Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Acting
MAGNOLIA
“Go to your room, Magnolia,” Dahes’ voice whispered in my head from across the castle.
No. No. No.
He had Hael. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run through every single room in the Suns-cursed castle until I found him. But I couldn’t. I thought I would be okay with it, thought I could accept this if it meant Masin was safe, but I couldn’t.
My feet were already moving, walking me back to my room. The stupid deal I made with Dahes forcing me to obey him.
As soon as I stepped inside my too-crammed room, the door shut, locking me in from the outside.
My only indication of how much time had passed was the blood that pooled down my palms from pounding against the stone.
My fists were raw by the time the door finally groaned open. Two sentries stood on the other side. I tripped as the door fully swung, nearly falling onto the metal chest plate of one of them. The two moved in unison, grabbing my arms and started dragging me through the castle.
They didn’t stop until I was shoved into the throne room.
“You will not speak,” Dahes’ voice ordered inside my head so only I could hear, and anything I wanted to say evaporated on my lips.
My breath made a soundless hitch as I saw Hael chained in the middle of the room.
He was beaten, so much worse than he was after his fight on Perinth. Whatever time I’d spent trapped inside my room, Dahes spent torturing him…
Bile rose in my throat. This was all my fault.
Shackles were around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck, all connecting to a point bolted into the floor. A sentry was holding onto a loose link—like being chained into the stone wasn’t enough—and another two were flanking his back.
They shoved him forward and he fell onto the floor. His hands had just enough slack through the chains to brace the fall before his head hit the stone.
I wanted to warn him not to agree to anything Dahes might try to get him to do, I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, to beg him to forgive me. But I couldn’t. It was too late for any of that. All I could do was watch…
“Stand.” Dahes’ voice was menacing.
Hael managed to get to his knees before he saw me. He stilled. His gaze scanning every inch of my body, lingering over the dried blood across my neck to the fresh smear running down my knuckles.
Dahes was lounged on the throne, his long fingers drumming against the spiked armrest like he had all the time in the world.
The sentries were still holding me. Across the room, another one was holding the prisoner from earlier.
Hael started cursing, trying to fight his way toward… me. Four more sentries flocked toward him, attempting to hold him down.
“Unless you want Magnolia to go through the exact same thing that was done to you, you will stop resisting my sentries.” Dahes’ voice was glacial calm, like a silent rage holding back a storm, waiting to claw its way out.
I knew firsthand this was worse than whenever he lost his temper.
Because now his wrath was calculated. He’d take his time, draw it out to make sure he’d inflict the most amount of pain.
Hael stilled. His fists clenched beneath the chains.
Dahes flicked his finger and the sentry holding the girl moved, dragging her toward him.
Dahes’ hood was drawn, but I could still see everything in his expression through his mask.
I’d never seen him so livid before. There was so much raw fury, it consumed him.
Hael killed his dragon, and worse, he now knew something happened between us.
All because I let myself slip. Because I was so stupid…
I swallowed, my own heart rate skyrocketing with trepidation, having no idea what he was going to do next.
“Walk into my throne.”
“What?” the girl gasped, then realization dawned as she took in his throne. “No. No. No. Please!” A second sentry grabbed her other arm as she tried to pull back, her feet dragging behind her as she fought. I flinched, her wails piercing my ears.
A lot of people in Moriann knew about Dahes’ throne, knew exactly how the once-white thorns got their blood-red coloring before it crusted to black, and knew exactly what he meant when he made the request.
“Please, don’t,” she sobbed, and I think I might have been crying with her. “I did exactly what you asked. I projected the fight…”
“And now I no longer have use for you,” Dahes droned, cutting her off. His voice was bored as his eyes locked onto me, on my tears, but there was a tightness to his gaze.
Shit. I was supposed to be accustomed to death. I wasn’t supposed to cry, wasn’t supposed to show my empathy.
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.
Stop crying. Stop feeling.
Her life was miserable as his prisoner, maybe she’ll find some peace in death…
But I knew it was a farce. Dahes could haunt her in death worse than in life.
Her bare feet hit the steps. The sentries didn’t care that her ankle caught, that her bone twisted at an angle and snapped as they kept dragging her up, up, up.
