only having been a young boy, I still remembered that day, the heat so intense that my mother had strung sheets over the windows to try and trap as much shade as possible within our home.
But that hadn’t been the most concerning part, it was our enemies at the border of our city which had really unsettled me.
They had done what was once thought impossible and crossed the Lyrian Desert from the north, and most of our emperor’s army had been sent to intercept them before they breached our kingdom.
Those who remained were stationed along the streets, wearing the bright blue and white colours of Osaria, their armour glinting in the baking sun as they stood unyieldingly at our doors with swords in hand.
In the end, the heat had been the downfall of our opponents, and after many hours hiding in our homes and watching the sun try to crawl between the cracks in our defences against it, our army had returned bloody and victorious.
It was a fine day for our kingdom, one that even today filled me with pride.
Especially as I now wore that same heavy armour while heat bled through the palace, and I realised how strong our army had really been that day to fight under the weight of so much steel while the sun glared down at their backs.
“Surely we can put it off another day?” the princess’s angry voice reached me further down the white stone corridor as I followed along at the emperor’s back.
She’d turned eighteen last week and Magdor had insisted she be paraded through the streets often, covered from head to toe in white as she was hailed the most beautiful woman in the world.
Whether it was true or not, I didn’t know, but the rumours were escalating about her fast, especially after it had been announced that in three years’ time, her hand in marriage would be bid for in a traditional pageant established by the emperors of old.