Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Thalia woke with her hands chained on either side of the bed.
She started but immediately regretted it, as fire erupted all over her body.
Thalia moaned, her head lolling into the pillows. The fabric scratched her—skin tingling with a deep-rooted burn.
“Is she secure?” She heard Cassius somewhere in the room.
A slight tug on the chains around her wrists sent another wave of pain spreading through her. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?” Cassius growled.
“Yes,” Keegan replied, his voice low.
Thalia managed to peel open her lids.
Cassius and Keegan were at the foot of the bed, the latter with his arms crossed, face set in hard determination. Cassius, on the other hand …
He couldn’t stop running his fingers through his hair, pacing as though he’d wear the carpet bare.
“Cassius?” Thalia managed to work her throat, despite the pain it caused. Her neck felt as though it hung by a thread, a throbbing pulse echoing from the bite marks.
He stopped pacing, turning to her immediately. He was at her side in an instant. “I’m here.”
Thalia tried to move her arms but cried out, pain flaring along her bones. “It hurts,” she said, tears leaking from her eyes.
Cassius didn’t touch her, but his fingers curled as if aching to. “I know. I know.”
“What’s happening?” Thalia groaned. The hairs along the backs of her arms stood on end, causing needle-like pricks to echo in their wake.
“Your body is in the process of trying to change,” Keegan said gently.
Thalia tried shaking her head, but her neck refused to work. “I don’t—”
A deep stabbing flared in her stomach, cutting off her words. Thalia cried out, her body arching.
Her muscles spasmed, pain racking her system, before she collapsed onto the mattress.
“Cass,” Thalia whimpered.
“I know,” Cassius murmured, his face so pained it was though he were experiencing the burning in her body instead of her. “But this is the only way.”
Thalia’s eyes blurred as another wave of agony swept through her. The chains tightened around her wrists.
“Your body is trying to fight the Vampyr bite,” Cassius said, his voice near guttural. “It will fight it until it works its way out of your system.”
Thalia’s limbs trembled as her organs turned over in her abdomen.
“Make it stop,” Thalia cried, twisting in the chains.
“We can’t,” Cassius gasped. Hands pressed into her legs, and she cried out once more. The grip felt as though daggers were slicing into her shins, each press against her heated skin cutting deep into the muscle. “You have to fight the pain.”
Thalia shook her head, the muscles in her neck straining. Her throat tightened, closing until she choked.
She screamed as wave after wave racked her body. She was a practice dummy, the Vampyr’s bite spearing arrow after arrow into her swollen flesh.
She was being flayed from the inside out. Her organs were being taken out and roasted on a spit before being shoved back into place, still flaming.
Her tears burned the sides of her face as they fell—each nerve ending frayed at the edges, making her whole body spasm and tighten.
Then, through the pain, something dangerous hit her tongue.
An insatiable hunger that had her arching off the bed, the chains the only thing keeping her in place.
“I’m so hungry,” Thalia sobbed, that desire intensifying as she somehow managed to focus on Cassius.
His brows were narrowed, his jaw clenched tight enough to snap. “I know.”
“I need it,” she got out.
She didn’t know what she needed. Only that her senses were being overwhelmed with the sharp tang of blood—her own blood.
Her head jerked, eyes landing on Keegan, who held her legs down. Her eyes went straight to the pulse fluttering in his throat. “I need it,” she got out again, her mouth nearly salivating.
Then another wave hit her and she closed her eyes, biting through her tongue as she cried. Each bone in her body snapped in half before being glued back together in jagged spikes.
“Maybe we should let her feed.” Keegan’s tentative voice broke through the wave of pain.
“No,” Cassius growled out. “I can’t.”
“If it saves her, we should.” Keegan’s voice sharpened.
“She will never forgive me,” Cassius snapped back. “And she was bitten by Sybil. If she turns, then she’ll become one of them too.”
“Cassius, she is dying! The pain is killing her!” Keegan yelled.
Dying? Was that what was happening to her? Her insides felt as though they’d been lit on fire, sizzling and peeling until everything in her was stripped away, leaving only a bloody pulp in its wake.
A hand pressed into her face, and Thalia groaned, peeling her lids open to find Cassius hovering above her. “You need to fight it,” he whispered, his eyes scanning hers. “You need to.”
Thalia tried to nod, but the pain was so great she arched, screaming. The headboard behind her cracked, her arms straining against her bounds—
The chains ripped from the wood.
