Chapter 26 Blooming Agony
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BLOOMING AGONY
Valen stepped further into my cell, the torchlight casting half his face in shadow as he assessed my naked form with a measured gaze.
Unlike previous nights, surprise had broken through his careful mask—a slight widening of his eyes, a momentary pause in his breathing. I had disrupted our ritual, stolen his first act of domination, and for one brief, satisfying moment, I held the upper hand.
But whatever power I stole from him always seemed fleeting, a wavering flame that never remained with me for long.
“This is an... interesting choice,” he said, circling me with deliberate slowness. Each footfall seemed calculated, the steady rhythm of a predator preparing to strike. “I must confess, I’ve grown rather fond of unwrapping you myself.”
He stopped behind me, close enough that I could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his body. Unlike the damp chill of the dungeon, Valen burned, as if molten rock ran beneath his skin instead of blood.
Maybe it did.
“Did you think it wise to deny me this pleasure?” he asked, his voice dropping to that intimate register he used when he wanted to unsettle me.
His hand appeared at my side, hovering just above my skin without touching.
I braced myself for pain, for the sharp sting of a cut or the deeper burn of his power flowing through me.
Instead, his fingers made contact with a gentleness so unexpected it nearly drew a gasp from my lips.
He traced the curve of my waist, the touch feather-light, almost reverent.
“Nothing to say?” Valen continued, his hand moving upward along my ribcage. “Not even now, when you’ve tried to change the rules of our little game?”
I kept my gaze fixed on the cell door, refusing to acknowledge his touch even as my skin prickled beneath his fingers. This was new territory—no blade, no blood, just the disquieting gentleness that felt more invasive than any cut.
He moved to stand before me, his tall frame blocking my view of the door. His fingers trailed across my collarbone, still unnervingly gentle, then down between my breasts, following the pale line of an old scar. My heart thundered beneath his touch, a terrified bird in a too-small cage.
“I’ve grown weary of your silence, Princess,” he said, his expression hardening.
“Seven nights of cuts and pain, and not so much as a whimper.” His fingers curled suddenly against my hip, grip firm but not bruising.
“And now this little act of defiance. Removing your clothes before I can tear them from you.”
His other hand rose to my face, knuckles grazing my cheek with impossible softness.
“Do you think it changes anything? The silence, the discarded clothing... they’re charming, really.
Like a toddler throwing pebbles at a mountain.
” His grip at my hip tightened further, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from gasping. “Cute, but ultimately futile.”
I kept my expression blank. He thought me so calculated. The truth was simpler than he imagined—I needed to hold on to the things that were mine, choices in a world where choice had been stripped from me along with everything else.
“If you refuse to cry out in pain,” Valen mused, circling around to my back, his hand never leaving my skin as he moved. “Perhaps I should try a different approach.”
His palm flattened against my abdomen warm and steady, then slid up my ribs. His grip tightened briefly, fingers pressing into flesh but stopping short of bruising. “What would you do, I wonder, if instead of pain, I offered you pleasure?”
My muscles tensed involuntarily at the suggestion, a reaction I couldn’t hide while suspended from the ceiling. Valen noticed—of course he did—and I felt a smile curve his lips, dark satisfaction radiating from him.
“Do you remember, Princess?” His thumb traced small circles against my protruding ribs, each movement precise and deliberate. “Our wedding night? Before the screaming began. Before you knew who I truly was.”
The memory surfaced unbidden—his hands on my skin, his mouth at my throat, the shameful heat that had built between us before the world collapsed into blood and death. I pushed it down, burying it beneath layers of hatred and disgust.
“I dream of it,” Valen continued, his voice dropping lower.
“How responsive you were. How perfectly you moved beneath me.” His lips brushed my shoulder, the contact so light it might have been imagined.
“I wonder if I could coax those sounds from you again, even now. Even despite the pain I’ve caused you. ”
My body betrayed me with a shudder that rippled from my shoulders to my knees. It wasn’t desire—at least, not entirely. It was confusion, revulsion, and beneath it all, the terrible knowledge that my body remembered the pleasure at his hands. The most potent pleasure I’d ever felt from a man.
