Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Jack
Acruel sea of agony battered every nerve like crashing waves against a crumbling shore, accompanied by a smoldering fire as though burning coals had been pressed into my back, left there to burn through my flesh and bones.
I floated somewhere between consciousness and a black void, tethered to life by the faintest thread.
My mouth tasted dry, my throat stripped raw. I tried to swallow, but even that small mercy evaded me.
I tried to move, only to be hit with another wave of pain that forced a trembling groan from my chest. That’s when I realized I’d been strapped to a table, face down, shackled at the wrists and ankles.
I could barely move, and I wasn’t sure if I should attempt again.
Even the faintest twitch sent a thousand knives slicing through my spine.
Every inhale grated across ribs that felt fractured, every exhale turned into tremors of white-hot torment.
Gods, the agony.
My skin—what remained of it, if any—felt peeled, exposed to the bitter air, then set ablaze. Muscles burned where the whip had dug deep. Bone might have been exposed, I couldn’t tell. Couldn’t even fathom the damage Soulstripper had done to me.
And the fucking collar…
That cursed relic clung to my throat like a brand from Náldrún himself, its iron biting deep into my skin, pulsing with fire that ran straight into my soul.
The magic suppression bled through me like poison, silencing the healing that lived in my blood.
I was bare to the pain, defenseless. I longed to pass out again, to surrender to the darkness…
But somewhere between the agony and that void that threatened to claim me, I remembered…
Sylvi.
She had been there, on the balcony above the courtyard. Watching me.
The instant our gazes had met, relief slammed into my chest so hard it had almost buckled my knees. Even with the collar choking my power, I had felt her like a lifeline thrown into the darkness. She hadn’t abandoned me. She hadn’t hidden away to spare herself the horror.
But that sweet memory twisted almost instantly into terror.
She shouldn’t have seen me like that. She shouldn’t have had to hear the sound of my flesh tearing, shouldn’t have had to watch me bleed out onto the stones like a slaughtered animal.
I knew her, and witnessing my sentence would plague her with guilt and destroy her in ways no whip could destroy a body.
A deeper panic surfaced, a gnawing fear. What if it hadn’t just been my body they’d meant to break? What if Sylvi had been purposely put in a position to witness my public lashing?
Had that public spectacle been a message, not just for the citizens of Isenheim, but for Sylvi?
It was evident my mother saw the bond between us as a threat to her power. The look that flashed in her eyes whenever she saw us together, as if she sensed something more profound united Sylvi and I—something not even she could break, maybe not even her dark magic—spoke of her fear.
But she couldn’t execute me without dooming her own rule. The Queen of Skadgard still needed an heir. But Sylvi? She could make Sylvi suffer in other ways. And forcing her to watch…
That had been Sylvi’s true punishment, not the stripping of her rank.
My blood boiled.
That thought was worse than the agony of my torn back.
My heart pounded violently, a bird thrashing to escape its cage.
Sylvi wasn’t safe here. No matter what was left of me after this ordeal, even if it meant dragging myself across the floor with nothing but splintered will and shattered bones, I would not let them harm her.
Not while there was breath left in my body.
Voices seeped into the haze.
“Maelis! Gods damn it, he won’t stop bleeding!” Ravin’s voice shook with panic.
“I’ll get more bandages,” Maelis said, footsteps rustling around the room. “But the collar is spelled with suppression wards. Until it’s removed, he won’t be able to heal.”
“We need to fucking remove it!”
“I told you already. I don’t have the key.”
“I’m talking about cutting it off him,” Ravin replied, frantic.
“The iron is enchanted. If we try to remove it without the key, it could kill him.”
“Fuck,” Ravin rasped. “What the Hel are we supposed to do?”
My throat worked around a groan. I tried to speak, but it came out broken, guttural. “Syl…vi…”
“Jack?” Boots scraped across the floor. “Maelis, he’s waking.”
My eyes struggled to blink as candlelight cut across the room like shards of broken glass, blurring my vision. The scent of blood and herbs wafted around me. I tried lifting my head but immediately dropped it back down, my body erupting into an uncontrollable tremble.
“Your Highness, please stay still,” Maelis said, coming nearer. “We had to shackle you. It’s for your own safety. To keep you from thrashing.”
“The collar…take it off…” I said shakily.
Varik stepped into the room, his silhouette blurry through my slit eyes. “Only Lord Kaelven has the key. He alone holds the authority to remove the collar.”
