Chapter 65 #2
"You will love it. If my scouts are to be believed, it is nothing you haven’t experienced before.
All of this is not new to you, isn’t that right?
You’ve been forced to kneel before a king before.
Forced in front of a court that wants nothing more than your blood on their hands, your heart in their palms. None of this is novel—don’t pretend you’re shocked or frightened.
Not when the King of Serpentis did this very same thing to you.
" His voice dropped. "He paraded you about.
Treated you like his. Claimed you as a war prize. What makes us so different?"
His thumb dug into her jaw, forcing her mouth to open.
Luella narrowed her eyes.
"If you don’t answer, I can still find a way to get the information I want. You’d break so easily, I think. Look at you—already broken and I’ve barely done anything yet. Did he not treat you well?"
He didn’t say Vale’s name, as if unwilling to speak it.
"I may have been a war prize, but Vale"—she stressed, voice wobbling barely—"never treated me like this."
Caliban bared his teeth, shadows flickering. She stared at the planes of his face, the line of his jaw. How could he be so similar, yet so different from Vale?
It was strange to her that Vale was the serpent between the two of them—because she had never met a being more vile, wicked, and forked-tongued than the male above her.
"If there’s one thing I am certain of, it is my bro—the King of Serpentis and I share the same father.
That means we share the same love for hurting females.
Did you know my father raped my mother? That was how I was born.
She was a concubine, but not of her own will.
Some females gave their bodies willingly for money or jewels, to be told they mean something and have worth. Not my mother."
The shadows blended, shifting in his eyes to reveal the green, then darkening again, like he warred against them.
"She wanted nothing of the sort. That didn’t matter to my father.
He took her anyway. When I was born, he tried to kill me.
He never meant to have a bastard. When he was killed, I laughed and laughed and laughed. "
Luella trembled in his hold. He was evil. Deranged. The shadows had turned him into a mockery of the male of her dreams.
Enora’s name danced on the tip of her tongue. He didn’t know that Luella knew. For now, she would keep it secret.
"You’re tired," he repeated, the sharp, sadistic glee flickering. "Come. Let me show you to your new home."
He stood, and the shadows forced her to follow.
The crowd stilled as Caliban walked down the steps into their midst, and Luella was tugged behind. The collar dug into her neck, and her legs trembled as sensation rushed back into them.
The Umbra’s eyes trailed after her. One stood out:
Ambrose stood by the wall, a glass in hand, knuckles white as he gripped it. The shadows under his eyes were stark. She couldn’t reconcile with what she’d seen—how Caliban had shoved his hand in his chest—with the male, living and breathing before her.
Ambrose caught her eye and raised his glass. A female knelt by his legs, cheek rubbing against his thigh as her painted nails scratched over the seam of his trousers. He fisted his hand in her hair and bent down to press his lips to hers, eyes never leaving Luella’s as she was pulled from the room.
The halls were dark; the shadows were cold.
Down, down, they went. The halls circled down into the pit of the castle.
Caliban’s steps never faltered, and hers did not, either, but only because the shadows kept her upright. If not for them tangling around her chest and legs, she would have fallen long ago.
"The dungeons," Caliban proclaimed, as he stopped at a hollow and dark cavern. Rusted iron bars and tall ceilings. It smelled of dust.
He placed his hand on the bars and pushed them open, revealing a small cell with a smooth, bowl-like floor. No windows, no anything. It was barren.
"Well, come in, look around. I’m sure it may not compare to your cell at Serpentis, but I’ll try to make up for the lack in other ways."
The shadows yanked her forward, and as she passed him, his hands drifted over the tip of her wings.
It was so dark, she could barely see her own hand in front of her. She trembled as she felt him at her back.
He made a low tutting sound. "The darkness can be welcome. Shadows work best when there’s a little light." He snapped his fingers, and soft blue orbs began to gleam on the ceiling above, casting everything in a haze of blue.
He was right.
Light made it all worse.
She saw the shifting shadows seeping over the walls like spilled ink. The stains on the floor, brown and old.
"Enjoy your stay, my future bride. It is only until you come to heel.
Eventually, you will warm my bed. It must happen.
It must. There is no other way. No—" Caliban’s words turned low at the end.
He pressed his palms against his eyes, drew in an angry-sounding breath, then faced her fully, shadows darkening his eyes and curling over his neck.
For just one moment, his tone had dropped the harsh echo it held and turned soft and pleading.
She took a step back, ankle twinging in pain.
He blocked the cell’s doorway.
She was alone. He could hurt her—he could do anything to her, but the words came regardless:
"I will never be your anything. You can imprison me—you can—break me. But I won’t give you anything of myself. That remains solely mine."
"You are so naive and hopeful. I wonder if your Vincire ever grew tired of it."
Her mangled hand twitched where she cradled it against her chest. He knew the others were her Vincire—of course, he did. She wondered what else he knew. Did he know everything? The prophecy, too? She wouldn’t be surprised at all if he did.
"They won’t come for you. It would be their demise. Your captors are many things, but stupid is not one—mostly, at least. They know if they come for you, they’ll be killed, and then no one will be able to stop me, and no one will be able to save you. Do not hold out hope; better to let it die now."
He may as well have struck her. The pain was the same.
Caliban shut the door and left, the blue lights flickering overhead.
Luella sank to her knees, and in the utter silence, she wept.
She found herself lying down, curled into the tightest of balls, despondent and still, as if awaiting death’s blow—like a prisoner before an execution, wondering if the blade’s kiss at the back of her neck would hurt when it came.
It could have been mere minutes or a day when she realized she no longer wore the dream amulet Tharen had given her, or the bracelet she’d stolen from Vale’s hoard.
Her hand had journeyed up to her chest to touch the stone for comfort, but her fingers had felt nothing but skin. She’d sat up, a gasp caught in her throat, afraid to make a sound lest she wake the shadowed monsters hovering beyond the cell in the dark.
"No," she whispered, unable to hold the words back as her hand patted along her chest, then up to her neck. No chain. No stone. "No, no—"
Her wrist rubbed against her chest, and it felt bare, too.
She forced her stiff fingers to uncurl as she twisted her ruined hand. Nothing.
The bracelet was gone.
There would be no Bastian to bring her tarts and help her bathe, no Az to keep her company from the other side of the iron bars, and no Graves, watching her from the darkened halls.
She was alone.
Utterly, horribly alone.
Vale would not come, find her sick, and order Tharen to heal her. She wouldn’t be carried to a soft room with fluttering drapes.
She would be left here to rot until her skin peeled away from her flesh and her bones turned to dust.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
Because Caliban wouldn’t let her die. He wanted to use her—to wed her.
She had to be alive for that. But the state of her body was not guaranteed.
Spiraling, Luella shrank against the curved lower half of the wall. The blue glimmering light stretched the shadows around her until she felt suffocated by them.