Chapter 17 Beneath My Heel
Eluned
Concrete kissed my cheekbone, its cold lips sucking the heat from my flesh.
I blinked grit from my eyes and spat a ruby droplet onto the floor.
My whimper morphed into a giggle, pain blossoming across my jaw where that brute Casimir had struck me.
My wedding dress—oh, my beautiful snowdrop-white gown!
—now hung in tattered strips like the skin of a flayed angel.
An enchanted cord around my wrists, its magic humming against my wrists like angry bees, tightening each time I struggled.
How dare they truss me up like this? I’ll make necklaces of their entrails!
My thoughts skittered across my mind like insects scrabbling over glass, disjointed yet somehow perfect. Perfect, yes. Everything would be perfect once Mother saw what I’d done.
What I’d tried to do.
The crawfish had been magnificent, my finest idea yet. Its pincers would have snipped that little bitch Serafina right in half.
“Ring around the rosie,” I whispered to myself, testing the soreness in my jaw, “pocket full of posies.”
The room was dim, cinder block walls surrounding me like a coffin.
A basement, perhaps? No windows. Just a single lightbulb swinging gently overhead, casting trembling shadows across the floor.
I blinked against the harsh light, my eyes adjusting to reveal three figures watching me with varying degrees of contempt.
“Wake up,” a voice commanded.
I jerked my head up, my neck protesting the sudden movement. The eldest Cimmerian stood just inside the door, his blond hair pulled back in a ridiculous bun, his expression perfectly, infuriatingly blank, his boots pristine, not a speck of my blood staining them.
Typical. The Ice Prince wouldn’t deign to get dirty. I wondered what it would take to crack that stone facade. To make him scream. To make him bleed.
“Ashes, ashes,” I continued in a sing-song whisper, “we all fall down.”
Koa flanked Casimir, silent as always. His knuckles were stained with blood and his nearly black eyes burned with something luscious that made my insides twist. I’d watched him the most during our reconnaissance missions because he was the most dangerous of the three.
I’d always thought so. Amabel disagreed, citing Casimir’s strategic mind, but I knew better.
The ones who held their rage so tightly that it became part of them, they were the ones who would tear your throat out without hesitation.
Then there was Zane, leaning against the wall with practiced nonchalance, arms crossed over his chest, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.
His red hair was a mess, as if he’d just rolled out of bed after a particularly vigorous round of sex.
I wondered if he’d ever consider taking me.
I’d show him things that would prove just how much of a virginal bore his precious little wife was.
And on the floor lay that mangy dire wolf pup, happily gnawing on my beautiful monster’s pincer. Reduced to a chew toy. I felt something inside me crack, a hairline fracture spreading through my mind.
“Have a nice nap, bitch?” Zane called out, his voice dripping with mock concern. “You’ve got a little something,” he gestured vaguely at his own face, “everywhere.”
“Already bored of playing jailers?” I crooned, rolling onto my side with what dignity I could muster. The dress tore further, lace catching on rough concrete. I imagined it screaming. “Three big strong dhampirs trembling over little old me? Where’s your precious Serafina?”
Koa’s fist slammed into the wall beside my head. Gray powder rained down as I flinched, the cord searing my wrists. His eyes glowed like bottled lightning, chest heaving.
“Say her name again,” he growled. “You’ll regret it.”
“Wouldn’t want to deny you the pleasure of gagging on it later, would I?” I laughed until my split lip reopened, copper flooding my mouth. “When I get free, I’ll make cat toys from your eyeballs.”
My knees brushed together under the ruined satin skirts, still stiff with lake mud from where they’d dragged me. I wondered if Serafina had watched. Had she clapped her grubby little hands while they debased me?
“Tsk, tsk, Luney.” Zane was all sharp smirks and sharper teeth. “That’s no way to talk when you’re the one lying down with the dogs.”
He nodded to the dire gnawing his prize, and the wolf’s tail thumped once.
“You think capturing me makes me yours?” I arched my back, letting the damp bodice gape.
Casimir didn’t blink. None of them did. Fury prickled hotter.
“So you met our kitchen boy.” Zane’s grin turned feral. “Kid has some serious knife skills. Ko mighta found himself an apprentice. Addison was filleting your monster like a sushi chef before we even hit the scene, witchy poo.”
Ooo, that Latino boy! Warbling some pathetic war cry, hacking at my glorious monster as Serafina defended herself with a twig.