“Fuck.” Cassius lunged, grasping her arms just as Thalia tried to surge upward.
“Cassius, you need to decide,” Keegan ground out behind him.
Thalia could barely think. Not with her brain melting into a soup. Not with the scent of Cassius’s own blood flowing beneath his veins.
“Thalia.” Cassius gritted his teeth.
Thalia thrashed, sobbing through the pain. “I don’t want to die—”
Cassius’s eyes guttered, his fingers still tight on her biceps. But he was lost, his eyes flashing in deep fear, as if he could feel her dying slowly, painfully, beneath him.
“Cassius,” Keegan cautioned.
“I know.” His voice shook. He swallowed, eyes scanning her face. “Thalia. Thalia, can you hear me?”
Thalia trembled, her muscles seizing like tightened ropes. His words broke through the haze of her pain.
“There is something we can try,” he said lowly. “To maybe get you past the pain.” Thalia moaned, her body weakening with each heartbeat. “But I need you to agree. I need you to understand what is going on.”
Thalia shook her head, her tears like acid. “I don’t want to die.”
“I know, I know, my love,” Cassius murmured. “The pain is what will kill you. That is why so many of us turn. But we can try to find a different stimulus, one that will override the pain. Do you know what I’m saying?”
The waves of agony threatened to drown her. Thalia panted, the veins in her neck bulging. Yet somehow she understood. A stronger stimulus could get rid of this pain. “Yes.”
Regret speared itself through Cassius’s face, his hesitation palpable.
Thalia whimpered, latching on to his face. “I don’t want to die.”
Cassius’s face hardened. “Switch places with me.”
She didn’t know who he was talking to, only that one moment her arms were free, then warm hands clamped on them.
Through the haze of her pain, she saw Keegan above her. He stared at her, holding her down as her body thrashed uncontrollably. She screamed until her vocal chords shredded.
Then hands clamped onto her legs once more.
Thalia managed to open her eyes, her chest cracking in half, to find Cassius at the foot of the bed, his hands wrapped around her ankles.
She sobbed as her body trembled, bile rising in her throat at the pain. The insatiable hunger deepened. Keegan’s blood pulsed just out of reach above her. Yet through the hunger, darkness hummed along the edges of her vision. Pain blinded her, making her arch until her spine groaned.
Cassius stared at her, his face a mixture of guilt and trepidation.
“Cassius,” Keegan warned as Thalia slumped, her poor body lying useless like a broken doll.
“Give me a minute.”
Thalia wasn’t sure if she had a minute. But then Cassius knelt, his hands drifting up her legs.
“Do you remember our first coupling?” Cassius said quietly.
Another wave of pain hovered on the edge of her vision, but she latched on to Cassius’s words.
Latched on to his fingers, which were slowly inching up her thighs—tried to zero in on the sensation instead of the building agony.
“It was right after you’d told off Lord Vincent’s son before the whole court. ”
Thalia’s muscles bunched, shrinking and warping, begging her to succumb to the pain.
“You told him that you’d rather marry one of the horses in the stables than him.
Your mother was furious, so angry that you’d embarrassed her before her court.
But you didn’t care. You just held your head high, claiming that if you were going to marry anyone, it would be for the good of Agripa.
Not just because your mother was trying to appease her simpering council. ”
Thalia’s arms strained, but Keegan’s weight kept her firmly pressed against the mattress.
“I remember your mother dismissed you from her court entirely then. And you just looked at her and smiled, sketching a bow before you swept out of the room.”
Cassius’s fingers set tiny fires in their wake, the pad of his thumb sweeping up the inner part of her thigh. Pain reared its head, and Thalia couldn’t stop it as it hit her.
“I remember you got to your room, and I followed you inside. You slammed the door hard enough it rattled on the hinges. Then you turned to me.” Cassius’s words brought her back.
He paused, his fingers pausing with him.
“And your eyes blazed with such annoyance, with such anger, it sent my own blood sparking. Do you remember what you said to me?”
Thalia couldn’t speak, not with the pain still wrapping tightly around her throat. Cassius continued, “You told me to get out. That you couldn’t bear to hear a lecture from me regarding your behavior at court—about how you should have behaved better.”
Thalia’s mind flashed only briefly. The image was hazy. She remembered screaming at him to leave. Because she’d come to care for him far more than she’d realized. And the thought of him being disappointed in her was worse than the banishment from her mother’s court.
