Chapter 46 Devora
Devora
Iwoke with a gasp.
My eyes fluttered open, pain pounding through my head, my shoulders, my chest. I thrashed my torso back and forth, then sucked in a breath as spasms tore through me.
My arms had been wretched backward and strung up by a pair of cuffs, my entire body now hanging limp from the chains.
But that discomfort was secondary to whatever Scarven had injected me with.
It was like someone had shoved a dagger into the side of my neck.
The spot radiated heat, pulsing down into my chest like a white-hot brand.
Dragging my legs along the ground, I tried to get to my feet and take some of the strain off my shoulders. I could barely support myself. My muscles felt as if they’d been beaten to a pulp and left as noodles.
It was safe to say the mission was compromised.
Terror gripped me, sluggish at first as my mind tried to catch up with what had happened. Scarven knew I was spying on him, and that I was working with Nox. Did he know about the Keep?
I let out a ragged sob as visions of what he might do to all of them raced across my mind.
It’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s my fault.
My chance to do something good, to prove myself, and I’d messed everything up.
I took in my surroundings. I was in a stone cell with iron bars allowing me a view of the dark hallway outside. If I listened closely, I could hear echoes of groans and footsteps from further down.
A shadow appeared outside the iron bars, one I’d begun to recognize easily.
“Look who’s finally awake.” Scarven’s voice slithered over me as he turned a key in the padlock and slipped inside the cell. One of his masked lackeys followed close on his heels.
I steeled my nerves and stood straighter, shoving away the fear. He wanted me to be scared. He wanted to break me down piece by piece until I was trembling at his feet, like every other person he forced beneath him.
Well, I wasn’t like every other person. And I’d die before I kneeled for this man.
“Look who’s finally figured it out,” I said between grunts as I struggled against the chains.
Scarven drew nearer with a chuckle. “Ah, the little lamb has sharp teeth. That was what I liked most about Miss Nyte. Although, I suppose it’s Devora now, isn’t it?”
I swallowed but stayed silent, holding his gaze.
He narrowed his eyes and lashed out a hand. His fingers wrapped around my throat, his thumb digging into the injection site wound. Before I could control it, a scream slipped from my lips.
“You thought you were so clever,” he whispered, hot breath filling my ear.
“You and Nox both. Sneaking around my house like a rat, thinking I wouldn’t smell your deception.
But you made a mistake, didn’t you, love?
” He ran his nose along my chin until he reached the other side of my face.
“That night at my stables when you left your cloak. The destruction had my brother written all over it. He never could control that temper of his.”
He had known all this time. It had just been another game to him. Showing me Vera while knowing I was working with Nox, letting me see what he was doing to all those innocent people, flaunting his torture in my face.
I let out a whimper when he pressed into the sore spot on my neck again. “He will soon learn that he cannot take what is mine.”
“I was never yours,” I croaked out between ragged breaths.
He hummed, then raised two fingers in the air and summoned the silent guard into the room.
“Still snapping, even in chains. I wonder how long that spirit of yours will last after I’m through with you.
” Releasing his grip on my throat, he raised an eyebrow.
“Or perhaps you could simply tell me what my brother is up to. You don’t need to suffer. Not if you give me what I want.”
I took in lungfuls of air, struggling to stay upright as I rasped, “What makes you think I would give you anything?”
Scarven shared a look with the masked guard, and before I could blink, the guard slapped me so hard across the cheek that my head banged into the wall behind me. A ringing formed low in my ears, my cheek pounding as blood filled my mouth.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Shadow Wielder,” Scarven said.
I spat blood at his feet.
He sighed. “The hard way, then.” He motioned to the guard again, who quickly left the cell.
My heart raced. I could only guess what was coming. “Why didn’t you just kill me?” I asked. “If you knew I was lying, why let me keep going? Why let me stay in your home?”
“Keep your enemies close, they say,” he mused.
“And why should I deny myself the pleasures of your company, Devora?” He stepped closer and ran a hand along my neck, leisurely stroking down my chest and hips until he grabbed my backside.
When he yanked me against him, I cried out as the chains bit into my arms.
“You may not be a threat, but you’re still rather extraordinary,” he murmured. “I can see why that brother of mine is so drawn to you.”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” I asked. “Why do you hate him so much?”
“Because he had everything,” he said with a growl, that carefully curated voice of control beginning to slip.
“He had the life that should have been mine. I was Caius Duma’s firstborn, yet my mother and I were thrown out with the trash.
Do you know what it’s like to be shunned by your entire society, simply for what you were born into?
To watch your own mother suffer the consequences of her and my father’s actions by herself, while he faced no scrutiny, no ire?
” He cocked his head as if he were inspecting me.
Then his lips curved into a smirk. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Because your mother died before you could wipe your own spit from your chin.”
My chest caved in, the backs of my eyes burning with the effort to hold back a sob.
“I did my research. Born to Malijah and Ceres Sephorne, a pair of gifted but ultimately unremarkable Shadow Wielders. It’s a pity, isn’t it?” He ran his hand up the bare skin of my back. “Growing up without an identity. Without a past or a purpose.”
His guard entered just then, and Scarven finally released me.
He looked over at the shiny, sharp objects on the tray in the guard’s hand.
There were several syringes full of multi-colored serums—black, red, clear, green.
Their needles shone in the candlelight, primed and ready to break into my flesh.
“I had nothing, Devora. But look at me now.” Scarven picked up a blade coated in an oily dark green substance. “I rose from the silence of the shadows to take my rightful place in this empire. I have full control over the entirety of Veridian magic.”
He brought the blade to my ribs and pressed the tip into my skin, slowly dragging it down. That entire side of my body was lit on fire. I screamed in agony as my shadows themselves were split in two, writhing and shrieking inside my mind.
And then…they went silent. Dead. Gone.
My heart stopped in its tracks. Hopelessness and panic collided in my chest, mixing with the excruciating pain. Was it gone? Had he taken my shadows away? I only just found them, but the thought of losing them forever gutted me completely.
“Do you hear that, Devora?” Scarven asked softly, his voice carrying over the sound of my screams. “Your magic is mine. You are mine. I am inevitable.”
He removed the dagger from my side, leaving my shirt in tatters. When the pain passed enough for me to think straight, I rolled my neck on my shoulders to meet his gaze.
“You—are—a coward,” I said on a gasping breath.
He drove the blade into my thigh.
I let out another guttural shriek. The pain reverberated in my very core, ripping and shredding through more than just skin and muscle.
A small part of me thought that perhaps I deserved this. This was the kind of punishment traitors endured. Nox’s gilded tower was a mercy.
Nox.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture him. I could almost imagine him kneeling before me in front of the fireplace. His warm hands cupping my cheek, so gentle despite the strength of the dragon living inside him.
I never told him how brave he was. How much I admired him for everything he was doing for his people, how I’d been so wrong about him in the beginning. How he was the kind of man I was proud to stand beside.
I should have told him. Maybe then this wouldn’t hurt so much.
As if Scarven knew who I was thinking about, he pulled the dagger from my thigh and leaned in closer. “Do you think your precious Nox is going to come save you now, love?”
I hope he doesn’t, I thought to myself. Keeping the rest of them safe was more important than me.
I must have said it out loud, for Scarven smirked at me. “Well, I hope he does.” He put the dagger back on the tray and grabbed a syringe with red liquid inside, then placed the tip to the same wound on my neck. I gasped as he drove the needle in.
“Because I have a surprise for him.”