Ravin growled, rushing toward Varik. “You coward. You helped do this to him.”
“I was following orders.”
“It’s your job to protect the prince, not cut him down like a common criminal.”
“The queen decreed it, in case you forgot.”
“I don’t give a fuck what she decreed. Get Lord Kaelven. He needs to remove the collar, or Jack could die.”
“Don’t presume you have the authority to command me.”
There was a scuffle, the scrape of boots, a thud, a grunt.
“Get your hands off me,” Varik spat. “Or I’ll…”
Ravin chuckled. “Or you’ll what? Run off to mommy?”
“Take your hands off the captain, Lord Valeska,” Kaelven’s voice piped into the room as if he’d appeared out of thin air. “The prince must bear his punishment in accordance with the laws of our realm.”
“Punishment?” Ravin’s voice dropped, that lethality I knew he wore under his skin breaking through. “For defending the crown? For saving Sylvanna? He’s your prince, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t remove that blasted collar, I swear by every frozen God in the seven peaks, you’ll live to regret it.”
Kaelven flashed Ravin a mocking smile. “The former captain should’ve never been in the Warrens.
Her careless actions caused this. If anyone is to blame for the blood he bleeds, it’s that feckless female.
If it had been up to me, I would’ve had her flogged for putting the crown in such danger.
Though perhaps it’s not too late to…teach her a lesson. ”
Kaelven’s words sliced through the fog clouding my mind.
Feckless female.
Flogged.
Teach her a lesson…
The roar that built inside me was unlike anything I had ever known. It was molten. It was madness. It was a second lashing, one far crueler than Soulstripper’s bite.
I tried to lift my head, but the collar seared into my flesh, sending a jolt of pain down my spine so sharp I saw stars. Leather scuffed against the edges of the table as my wrists jerked, powerless, useless.
If I’d had strength left, I would have torn free of those shackles. I would have ripped the collar from my throat with my own fingers. Kaelven wasn’t just threatening me anymore; he was threatening Sylvi—again. A growl ripped from my throat, a feral sound that seemed to freeze the entire infirmary.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Even Kaelven flinched, his serpentine smirk faltering as he turned a wary eye toward me, as if he realized, belatedly, that a chained monster was still a monster.
Ravin stepped forward, placing himself directly between Kaelven and me.
“I suggest you watch your tongue. You so much as whisper another threat against Sylvi,” Ravin said, “and I swear, collar or not, Jack will make sure they’ll need more than your personal attendants to scrape your carcass off these stones. ”
Kaelven’s lip curled into a snarl. “You forget yourself, Lord Valeska.”
“No,” Ravin said, stepping toward the advisor, “You forget that’s the Frost Prince—your fucking future king—on that table.”
“Some would question that claim.”
“You bastard,” Ravin snarled, rushing toward him. “Does the queen know you question the legitimacy of her son?”
“Touch me,” Kaelven said coolly, “and I’ll have you thrown into the dungeons for laying hands on the royal chancellor. Perhaps even tried for treason.”
Ravin growled, a hand on the hilt of his dagger.
Kaelven went on, “I’d rethink your murderous thoughts unless you don’t care what your mother might think if certain truths about her past were brought to light.”
“Lest you want me to cut off your tongue and feed it to the queen’s leopards, you better not speak of my mother ever again.”
“You can’t threaten me.”
“That wasn’t a threat.”
A long, charged silence crackled between them.
I strained against the cuffs again, not caring that each move felt like iron picks being driven through my back. I couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. But I poured every ounce of my will, every shred of fury in the royal blood pulsing through my battered veins, into the space between us.
Ravin must have felt the ice-crusted silent threat that radiated from me because his shoulders straightened, and when he spoke again, his words were a sheer warning that boomed as if the words had been spoken directly by me. “Take. The. Fucking. Collar. Off. Now."
Kaelven’s jaw ticked, a thousand calculations seeming to flicker behind his narrowed eyes.
Cowardice. Pride. Fear. He wanted to refuse, but something about the way Ravin stood, something about the way I lay there, straining and bleeding and promising retribution with nothing but my soul, must have finally convinced him.
With a muttered curse, Kaelven pulled a small iron key from the folds of his robe. He stalked over and gently inserted the key, a slight tremble in his fingers, as if he was too scared to touch the iron, or perhaps it was me he was afraid of.
Click.
The Drekhvaen Shackle unlocked with a sharp metallic hiss and fell away from my neck, clattering to the stone floor.