Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
After Father had taken Kaiser below deck, I’d been corralled by four of his fiercest warriors, manhandled back into my quarters for ‘my own safety’ and locked away like a princess in a tower. The growl that had left me when they’d locked the door in my face had been nothing short of feral.
They remained out there guarding me while I paced my room, confused, angry, lost. I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that Kaiser was both alive and now below deck, being mercilessly tortured by my father.
I should have wanted that. I should have been yearning to go down there and cut into him myself.
But instead, I found myself torn to ribbons inside.
Some part of me was screaming for his freedom and I didn’t know why.
Perhaps it was some lasting mark from the Fearsire bond, but in truth, I knew that was a lie I was trying to convince myself of.
It was deeper than that. Something beyond magic.
Something that had haunted me ever since I’d driven my dagger into his chest. The same dagger I held in my grip now, turning it over and over as I examined his name.
The thought of Kaiser’s body being marked, beaten, bruised sent a shudder down my spine. I squeezed my eyes shut to fight the thoughts away, but they wouldn’t leave. Why did they torment me so?
I realised the sound of voices beyond my door had ceased and I hurried to it, pressing my ear to the wood. I cast my Void out into the space beyond, seeking the source of the warriors’ magic but I found none.
They were gone.
My gaze fell on my dark green armour on the wall, my matching sword hanging beside it. Calcifiend let out a mournful trill and flew to me from the bed, landing on my arm and tugging at my sleeve with his teeth.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I put that on,” I breathed to him, an itch growing in my skin.
Calcifiend let out a despairing noise that tugged at my heart and I met his gaze, shaking my head.
“Going down there is madness,” I told him but I walked toward my armour, as if drawn to the green shimmer of the plates. “But not going down there isn’t an option.”
Calcifiend let out an excited click of his tongue as if he’d understood what I’d said.
I grabbed the armour, pulling it all on and sheathing my sword on one hip while tethering my dagger to the other.
As I whirled to leave, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and my throat tightened as I saw my mother in my face.
Was she watching me now from some place beyond death?
Was she screaming my name and demanding I remember the sins of my enemy?
I shut my eyes, seeing it all. Kaiser’s emotionless eyes.
The basilisk venom.
The fire.
The heat, the smoke, the scent of singed skin.
I opened my eyes to look down at the scar on my palm. A stain of war. Tit for tat and tit for tat. Where did it end?
“I can’t turn from this,” I hissed at the mirror, at my mother. “If he is to suffer then I will at least be there to see it.”
Those words fell from my lips like an offering to my flesh and blood. But they didn’t feel like the real reason I was going below deck.
I lifted Calcifiend to my hair, letting him crawl in among it despite my confliction over him spying on me. But it felt like I was on a precipice and I had to jump now or forever miss my chance. So I couldn’t spare time to think about the betrayal. I just had to act.
Hurrying across the room, I pressed my hand to the lock and froze it, shattering it to pieces. With my pulse thumping heavily in the back of my head, I strode out and slipped across the empty deck.
Fires lit the hillside where our people had made camp, thousands of Cascadians still enjoying the night as they continued to relish in their victory at Cinder Vale. I turned my gaze from them and made a passage down the stairs that led toward the brig, my mind honed onto one thing.
Him.
When I made it two levels down, I heard screams. A woman crying out for Capricorn to come down from the stars to save her. A man begging for death. The cries for help answered by callous laughter.
I made it down the next level and came eye to eye with the heavy wooden door that led into the brig, not wanting to see beyond it but refusing to turn from the terrors awaiting me there.
I pushed through the door, coming face to face with the brutal reality of torture beyond.
Men and women were strapped to racks, strung up like pieces of meat while others called out to them from cells that lined the cabin.
From their clothes, I could tell they were from Avanis.
A faction of the upper class Fae that had surrendered to us at Cinder Vale.
These were prisoners of war. And my father and his warriors showed no mercy as they cut lumps out of their flesh and made them bleed and bleed.
Father’s man Goshart was flaying a woman with a whip, beating her and asking nothing. No questions. No reason for the torture except the clear pleasure he was taking from it.
