Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Malakai
Calloused hands shoved me through the stone archway, digging into my bare skin and slamming my body to the floor.
I groaned internally as my shoulder caught my weight.
Bone crunched painfully against cool rock, but I stayed silent.
They must have weakened me somehow to be capable of forcing me to the ground so easily.
The fucking whiskey…
They had graciously pushed a bottle of something strong through the door of my cell late last night.
One dizzying sip was all I took, but it was enough if laced with the right drug.
I was usually more cautious than that, learning early on in captivity to be wary of beverages handed to me.
I cursed myself for my sloppy behavior, but last night was the eve of—
No, I couldn’t think of that now. I needed whatever strength they hadn’t robbed in order to maintain a sliver of my Spirit-damned dignity.
A metal gate slammed shut, the frame rattling. Heavy boots stalked across the stone floor, circling me and moving to the front of the room. I sensed that there were two sets of them.
I relied only on my hearing, scent, and touch, the thick black blindfold stealing my sight.
Still, I knew where we were. I didn’t need to see the sheen glistening on the walls to know that it was there from our last session.
Damp with the mixture of sweat and blood that clung to the air, floor, and walls. Stuck to my skin.
My sweat. My blood. But not my tears. No, I would not allow them that satisfaction.
I didn’t need to see the heavy chains hanging from the center of the ceiling—or the matched sets on the walls—to know they were there, providing a variety of ways to bend, restrain, and destroy a captive. Whatever cruel means entered the guards’ minds.
I was theirs to torment, for their entertainment, because they knew I wouldn’t fight back. I couldn’t. Not if the promises were to be upheld.
An iron scent penetrated the air, but that was usual. I had grown accustomed to the scent of my own blood over these two years of torture. They liked to extract it in a number of brutal, creative ways.
Afterward, they always left the mess on my torn skin as a reminder of their sport.
The chains rattled—the haunting clatter that tore me from sleep each night, gasping for breath. I showed none of that fear as I was dragged to my feet. They may own me, but I would not bare my soul.
One heavy cuff closed around each wrist and ankle, and the guard pulled the ends of the chains tight.
My arms stretched outward, pointing toward the walls, and my blindfold fell to the floor.
This was their favorite position in which to restrain me.
The irony of my body resembling the tattoo inked on my chest was a cruel joke to them.
A reminder of the path that led me here, as if I would otherwise forget. Some days I wished I could.
I locked eyes with the man standing on the dais before me as the crack of a whip whistled through the air.
The chamber filled with the snap of leather on skin, but I barely registered the pain.
In the two years since my imprisonment, my body had grown numb to the feeling.
The torture—though it had been hard to admit at first that that was what was happening to me.
It became easier to accept over time, but there were some things I still chose to ignore.
I heard rather than felt the impact of the whip, a tearing sound that radiated through my body as my flesh ripped. It wasn’t hard to break it—the wounds never had time to fully heal.
Everything around me was just noise. Nothing could hurt me anymore. Nothing physical at least, I thought as a hot trickle of blood trailed down my back.
“Again,” the guard in charge instructed from his platform, his voice even and demanding, as if nothing he saw done to me fazed him or pleased him enough.
I raised my chin to meet his icy stare. With my arms spread wide as they were, chains binding me to the walls, I should have felt vulnerable. That was his hope. But I held his eyes as I heard the whip make contact again. The blood thickened, trailing under my shorts and down the back of my legs.
They never tortured me enough to kill me, though sometimes I wished they had. But it was impossible to kill me here; my body healed too quickly. They knew that I would wake each day with the fresh pink scars of mending injuries, the blood crusted onto my skin.
They knew that. The ones responsible for this.
“One more,” the guard directed his fellow holding the whip.
“Only three today?” I spat the words, my voice croaking and hoarse from disuse.
Those first weeks, I had screamed through the torture.
Each blow, hot iron, and carving drew a cry from deep within me that shook the room.
Since those weeks, my voice had barely been used beyond my meager taunts during these sessions.
I shook my matted black hair from my eyes as I threw my head back, authority I didn’t truly have demanding that his gaze meet mine. I shouldn’t goad the guard. He held the ears of my captors closely and acted with their orders. But if this was my fate, I would not be entirely submissive.
A cruel smile curled the guard’s lips. The whip whistled through the air a third time. I didn’t flinch—didn’t blink—when it landed.
“Would you like more, Warrior Prince?” They liked to mock me with reminders of who I was destined to be, but the harsh words didn’t sting. The one they called Warrior Prince—a false title, for Mystiques had no princes—no longer existed. Not as he had before.
I held his black gaze to mine, unrelenting. “Do your worst,” I growled.
Today of all days, my body was filled with restless energy. I couldn’t fight the baiting words that came to my lips, expelling a sliver of that wild heat growing inside of me. Anger at what I missed.
The man on the dais nodded at the inflictor, whose hands reached for the cold steel sword at his belt. It slid out of its sheath, shining against his leather armor. He flexed his hands around the hilt, muscles tensing, savoring the moment that my eyes locked on the blade before he struck.
Maybe this will be the final blow, I thought, hopeful at first. But as he raised the sword a pair of magenta eyes swam into my vision, and fear sank low in my stomach.
The fear of never seeing those eyes before mine again.
The fear of never running my hands along her warm, tanned skin or through her golden hair.
The memory of jasmine and honeysuckle made my knees go weak with terror, and I stumbled. The cuff chaining me to the wall—the only thing keeping me upright besides my own fortitude—dug into my skin, a new line of blood trailing down my arm.
My eyes followed the sword, but I thought of her, swearing to the Angels that if this was the end, she would be my last memory.
