Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
PIERCE
Drake looked over his shoulder, and his eyes lit with satisfaction. This was his one and only chance to damage something that was ours. The asswipe grinned and loosed a vicious lash against our shield’s back.
The shield stiffened, but she didn’t beg or scream. I respected that.
I’d been whipped. I knew the agony of a fall meeting with already split skin. I’d had to grit my teeth to remain silent.
The shield looked strong, like she could take another fifty lashes.
How?
I circled until I could see her face.
Tears wet her cheeks, and she stared at the wall in front of her without blinking. No. Not the wall. She was focused on a dagger. She stared at the blade as if she could imagine the hilt in her small hand. As if she wanted to stab each one of us and leave us bleeding.
She’d fought me with surprising skill. She’d run laps with a broken rib. She was enduring hell right now.
I turned away.
She was just a shield. Nothing more. Even as I had the thought, I recognized the lie.
She was more than that—more than any shield I’d ever encountered.
The way she’d looked at me during training, like she could see through my walls.
The way she held her chin even now. We were fucking up.
We should be protecting her, not watching while a dickless twat like Drake ruined her back.
Her grandmother’s warning played through my mind. We would rue every cruelty. This definitely counted as cruelty.
Acid churned in my gut as I moved behind her and searched her back for uninjured flesh.
I didn’t find any. Her skin was a bloody mess. The ends of her blonde hair looked as if they’d been dyed crimson. Her legs shook with the effort to remain standing.
This needed to stop. I longed to rip the whip from Drake’s hand.
But if I intervened, that bastard Carron would wring every ounce of agony from her body before ending her life.
I’d seen him break girls, acting as if it hurt him to hurt them, as if their punishment was an unpleasant duty.
Even as his eyes gleamed with sick pleasure.
Drake cracked the whip, and my stomach flipped as fresh blood speckled the gymnasium’s floor.
She remained silent.
“Breathe. Be strong.” Teal’s voice was gentle, almost encouraging.
The shield turned her head until she could see Teal, then she lifted her proud chin and sneered at him.
That tiny bit of defiance hurt me as much as the whip hurt her. Defiance meant death. And this woman didn’t deserve to die.
My hand found my dagger’s hilt, fingers tracing the familiar grooves. The repetitive motion that had calmed me through countless nightmares did nothing now.
Drake’s next lash fell across already ruined skin.
She flinched in pain.
I could no longer see her face, but I’d bet anything that fresh tears wet her cheeks.
“You’ll survive this,” Teal promised.
Would she? Four days in the pit with a destroyed back and no medical care? I had my doubts.
This was wrong. The next lash fell lower, near her perfect ass, and she gasped. Perfect? When had I started thinking of any part of her as perfect? I forced the thought away, but it lingered like smoke from one of Flynn’s fires.
Before she could even catch her breath, Drake cracked the whip again.
Blood sprayed, hundreds of droplets joining the large puddle already at her feet.
“I’ll give the last lash.” Carron had slipped into the gymnasium without me noticing.
He held out his hand for the whip. When Drake gave it to him, Carron ran his gloved hand over the fall’s length, and his fingers came away crimson with the shield’s blood.
Then he repeated the motion, as if he wanted to completely soak the glove’s leather.
“It looks to me like you’ve been pulling your punches. ”
“Sir?” Drake’s brows rose.
Carron cracked the whip. Hard. The sound echoed against the gymnasium’s weapon-lined walls.
The shield gasped.
A fresh cut opened on her mid-back, and I saw a flash of bone before blood welled from the injury.
The general returned the whip to Drake and tsked. “I assumed I’d get your best effort. This”—he shook his head as if Drake had offered Haven a massage instead of flaying the flesh from her body—“this is hardly a punishment. I think a week in the pit.”
It was a death warrant.
She might have lasted four days without water. A week was an impossibility.
Every lash that striped her skin had been for nothing.
Triumph flared in Carron’s eyes. This had always been his plan. He never meant for her to live. And we’d played into his hands.
“Sir.” Grayson stood straight and tall, even as anger radiated from his skin. Maybe he wasn’t as unaffected by her as he pretended. “That’s not what we discussed.”
“Not my fault. Drake went easy on her.” Carron dropped the bloody whip to the floor, took out a handkerchief, and carefully wiped a speck of blood from his lapel.
Drake had not gone easy on her.
A wet laugh drew my attention. The shield was laughing.
“Something funny, Shield?” General Carron’s tone was cold enough to ice even my veins.
“You.”
Did she want to die right this minute? Maybe she did. It would be a faster, more merciful death than yielding to dehydration in the pit.
“And why am I funny?”
“You’re afraid. Of me. I can taste your fear in the air. But don’t worry. You have these assholes fooled.”
The general’s eyes narrowed to furious slits, and he raised his right hand and hit her with his magic. Magic that could bring the strongest guard to his knees.
She didn’t react. The cuffs muted her power. Her shield should be down. Somehow, it wasn’t. Just how strong was she?
Carron’s face darkened, and he bent and snatched the whip from the floor.
With a vicious crack, the whip slit her skin from the shoulder I’d injured this morning to her ass.
I cringed on her behalf.
She didn’t scream. She did something much worse. Her head fell forward, and she slumped. Only the cuffs kept her upright.
Haven was either passed out or dead. When had I started thinking of her by name? When had “the shield” become “Haven” in my mind? The distinction felt dangerous—and irreversible.