Chapter 17 Beneath My Heel #2
I licked his finger and laughed when he caught my tongue between his thumb and knuckle, pinching it hard. For one delightful moment, I spied a wild hunger in his eyes. Was it a match to the heat pooling between my thighs?
Then he produced a knife from somewhere, letting it dance across his knuckles in silver flashes, and the hunger darkened.
Oh. Not the right kind of hunger at all, I realized with disappointment. Pity.
The only fuck I’d ever get from this one was fucked up.
Sure enough, he held the blade an inch from my lips as he pulled my tongue taut. His grin widened, fangs down and gleaming.
And my heart stuttered traitorously in my chest. There was something so exquisitely beautiful about a monster who didn’t pretend to be anything else.
Then Casimir cleared his throat, and Zane sighed dramatically before releasing my tongue and making his knife disappear.
“Party pooper,” he grumbled, flopping onto an overturned crate. “I didn’t even get to the second lesson.”
“She needs her tongue to answer questions, Z,” was all Casimir said.
The dire wolf chose that moment to crunch down hard on the crayfish pincer, sending a few shell fragments skittering across concrete. Then he raised his head, met my eyes, and made a huffing noise like he was laughing at me.
Something unraveled in me, and a screech tore from my throat as I bucked wildly against restraints that only tightened further.
“Filthy mongrel!” Spittle flew from my lips as I kicked uselessly at the beast. “I’ll skin you alive!
Sew your pelt into toilet seat covers! Mother should have drowned you when she first planned to, but no!
Amabel said to wait until Serafina grew attached, then do it!
Amabel always wants to wait, wait, wait! ”
“Too bad you never learned patience yourself.” Casimir arched one pale eyebrow. “Instead, you rashly thought you could touch our wife. In our home.”
“She is nothing,” I spat, my composure fracturing. “She is worthless. She is a weak little worm who belongs beneath my heel, begging for mercy that will never come.”
Casimir didn’t react, but Zane laughed as he moved beside his brother, resting a hand on Casimir’s shoulder with casual familiarity that made something in my chest twist with envy. Amabel never touched me like that.
“Hate to tell you this, Luney, but that ‘weak little worm’ kicked your ass without even using magic,” Zane said cheerfully, as if we were discussing the weather rather than my humiliating defeat.
“Three blind mice,” I sang, “three blind mice. See how they run. See how they run.”
“Where is our beloved now, Cas?”
My voice trailed off at the way Koa said beloved.
Like it was something sacred, something holy.
It made me want to vomit. To scream. To tear my own hair out in clumps until my scalp bled.
Mother said she was nothing but a vessel to be used and discarded, but they thought she was special. They thought she was worthy.
“Kitchen. Worried about Addison,” Casimir answered without breaking eye contact with me, and I preened slightly under his unbroken attention. At least he recognized that I was the true threat, the one deserving of his focus. Not Serafina.
Koa walked to the door, and I watched the way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides until he was gone from my view.
“Did Mommy send you, Luney?” Zane dragged my attention back to him. “Or did you dream up this shitshow all on your own?”
“Mother is a goddess,” I hissed. “You have no idea what’s coming. What she’s planning. Serafina is just the beginning. Just a taste. Mother will take everything from you, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left, not even dust.”
“Tell us what she’s planning,” Casimir said coolly. “Make it easy on yourself.”
“I’d rather burn than help you.” I infused each word with all the venom I could muster.
“I can make that happen!” Zane’s face lit up with unholy glee. “I can make that happen right now! Can I, Cas? Can I? Pleeease?”
“Her fate isn’t in our hands.” Casimir rose, unhurried, and grabbed his jacket with one hand and the folding chair with the other. “There is only one who deserves to make that decision.”
For a moment, I didn’t understand.
“Excellent idea, bro! Seri will definitely enjoy taking out this trash!”
Something cold and heavy settled in the pit of my stomach as realization hit.
Serafina, that scared little mouse, was going to pass judgment on me?
For a second, rage choked me. Not her. Not Serafina.
The thought of being at her mercy was worse than death.
Worse than my mother’s disappointment. Worse than Amabel’s smug I-told-you-so expression that I knew was waiting for me if I ever made it back home.
A manic giggle bubbled up through my lips as I sang in a whisper.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Serafina Bell
Rotting deep in Hell
And her husbands at her grave in a row.”
Ignoring me, Zane danced out of the room, humming as he swirled around with his arms in the air, and that damn dire followed, dragging the pincer with him.
“You’ve lost, Eluned.” Casimir glanced at me. “The only question is how much dignity Seri will allow you to maintain before the end.”
He flicked off the light and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the dark. As their footsteps faded, the walls began breathing and Amabel’s voice whispered in the back of my mind.
He’s right. You’ve lost. You lost the moment you decided to act without thinking. You lost because you’re weak. Because you’re impulsive. Because you didn’t wait.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the voice, but it persisted, growing louder until it drowned out my own heartbeat.
Amabel had warned me not to go alone. She’d told me to wait, to plan, to be patient.
And now here I sat, bound and bloody, at the mercy of three dhampirs and their precious bitch.
Dammit! She’d been right all along. And that, more than anything else, made me want to burn the world to ashes.