The blade rose high before me. It was a streak of lightning against the night, slicing through the air with devilish intent and precision.
In one powerful swipe, he cut through the skin and muscle stretched across the right side of my rib cage.
It cut deep enough to leave a scar, but not so deep as to cause permanent damage.
The guards were calculating where they struck, not wanting to anger their boss.
I panted as the metal slid against my skin.
I crumpled to the blade, but righted myself quickly, ignoring the growing puddle of blood obscuring the stone floor. It was sticky and warm beneath my bare feet, and I felt the loss radiating through my skull.
My captor smirked as if he had tasted something sweet.
“You’re lucky he only ordered three lashes today.
” His voice rang through the chamber as he jumped off his platform and landed before me.
In my contorted state, he seemed bigger than me, but if I stood to my full height, I would have defeated him. A chance I’d never have.
He continued, voice cold and face just inches from mine, “If I had my way, you’d have been dead long ago, Warrior Prince.
” His eyes trailed over my body. When they flashed back to my face, an unsettling spark flared in their dark depths.
He smiled hungrily. “Hold him down. I have one more enhancement I’d like to make. ”
There was a sharp click, and a blade shot into his hand. The inflictor sheathed his sword and rammed my shoulders against the wall, holding me still. The first guard prowled forward. “Your tattoo,” he purred. “It’s quite…sentimental, is it not?”
I squirmed beneath the inflictor’s hands, the wound in my side throbbing and the slices in my back stinging against the wall. “Don’t fucking touch it!” I growled, but that erratic energy was the reaction he wanted.
“Oh, no…I would never,” he purred. “I’m simply making an improvement.”
My eyes widened in horror as he raised the delicate blade. The tip pressed into the flesh on the right side of my chest below my collarbone, opposite the Bind.
“Get off of me,” I panted, a soft bubble of red beading with the first prick. My vision was clouding from blood loss.
“Hold still, or we’ll have to start over.” His words were a cruel promise, and I knew from experience that he meant it. If I moved, he would allow the wound to heal and then begin again.
I wrenched my head upward and bit down on the scream that rose up my throat when the tip of the blade tore slowly through my flesh.
He carved my chest for agonizing minutes, the hungry look never leaving his damned face.
I did not cry out as the sharp point sliced along my muscle and skin, leaving his personal mark on me.
When he stepped back, he smiled. “Now you have been marked with our constellation, as well. Since you seem to have an affinity for stars.”
I wanted to vomit at his feet. Their precious constellation, forever etched into my skin. The wounds would heal, but the scars would be a permanent reminder of who inflicted them. Marked me as a representation of their Angel-damned selves.
“Release his chains. Return him to his cell,” he barked, taking a step back. His pale skin glowed in the moonlight from the one small window cut high into the stone. “We’ll continue next time, Warrior Prince. Sleep well.”
I glared at his retreating figure, swearing to the revenge I may never get to enact, until the gate closed behind him.
My chains slackened, and I fell to my knees in exhaustion. Defeat swarmed me as the inflictor returned my blindfold. My goading was met in this session, and though I brought it upon myself, I felt drained as we left the iron-scented room behind.
My cell was nearly identical to the bloodstained chamber, but instead of chains and a dais, there was a cot in one corner and a bucket in the other.
The only entrance was a heavy iron door with a small window cut into it through which one of my four guards passed food daily.
It remained locked at all hours; they didn’t realize that I wouldn’t try to escape.
I couldn’t. I heard them whispering about it sometimes.
Speculating how I, the destined future of the Mystique Warriors, had come to this fate.
How they had been so lucky to easily capture me and why I had not once attempted escape.
It seemed none of them were privy to the truth.
An ache started to creep along my muscles, beginning in my shoulders and spreading slowly down my back and arms. That fucking spot on my chest that I couldn’t bear to look at was the most prominent.
Light licks of fire crept into the flesh, muscle, and bone.
The sting was subtle, my body healing as quickly as the sparks ignited.
Ice tangled with the flames until it filled the space, sealing over what had been ripped apart.
I touched my hand to the spot on my ribs where the sword had sliced me.
It stung when my fingers grazed the open flesh, but they came away clean.
The blood had already clotted, leaving a shallow gouge in its place, exposing pink muscle.
As I watched, the muscle became less tender.
The blood on my skin dried and crusted, but it gave me little comfort.
Stumbling to the musky cot, I turned my head up toward the room’s lone window.
Three feet above me, its bars framed the rising moon and the sea of glimmering stars surrounding it.
The iridescence broke the bleakness of the night.
The moon appeared closer than usual, the sight planting a seed of something warm inside me—hope.
“Eight hundred and twenty-two,” I whispered into the empty cell. I leaned my shoulder against the wall, my back still too raw to rest against the cold stone.
Eight hundred and twenty-two days since life as I knew it ended. Eight hundred and twenty-two days since I had kissed her goodbye.
I brushed my sweat-soaked bangs out of my eyes to view the moon better, imagining her skin bathed in its glow somewhere out in the world.
Her eyes would reflect its light like a pearl placed in a sea of deep magenta flowers.
I thought of the things we had done beneath the moon in our clearing.
The way her body felt against mine all those nights ago, holding her to me.
Protecting her. Protecting us. I could still feel her, like she was pressed against me now, our bodies rising and falling and releasing together.
My head sank against the wall, giving into the sleep my body craved as thoughts of her danced through my head. I hoped she was happy tonight, the radiant smile gracing her face, softening her exquisite features.
“Happy birthday, Ophelia,” I breathed into the still air.
I’d like to think she felt it.