Sixty-One
Antonio
I had to wait three fucking weeks for Eduardo to feel well enough to do a transplant. I wanted to push him to do it earlier, but the operation is too risky at the best of times. If he’s struggling with his own illness, he could accidentally kill her.
But today is the day I give my mate back her eyes. It won’t change what I did to her, but it’s a start to fixing my sins.
And it’ll bring her closer to me while pushing Varius out of her orbit. Although she hasn’t wanted to see him at all, she keeps asking about my plans to bring back Rafiki. Their child.
And she’s pregnant with another one of his fucking kids. I wanted it aborted, but Eduardo warned me that if he did, her next pregnancy would be extremely risky. Magic got into her womb somehow, making it practically radioactive. He tells me he can’t heal her. He doesn’t know if it’s from the V –there haven’t been enough studies– but Siome had a hard time getting pregnant too after she became an addict. Ironic if it’s the cause, though, considering they have a line for increasing pregnancy. Either way, I’m fucking pissed. I can smell it in her womb every time I hold her.
Growing like a demon.
Claiming her like her fucker of a husband has, refusing to let go.
He’s still holding out despite his daily torture. I asked her if she could feel what I did to him, and she said no, so all the gloves came off. I haven’t told her she’s pregnant though; I know she isn’t ready to hear that news, and so I’ve been taking it all out on him. Skinning him. Hammering more nails into his skin. Making him eat bits of himself – muscle cut from his thigh, his left testicle, his right eye.
But physical pain isn’t breaking him. He’s still laughing, knowing that the more I do, the more I worry that Micha will go back to him.
She’s in my bed every night, but we haven’t made love yet. Haven’t even kissed. She still seems too fragile despite getting stronger and more confident every day. She asked me this morning if she could help me kill Sau when the time came, and that’s made me hopeful that she is looking to our future.
But every time I mention Varius, a bit too much rage flits across her face. He still has too much hold on her. Too much control over a woman who should be all mine. And I don’t want there to be any trace of that inside her when we make love for the first time. I want her solely focused on me, the man she loves. The one who loves her, who hasn’t stopped loving her for nearly two hundreds years.
So tonight I’ll be setting up a video camera in Rudy’s room and letting Varius watch what I do to him. He hasn’t once asked about his brother, so perhaps he will not care, but I want to torture Rudy anyway. Cut off another piece of him –his tongue this time rather than his ear– and send it to his mother.
Just like Aleric used to do all those years ago. Except I don’t want to kill him and ship him all at once. I want to drag it out and make it hurt.
He is a Shadow, and all Shadows deserve to be wiped out after Sau killed off all of Siome’s line. It matters not that she is reincarnated; she lost her entire family because of that head bitch. And I lost all of mine.
But for now, I just need to grab Jenny Ann – one of the three breeding women still on the boat. Her eyes are red. The other two women’s aren’t. So when she opens her door, I punch her in the face. Move in to choke her out quickly, then carry her to Eduardo’s lab over my shoulder.
As much as I don’t want Micha passed out on his table, there’s nowhere else to do the operation. So I lead her to it when the time comes, after Eduardo digs out Jenny’s eyes without an anesthetic spell because he doesn’t have much magic to spare.
“Will you be here when it’s over?” she asks.
“I’ll be there the whole time,”
I reply. And she climbs up on the table.
It takes him four hours to undo the spell he used to heal her after I scooped out her eyes. Anytime one is broken, it triggers an explosion of energy, so he has to concentrate hard in order to unravel it and control it, to stop it from going inside of her and frying her brain.
Then it takes another three for him to connect all of the nerves to her new sets of eyes. Each passing minute feels so godsdamn slow.
And then finally, he is done. He steps back with a wipe of his brow. He wakes her up, and I step forward as she opens her eyes so I’m the first thing she sees.
She sucks in a breath as I stare into her new red orbs. He modified them a bit, changed them so they don’t quite look like Jenny Ann’s. They don’t look like Siome’s either, and I can’t stop the flicker of pain in my chest at the knowledge that I will never see those specific beauties again.
Pushing that thought aside, I smile at her. “How does everything look?” I ask.
She blinks, then keeps her eyes shut. “It’s too bright.”
“Hold on.”
I pick her up and carry her out of here. Back to my rooms. Our rooms. I close the curtains to block out the majority of the sunlight. “Open them now,” I say.
She cracks them open in the gloom of the room, but our kind can easily see in the half-light. She sucks in a breath, then starts to cry. With a jolt of worry, I hurry to her and gather her in my arms.
“What’s wrong?”
I ask, terrified Eduardo messed them up somehow.
“I can see again. I never thought I would see again after the fucker chose to take my eyes,”
she babbles against my chest. Her fingers dig tight into my shirt. “Thank you.” She starts to cry with joy. “Oh my gods, thank you.”
And that’s when I get the idea – how best to break Varius and make her solely mine.