“Nasty things, kitchen boys,” I mused, lifting my right leg to inspect what was left of my shoe. “Amabel’s been enjoying ours immensely. Does sweet Serafina enjoy yours, hmm?”
Koa moved faster than curses. His hand fisted in my hair, slamming my skull against the wall. Stars burst behind my eyes, bright and delicious, as lake water dripped from his jacket sleeve onto my cheekbone plink-plink-plink like a song.
“Told you,” he breathed against my ear, “about her name.”
“A tisket, a tasket, a head in a basket,” I sang, voice wavering like a music box winding down. “If I should drop it, put it in your pock—”
I lunged, teeth snapping near his jugular. Grim bastard didn’t even flinch. Time for a new tactic.
“Oh, yes, Koa! Yes, yes, yes!” I screamed with a smirk, hoping Serafina could hear me. “Harder! Harder! Make it hurt!”
He released me so abruptly, I nearly face-planted on the concrete floor. When I looked up through my snarled hair, he was wiping his palm on his tactical pants like he’d touched something foul.
Casimir stepped forward then, the measured click of boots matching some internal metronome only he could hear.
He removed his leather jacket with agonizing slowness, revealing forearms corded with muscle.
My traitorous mouth watered even as hatred curdled in my stomach.
He draped the jacket over a metal chair that definitely hadn’t been there moments before, a subtle display of dhampir speed meant to unsettle me.
Unfortunately, it worked.
“Did you think the Cimmerians wouldn’t protect their most valuable treasure?” he asked as he sat on the chair.
I threw back my head and laughed until tears streaked through the muck on my cheeks.
“Your treasure? You mean your whore.” My gaze dragged down his body like claws on satin sheets. “Does my delicate stepsister enjoy being manhandled by three beasts?”
He only studied me with detachment, as if I were a particularly interesting specimen pinned to a board. I hated how small he made me feel, how insignificant, and I hated him even more for how little he seemed affected by my presence.
A minor inconvenience. That’s all I was to him.
He nudged my hip with the toe of his boot as if he had all the time in the world.
“You made a mistake,” he said with infuriating calm. “Coming here.”
I laughed again, and this time the sound was brittle and sharp enough to cut glass. I tasted blood where my teeth had caught the inside of my cheek when he’d knocked me unconscious. I savored it, rolling the metallic tang across my tongue like fine wine.
“Tell me, Casimir,” I sneered, tilting my head to mirror him, “do you fuck her as dispassionately as you read a grocery list?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Not that I expected him to.
He was too much like Amabel. Everything locked down.
Everything controlled. I scoffed at the idea of this man between that little bitch’s thighs.
Devil below, I’d bet he was a nice size, too.
Pity to waste a good cock on garbage like her, even if he had a face carved from stone.
“Careful, brother.” Zane examined his nails with exaggerated disinterest. “She’s picturing you naked right now. You are one horny bitch, Luney.”
“Which of you took her virginity?” I retorted.
Koa’s boot scuffed against the floor as he unconsciously shifted his weight. Aha! I latched onto the knowledge like a shark smelling blood in the water. His temper was so easy to stoke, and I wondered how many times I could make him lose it.
A game, then, I decided with a gleeful wiggle. A point for me every time I make the dog bark.
“Did she cry, Prince Koa? Did she scream?”
He didn’t move, and his silence was worse than any violence. It pressed against my skull like thumbs gouging into my eye sockets. Desperate to fracture it, I dropped my voice to a breathy moan.
“Did she bleed like a bitch all over your dick?”
For a heartbeat, just one, his eyes flickered with the promise of a most painful death, but Casimir placed a single fingertip against his brother’s chest without looking away from me.
“Don’t,” he murmured.
Koa exhaled heavily through his nose, but he stepped back, shoulders rigid.
The dismissal stung. They wouldn’t even grant me proper hatred! Just this infuriating disinterest!
“Awfully invested in our sex lives for someone fucking a rogue,” Zane scoffed. “Do you practice those lines in front of mirrors? Or just in your sister’s shadow?”
Fire bloomed beneath my ribs.
Amabel.
Always Amabel!
The basement walls seemed to ripple like heat haze.
“Poor little princes!” My voice cracked. “Too noble to admit you’re stuck with a frigid wife who can’t get you up—”
Zane was suddenly at my side, crouching so close, I could count every freckle across his nose.
“Lemme stop you there, Luney,” he purred, pressing a cold finger to my lips. “First lesson in seduction: Men find desperation tragically unsexy.”