But he hadn’t left.
He’d stayed.
Crossing the floor until his lips had collided with hers.
“I think about that look on your face,” Cassius murmured, his fingers parting the folds of her dressing gown, pushing the fabric aside despite it already being twisted around her from her thrashing.
“That blaze in your eyes—that defiance when you told your mother how poorly she was running her realm.”
Thalia shuddered, her breath hitching.
“And that look on your face is all I picture when I wrap my hand around my cock.”
Thalia’s body arched as his fingers finally found her. Pain speared through her, but it was quickly chased away by Cassius sliding his finger inside her.
Thalia groaned, her nerve endings sparking, as if trying to tie themselves back together after they’d been frayed raw.
“And I think about every coupling we’ve ever had,” Cassius continued, his thumb swirling over the bundle at the apex of her thighs.
“I think about when we fucked in the stables.” He added another finger in.
Thalia panted, her body twisting. “I think about when we fucked on your mother’s throne.
” His fingers pumped inside her. “I think about when you used to take me inside your mouth so hard you’d choke. ”
Pain flared along her limbs, but she pushed it aside, fighting to find that growing ache now burning deep inside her. Her hips arched, her breath sawing out through her teeth.
“You are all that consumes me. Every thought. Every moment. Waking up beside you every day is torture.”
Thalia groaned as he added a third finger.
“And then you wear those little nightgowns. The red one is particularly wicked.”
His finger curled, just as his thumb pressed hard on her bundle of nerves.
Thalia cried out, her back arching as pleasure pulsed through her. She let the wave lap against the pain. Let it wash some of the agony away.
The wave passed, but the pain persisted.
Thalia shook, gooseflesh pebbling her skin. She peeled open her eyes, finding Cassius still hovering over her.
His brows narrowed at her body, which still twitched with sharp, aching stabs.
“I can do this all night,” he whispered, his fingers starting to pump once more. “I can do this until my hand falls off.”
Thalia moaned, clenching around him. Her hips bucked and Cassius cursed.
Her arms strained to grasp her breast, but Keegan wouldn’t let go. She sobbed, trying to get any sort of friction that wasn’t the fabric of the dressing gown. Writhing, she finally felt the gown slip over her shoulder. Cold air ghosted over her peaked nipple.
Her heavy lids latched on to Cassius, who watched her, pupils near devouring the ring of his irises. Without removing his fingers, he leaned over, his nose trailing up the center of her stomach before his mouth closed over her breast.
Thalia hissed as his teeth scraped her skin, tugging her nipple between them. His free hand came up to grasp her other breast, squeezing hard enough that Thalia cried out.
Her hips rolled, trying to get him deeper. Trying to appease that ache that hovered above the pain. A low chuckle echoed from his throat. “Fuck my hand like you mean it.”
Heat flooded Thalia, pushing the pain back even more. Her hips moved in earnest, just as his teeth tugged at her nipple—
Pleasure exploded through her, and Thalia nearly wept.
Her skin tingled, the pain no more than a buzz now spreading through her body, but it still hummed on the edges of her mind.
“Cassius,” she moaned, her throat sore.
The pressure left her shoulders, leaving her trembling arms free.
He removed his fingers, and Thalia nearly cried out again until her body was tugged to the edge of the bed.
Her eyes flew open, and she only caught sight of Cassius’s dark stare before he lowered his mouth to her aching core.
Thalia groaned, fingers twisting in the sheets as Cassius’s tongue slid between the folds of her sex.
He moved her legs, placing them over his shoulders, and Thalia panted, his tongue plunging into her with just as much fervor as his fingers.
She could barely think over the feeling of him between her legs. His tongue worshiped her sex until it throbbed and pulsed. One hand tangled in his hair, pressing his face into her.
“Cass,” Thalia ground out, her pleasure building.
Then his fingers slipped inside just as he took her clit between his teeth.
Thalia screamed as she came, his tongue chasing away the last of the pain that racked her body.
It felt as though a lifetime passed before the waves slowed, and his fingers slipped out.
Thalia slumped against the mattress, the pain ebbing away like water along the shore.
Cassius pressed his lips to the soft inside of her thigh.
“Cass?” she mumbled. Already her lids were growing heavy, tiredness wringing her out as thoroughly as his tongue had.
“Yes?”
But whatever she was going to say didn’t come. Not as exhaustion swept her away in its current, his name still posed on her lips.