His fingers moved to trace the curve of my jaw, then down the column of my throat. “Won’t you speak to me? I’ve missed that sharp tongue of yours.”
I remained silent, though it cost me more than it had on previous nights.
The changed nature of his torture—this strange, unsettling gentleness—was more difficult to withstand than clean, honest pain.
Pain had boundaries, familiar territories.
This... this confusion of signals left me unmoored, uncertain where to plant my feet.
“So stubborn,” he murmured, something like admiration coloring his tone.
His hand pulled me backward, bringing our bodies closer without quite touching.
The heat of him seeped into my skin like an accusation.
“I could force the words from you, you know. There are methods I haven’t yet employed.
Ways to make silence more painful than any scream. ”
His lips brushed my ear, his breath warm against my neck. “But I think I prefer to hear you speak of your own accord. To know that I’ve earned those words, whatever they might be.”
Valen moved to stand before me once more, his hand slipping to the small of my back. His eyes traveled over my face with an intensity that felt almost physical.
The chains above me clinked softly as my weight shifted, instinctively leaning toward his warmth despite my mind’s desperate commands to remain still. It was a small movement, nearly imperceptible, yet again he noticed. His smile widened, satisfaction evident in the curve of his lips.
His hand at my back pressed more firmly, drawing me another inch closer. The fabric of his tunic brushed against my breasts, the contact sending an unwelcome jolt through my nerve endings. My breath hitched, the sound loud in the silence of the cell.
“I need to hear your voice,” he said, and for a heartbeat, I thought I detected something almost like pleading beneath the command. His fingers traced the curve of my cheek, then brushed across my lower lip. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you wish me dead. Tell me anything.”
The words slipped out before I could recapture them, breaking seven nights of carefully cultivated silence.
“I don’t hate you.”
Valen froze, his hand stilling against my face as if I’d struck him. Surprise flickered across his features, quickly replaced by wariness. He hadn’t expected these words. Perhaps hadn’t expected any words at all after so many nights of silence.
“No?” he asked, voice carefully controlled.
Now that I had begun, the words flowed more easily, although rough with disuse. “Hate would require me to feel something for you.” I met his gaze directly, a small smile twisting my lips.
His eyes darkened, pupils expanding until only a thin ring of iris remained visible.
“You want me to hate you because hate would mean I care,” I said, the dam broken.
“It would mean I’ve invested something of myself in you—my emotions, my energy.
That I think of you beyond these sessions.
” I offered a cold smile. “But I don’t. The moment you leave my cell, you cease to exist for me. ”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, a crack in his composure. His hand at my back spasmed, grip turning punishing as if he could anchor himself in my skin.
I tilted my head slightly, the movement pulling at the chains as I dropped my voice to a whisper. “You are nothing to me.”
Something flared in his eyes then—not the cold anger I had expected, but something hotter, more volatile. His hand moved to grip my face, the touch no longer gentle. “Let’s test that theory, shall we?”
Valen’s hand slid from my face to my throat, his thumb tracing the hollow between my collarbones with deliberate precision. Each movement was an exercise in control—measured, unhurried, as if he had all of eternity to map the contours of my body.
“Indifference,” he mused, his fingers trailing down to the curve where my shoulder met my neck. “Such a delicate lie to maintain. Tell me, Princess, if you truly feel nothing, then it shouldn’t matter what I do to you, should it?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to find that place of emptiness I had discovered during previous tortures, that void where pain couldn’t reach. But it eluded me now, as if Valen’s new approach had somehow blocked my escape routes, forcing me to remain present in my body.
He circled behind me again, his footsteps silent on the stone floor.
I felt his presence like a shadow, darker and more substantial than the ones cast by torchlight.
His hands found my shoulders, thumbs pressing into the tense muscles at the base of my neck.
The touch was firm but gentle, almost like a caress to ease the soreness.