I hunted for father and found him with Ransom, dragging his son close by the back of the neck. He pushed his son toward a man strung up on a wooden rack, arms tied above him with magical-blocking cuffs and his legs tethered in place too.
Kaiser’s shirt was half ripped off him; bloody marks lined his arms and chest, clearly placed there by the knife in my father’s hand.
My breaths came more raggedly.
Ransom shook his head, retreating from Kaiser as Father offered him his knife, and all the while I went unnoticed as I strode closer, my mind a sea of red.
“Like this, son,” Father said, twisting towards Kaiser and casting a whip of water that knotted around his neck and cut off his air supply. Father regarded Kaiser’s chest as if deciding where to cut next and I winced as he sliced a shallow slash across the scar my dagger had given him.
“Where is your whore of a mother hiding?” Father demanded, releasing the tether around Kaiser’s neck so he could speak.
“Fuck you,” he spat and Father slammed a fist into his stomach, making Kaiser growl.
Father lunged to the side, opening a cell and grabbing a woman out by her hair and slicing her throat right in front of Kaiser so blood splattered him. “You want to die, you Flamebringer bastard? This is what will happen to you if you don’t give me the location of The Matriarch!”
Ransom stared down at the dying woman on the floor with a pale face and shaking hands. Horror resounded through my bones at the ruthless death my father had delivered.
The warriors around us cheered as Father tossed the doomed woman to the floor, the sound drilling into my skull. They were so caught up in the blood lust of the torture that they hadn’t seemed to notice my arrival.
I prowled closer to my father, seeing him for what he was like a veil was lifting from my mind. How had I ever craved this man’s respect? Why had I wanted his approval? He was nothing but a vessel for death. A beast who lived for the kill.
He didn’t care who fell to his sword. He had long ago lost the will to care for anything more than victory.
“I’ll let you live if you give her up,” Father offered Kaiser. “And if you tell me now, then
maybe I’ll make her death swift. If not, I’ll cut ribbons out of her flesh and flay her good and slow. I’ll make her scream for days and days. I’ll enjoy her pain alongside all my warriors. I’ll let them play with her all they like.”
A cry of assent went up from Father’s grunts, their twisted desires colouring the air as they shouted out the sickening things they wished to do with her.
Monsters.
Kaiser roared out in fury, his eyes blood red and promising death for Rake’s words. But something was keeping his Order in check and I noted the range of strange potions laid out on a table at the centre of the room. Order supressing powder was among them.
“Come on Ransom. It’s time you learned to have a little fun.
” Father grabbed his arm and yanked him closer to Kaiser again.
“We’ll work together you and I. And by dawn we’ll have his secrets spilled.
There’s much to enjoy in this game. If you don’t want him, pick another to play with.
” He gestured to the cells where more prisoners gazed out in terror.
“No,” Ransom said, his voice barely above a whisper, but I caught it.
“What was that?” Father growled as Ransom backed away, shaking his head.
I was close now, close enough to smell the blood on Kaiser.
To see the Avanis woman fall still at my father’s feet.
But amidst the carnage, only one Fae saw me.
Kaiser’s eyes burned into mine, his head lifting and a strange frown crossing his face as if he wasn’t sure if I was a figment of his imagination.
His muscles bulged like he wanted to break free, his jaw flexing and his eyes wild with the darkest of emotions.
Father’s fist slammed into Ransom’s cheek, sending him stumbling backwards. “What’s wrong with you?” he sneered at my brother. “This is your birthright. You wouldn’t be in this world if it wasn’t for me.”
“Neither would I,” I said loud enough to be heard and Father and Ransom turned to look at me.
“You shouldn’t be down here,” Father snapped, glaring at me. “Get back to your quarters.”
“I thought it mattered that you were my father,” I hissed, ignoring his dismissal.
“I thought I needed your approval. I have always wanted you to look at me like I’m something more than a runt.
And now you have, but I finally see what you are and I find I don’t want your approval after all.
I don’t want your wicked blood running in my veins.
I’ll spend the rest of my life rejecting the parts of me that resemble you.
Because if being a Rake equals this.” I gestured to the cruelty around me. “Then I’ll have no part in it.”