Twenty-one
Twenty-one
HER
“I would have given you everything, Micha,” he says as his fingers tighten around my throat. “I would have risked more than you will ever fucking know just to be yours. For you to be mine.” He leans in, his breath fanning my ear and sending shivers down my spine. “But you lied to me. You betrayedme. So now I will give you what you deserve.”
My fingers dig into the wood, shoving splinters under my nails. I can’t breathe.Can’t tell him that he has it wrong, that whatever his mother fucking told him are nothing but lies. My mouth just moves up and down, a useless hinge that just keeps trying to suck in air even though it knows it can’t.
“I will kill you in this chair, Micha. You are not surviving this, but you can make it easy on yourself. You can stop the pain before it even starts.” He pulls back a little, looks me in the eye.
His are still so flat, so cold. A monster that’s stepped out of the dark, and I am of no illusion that I’m the prey.
Moving back, he releases my neck, and I instantly lean forward, hacking up my lungs even as I’m trying to suck in air. Two actions working so strongly against each other that for a moment, I can’t do either. My nails dig deeper into the wood as I try to get control of myself. My shoulders shake. My eyes water.
But then I manage it.
One breath in.
Two.
The fuzziness that’s poured into my brain starts to lift, making way for a killer headache that’s begging me to fall asleep. To bypass the pain in my dreams, but Varius isn’t making empty promises. If I can’t convince him that I didn’t let the wolves in, then I’m dead.
So I lift my head and try to focus my thoughts. Varius is standing by my bed, his back to me, his gaze on the items he’s spread out there. My grab bag sits empty beside his feet, and my heart kicks up into my throat. There was cash in there and new identities I never told him about. Cards to offshore accounts. Keys to safe houses all across the USA. Magical cuffs, even a witch’s snare, and various tools and weapons, alongside my favorite mementos.
My pulse hammering inside my skull, I jerk against my binds. I know how it looks – like I was always planning on betraying him, having my bag packed and ready to go. “I wasn’t…” I cut off as the syllables burn across my throat.
He turns around to face me, having picked up two items off the bed – the first presents I ever received – a hammer and a screw. Dayne likes to joke that even when faced with a screw, I’m still stubborn enough to hit it with a hammer, and my heart breaks, knowing that Varius is about to taint one of my favorite memories.
“Please, Varius, don’t do this,” I beg as he walks towards me. “I wasn’t leaving you. I swear, and I didn’t take down the wards. Your mother –”
His fist with the screw backhands me across the face, and my head jerks to the side as a bloody line tears across my cheek. The cut burns, but it has nothing on the pain from being hit by someone I love.
“Varius, please,” I push out, my voice cracking as I try not to cry. Pain, I can deal with. I suffered through worse when being trained by my father. But Varius is hitting me where father never could. He is tearing apart my soul with his refusal to even listen. Everything we were, everything we could have been, it is dying here along with me.
“The rules here are simple, Micha. You lie to me, you get punished. You tell me the truth, and I won’t touch you until I kill you. Now.” He pauses, letting me feel the weight of his words, the honesty within them. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
“I came back because your mother tricked me.” The text might have said it came from him, but I now know without a doubt that bitch lured me here. “Then she took down the wards and attacked me. I only fought back in self-defense.”
“She would never do that.”
“I would never do that.” I look at him, trying to push my love down the bond we share. “Please, Varius. You know me,” I murmur.
“I know a liar.” His jaw tics. His voice drops. “And a whore.”
“I’m not a whore.” I realize my mistake as soon as the words are free, that I didn’t protest to being a liar too, but I can still feel Antonio’s lips on me, his tongue in my mouth, and that violation makes me sick – second only to the man I love accusing me of being a whore.
I start to open my mouth to correct my statement, but his hand flies across my face. My teeth slam together, radiating pain all up and down my jaw. The end of the screw tears a new jagged line across my cheek.
“You kissed him,” he says. “Have you fucked him too yet? Or is that to be a celebratory act?”
“Fuck you.”
His hand wraps around my throat this time, and he leans in, his face so close to mine. “Perhaps I should kiss you now,” he murmurs, but there’s no passion in those words, no desire. There’s not even any anger of a lover wanting make-up sex, of an enemy wanting to punish. They are just flat, entirely and utterly empty. “So you can die alone, with not even your lover’s lips to comfort you.”
He keeps his face near mine as he chokes me, his eyes boring into me, letting me feel the force of his anger even as they shut me out. Panic floods my system, and if my hands weren’t bound, I’d be clawing at his throat. My head goes fuzzy. My vision starts to blur.
But just as I start to pass out, he releases me and steps back. I lean forward, gasping for air even as the voice in my head tells me it’s pointless. Why bother with trying to live when I’m not making it out of this room?