“Please…” Her sobs wrecked me, like a dagger was carving my own heart out, and twisting deeper and deeper with each new shrill.
She was going to die right now because of me. Because I let my emotions slip during the fight, and now Dahes knew.
He always acted out whenever he was pissed, always killed more, tortured more…
She hit the top step as her sobbing grew, the crescendo blending in with my pounding heart. Blood was already smearing the dais from her ankle.
“I’ll do anything, please…” she begged, but Dahes wasn’t even looking at her.
Her stomach hit the first spike as she wailed, and I had to force myself to not look away. The smell of urine filled the air, and Dahes clicked his tongue.
Don’t cry, Magnolia. Just watch. Calm your mind. You aren’t here. This isn’t happening.
More shrieks filled the room, her pitch rising to un-Sunly octaves as I tried to hide my own wince at her agony.
Another spike pierced her arm. Then another went through her leg. More screams…
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.
Blood poured down the spikes, spilling over the dais, and mixing with her urine.
Six seconds. Seven. Eight—
Why wasn’t she dying?
Nine. Ten. Eleven…
Her wails became gurgled, her breathing ragged. Her face paled, slowly draining of color.
Her head lolled, impaling on another spike as her body went limp.
Silence filled the throne room for a heartbeat. One single heartbeat, and then…
“Come to me, little ghost.”
I started walking, not on my own accord—Dahes was using our deal against me.
“Nollie, stop!” Hael’s voice rang out across the throne room, and Dahes’ back straightened at the nickname.
My breathing rose, my vision blurring, as I tried to blink back more tears.
I kept walking, trying to ignore Hael’s screams for me as I climbed the steps.
I didn’t stop until I stood before him. The girl’s blood seeped across the floor and onto my bare feet as I moved.
I hated that it was still warm. It was covering his throne, even more spilling over his dais, but he didn’t move.
He remained lounged like there wasn’t a dead body still impaled on it.
His legs spread wide, his fingers softly drumming the armrest, while he managed to stare down at me even though he was the one sitting.
The clash of metal rang out behind me, and I knew Hael was fighting his way through the sentries again.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” he screamed, his voice rattling off the empty stone.
Dahes finally rose, his hands clamping over my shoulders as he spun me around, forcing me to look down at Hael.
He punched the nearest sentry, breaking free of their hold, before three more pinned him down.
Dahes hands moved to my neck. His fingers felt like ice as they ran up my skin, such a contrast to the warm blood I was still stepping in. He pressed his palm against the cut he made on Perinth, reopening the wound as pain seared through me.
Breathe. One. Two—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe. Dahes was choking me, cutting off my air.
Hael’s eyes were desperate, pleading with me to do something. “You have control, Nollie,” he spat, still trying to fight through the sentries, but more kept flooding into the throne room. “Use your Token!”
My Token.
I focused on my heart rate, on trying to slow the beating against my chest, but the searing pain at my throat was jarring, clawing at my attention.
It felt like acid was pouring down my lungs as I choked on nothing.
Air refused to come, and panic pressed into me faster and faster with each passing second.
I couldn’t do it—
Hael’s words at the cabin came crashing back to me. “You’re in control of yourself, Magnolia. No one can take that away from you.”
I was powerless, my choices had been ripped from me seven years ago, my free will stripped bare until I was nothing more than a puppet on strings. Dahes controlled me, but not my Token. It was the only thing he couldn’t take through our deal. The only thing that was still my own.
I could still turn transparent.
I focused on it, on bringing myself back to that moment in the bathroom with Hael, and trying to only think of that feeling…
Of wanting my Token, of welcoming it…
Dahes growled the moment my transparency emerged, but it wasn’t staying long enough to be effective. It kept flickering on and off, gray, then solid, gray, then solid.
Focus, Magnolia.
I can do this. It’s my body, my Token…
“Turn it off,” Dahes sneered into my mind, cutting off my thoughts. “Same rules apply from Perinth. If you don’t want me to rip his fucking heart out and serve it to you for dinner, then TURN. IT. OFF.”
I immediately stopped trying to call it forward.
“Good girl,” he whispered, but his voice was still too cold, too dead, too removed. His breath hit the curve of my ear, his chest flush with my back. His hand was still around my neck, pressing too tight, holding me in place.