Because you’re not fighting for just you anymore.
Those words come out of nowhere and steal away the breath I’ve just regained. Antonio said he was coming back for the child in my belly. He hit me above my womb, and there’s no blood between my thighs.
My heart rate increasing, I lift my head and blurt, “I’m pregnant.”
For a moment, the world freezes as he stares at me.
But then he twirls the hammer in his hand, his eyes so fucking empty. “I told you what would happen if you lied to me,” he bites out, and my pulse jumps a wild beat inside my veins. I tug against my binds, willing my magic to free me. But he’s tied my fingers down tight, leaving me completely helpless.
“I’m not lying. I’m –”
His knuckles slam into my chest, hitting me right in the solar plexus. I lean forward, gasping for air as pain radiates across my chest. He switches the objects in his hands. The hammer is now in his dominant one, and seeing it there terrifies me. He isn’t planning on hitting me with his fist anymore.
“Varius, don’t do this,” I beg, coughing up spittle as I try to wheeze. “Please. I didn’t do this. Just listen to me. Varius, please.”
He places the long screw on the back of my hand, and my heart jumps into my throat. He raises the hammer, his eyes cold.
“Don’t. Varius. Varius, please, look at me. I love you. I –”
The hammer comes down, slamming the screw all the way through my flesh.
I scream, my voice cracking, pain radiating up my arm and across my vocal chords. The hammer resonates across the screw again, pure agony shooting through my body as the metal digs deeper into my flesh, the ridges causing even more damage, making the hole ragged and torn instead of clean.
I look up at him on a cry, and for the first time, he isn”t wearing a mask. His face is twisted in equal parts agony and rage, and I know he cares for me. He cares for me, and his heart is breaking thinking I betrayed him. This is killing him, killing us.
But I know he will not stop.
It’s because he cares that he’s punishing me so severely. He’s punishing himself for daring to believe in me. To trust me. To let himself be manipulated by me.
“I swear, Varius… I didn’t let the werewolves in,” I try again, my voice shaking as bad as my hand.
His eyes mist. His arm holding the hammer trembles. As his chest rises and falls rapidly, his Adam’s apple bobs with a wail he’ll never release. Then finally, he speaks, his words raw and cracked. “You attacked Mother,” he says. “You were here when the werewolves came, knowing we were all out. And you can’t…” He breaks off, his face twisting with so much agony before he controls it, flattens it. “You can’t be that.”
He places the claw of the hammer around the screw. His lips tremble. My gut twists in anticipation of the pain.
“Varius! Please! I’m telling the truth! I’m –” I scream as he rips the screw free, tearing out chunks of flesh, spraying blood high up between us.
I arch against my binds, screaming as my toes curl, the pain rocking through me in an overwhelming wave. “I didnotlet them in,” I cry, my head hanging, tears flowing down my cheeks. “I did not let them in.”
My hand’s throbbing too hard for me to feel the touch of metal against my skin again, but I feel it when it goes through another part of my palm. I feel it embed into the arm of the chair. I feel him rip it back out. Slam it back in again somewhere else.
“Tell me where Khalid is,” Varius says, his voice tight with his own pain.
Khalid? “He was with you. He wasn–” I break off on a whimper when he moves the screw to my other hand. I jerk against my binds, but it’s a futile, pathetic attempt. I can’t escape. I can’t stop him. “I’m not the traitor,” I say, focusing on the facts I know. “I’m not the traitor. I told you about the blackmail.” Even though his mom didn’t really want it, I told him instead of stealing it. That has to count for something – that honesty, that truth.
“To gain my trust,” he spits. “Admit to something small to hide something big. It’s a classic trick.”
“No –” I shake my head. “No, that’s not –”
The hammer comes down.
My back arches off the chair as I spasm in agony. My cries are shrill and cracked, ripping my throat raw. “Just feel the bond,” I beg. “Just feel it. I love you. Varius, please.”
His hands shake as he holds the screw against my skin. Its sharp end scratches me as his arm vibrates, but I am happy for that pain if it means he’ll believe me.
His eyes close. He swallows hard on a shudder.
Hope flares in my chest, but when he looks at me again, it plummets into the acid of my stomach.
“I feel nothing,” he says. “Now where is Khalid?”
“Varius –” My face twists under the strain of pain and panic. “How can you not feel anything? I love you. We’re bonded. I –” I scream. I jerk. I thrash inside my binds as he slams the screw over and over into my hand.
“Where is Khalid?”
“Tell me where Khalid is.”
“Where is Khalid, Micha?”
“I don”t know. I swear I don’t… But, Varius, stop, please. I’m p–”
My arms jerking against my binds, I scream.
And this time, I cannot stop.