Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
KADEN
Pain lanced through my scalp as Fleshtalker pulled me upright, his long, pale fingers fisting in my hair.
“I simply hate seeing you like this, Your Highness.”
“Oh, you love it,” I growled, glaring up at him through the blood oozing into my eyes from a deep gash along my brow. “You and Xadorsch have been waiting for a chance to knock me down a peg since I was born.”
Fleshtalker didn’t answer. He just hauled me over to the back wall of the chamber and drove his fist into my gut.
The pain doubled me over, but I swallowed down my groan.
Fleshtalker couldn’t hurt me. Not as long as Lyra was safe.
My father’s sycophants could do whatever they wanted to me. I would not break.
Still wheezing, I winced as Fleshtalker fitted heavy iron manacles around my wrists, the rowan-wood spikes lining the cuffs carving into my flesh.
He pulled the chains along the wall taut, stretching my arms wide.
The new position reopened the gashes along my back, and I felt the hot trickle of blood seeping through my shirt.
Still, I’d take the pain over the effects of the rowan-wood spikes any day. Rowan was poisonous to demons. While it wouldn’t kill me, it kept me weak and prevented my wounds from healing.
“Shall we begin, Highness?” Fleshtalker crooned. “Or have you thought better of protecting your whore?”
I blinked at him lazily, arching a brow. Gods, even that hurt.
Unfortunately, I knew enough about Fleshtalker’s methods to know the beating and whipping and rowan-wood spikes were only foreplay to him. He liked to watch his victims suffer, and I refused to scream or beg.
It wasn’t that Fleshtalker was any more despicable than the rest of my father’s servants. All the demons in Semphrys’s court basked in others’ pain.
But Fleshtalker had a talent the others lacked. He could pull memories from a person’s very bones — make them relive their very worst moments or distort reality for his own sick ends.
More troubling was that I’d seen him force his victims to reveal information against their will, no matter how carefully they guarded their thoughts. Unlike the mind, the body did not lie, and it was much harder to conceal memories stored in the flesh.
“Very well,” Fleshtalker murmured. “I had hoped to spare you the indignity of my methods, but His Majesty insists.”
I rolled my eyes. There wasn’t a demon among my father’s band of sycophants who wouldn’t have gladly traded places with him. They all resented having a half-breed mongrel on the throne and would have relished the opportunity to put me in my place.
My stomach clenched as Fleshtalker reached for me, his pale, spidery hands stretching toward my chest.
Gritting my teeth, I drew my focus inward, cloaking my mind in thick plumes of shadow to conceal all thoughts of Lyra. It was harder with the rowan-wood spikes depleting my strength, but I summoned all my resolve to lock the demon out.
Fleshtalker’s touch was surprisingly gentle, but I sensed when he started to pull my memories forth.
It felt as though my skin was being flayed from the bone, every tug of his will like a dull blade prying beneath my flesh.
I squeezed my eyes shut, losing myself to the shadows. I cast them out in every direction, filling my blood with smoke and mist and begging my body not to betray me.
I became the shadows. Shapeless. Ephemeral. Shifting with every change of the light.
Fleshtalker couldn’t find the memories if they had nowhere to live — if I was not Kaden, the demon prince, but darkness itself.
“Very good,” he simpered, not sounding at all frustrated by his lack of progress. “I must say, I am impressed. But it becomes much harder to escape the body when it is in pain.”
Then he stabbed me.
I was unprepared for the vicious steel as it sliced into my gut, ripping through flesh, puncturing organs, and scraping against bone.
An agonized gurgle heaved up my throat, and I gritted my teeth so hard I thought my molars might shatter.
With his other hand, he gripped my nape, and the fragment of a memory flashed in my mind.
Lyra, dressed in the silver-lilac gown that I had made for her. Her dark hair hanging in glossy waves, small arms encircling my neck as I flew us over the Quarter.
For a split second, I forgot where I was as the memory of her consumed me.
The warmth of her skin. The smell of her hair like summer rain. Floral and earthy, but with an underlying freshness of heat and grit being washed away.
Pulling out of the memory, I forced myself to focus on the pain — on the edge of the blade moving within me, setting my flesh aflame.
Such a wound wasn’t fatal to a demon, but it would hurt like a bitch while it healed. I knew what he was doing. He wanted the pain to shatter my defenses — to force me back into my body.
Fleshtalker slowly withdrew the dagger, wiping the blood on the hem of my shirt. His movements were careful. Lazy, even. As though he had all the time in the world.
Well, that was fine. We were all immortal here.
“Not personal enough, I see.” He tilted his head, considering me. Then his hands gripped the front of my shirt, ripping it down the middle.
“I liked this shirt,” I rasped through the blood that was pooling in my mouth.
Fleshtalker’s nostrils flared, betraying his frustration.
His fist shot out, catching me by surprise as my head whipped to the side. Blood sprayed from my mouth, splattering the already filthy wall.
I worked my jaw experimentally, savoring the pain. Most people tried to distance themselves from it when they were being tortured — bringing to mind better times to act as a distraction.
I could not afford to think of better times. They all involved her.
But then Fleshtalker sighed, and I stiffened as he traced a finger down the center of my bare chest. His featherlight touch reminded me of Lyra, and the realization hit me a second too late as the shadow of a memory ghosted over my skin.
Lyra, in the study at the Forest House, her hands roaming down my torso.
I snapped my awareness back to the present, cursing myself for my own weakness.
Fleshtalker’s mouth lifted in a sneer. “So she is your whore. I expected as much.”
His fingers curled over my shoulders, chipped yellow nails digging into my skin. Using my body for leverage, he jerked his knee up to connect with my groin.
A wave of nausea hit me at the explosion of pain, my vision blackening around the edges.
He snatched my hand before I could fully recover, and a memory surfaced, unbidden.
Me, lying between Lyra’s legs, one palm splayed across her stomach as I caressed her breast with the other.
You already know how to find me, love. You need only reach out and let me in.
No.
It was too much. Too close.
I threw up my shadows, useless as they were, and a low growl slipped from my throat. After days of torture, I was weakened and exhausted — unable to keep the residue of my own emotions leaking out with the memory.
Fleshtalker made a sound of disgust, though I could practically taste his satisfaction. “As delightful as it is to see you pliant at last, this is terribly boring.”
There was a soft click as he released my manacles, the spikes withdrawing from my flesh. Blackness swam in my vision as the floor rushed up to greet me, and I grunted as my nose collided with stone.
Fleshtalker grabbed a fistful of my hair, dragging me to my feet and shoving me toward the shallow stone basin at the opposite end of the chamber.
My body recoiled at the smell of the water, which stank of death and rot. I braced myself for the frigid cold and the agonizing burn in my lungs.
They’d drowned me eight times already, and it was never pleasant.
This time, when Fleshtalker shoved my head underwater, despair swamped me, and my shadows retracted.
This was why he was Semphrys’s most feared sycophant. Fleshtalker always got results.
Pain lanced through my scalp as my head broke the surface, water sluicing down my face. I sucked in a breath as he pushed me back down, pain splintering my skull as he rammed my face into the stone rim of the basin.
I howled as my nose shattered anew, blood pouring into my mouth.
Suddenly, I wasn’t in that infernal cell. I was standing on a walkway over the marsh, staring at Lyra through the driving rain. Her hair was plastered to her face. Water slid down her perfect cheeks.
I tried and failed to shove the memory away, but my mind spun from the pain and exhaustion.
Feeling desperate, I tried to call up a different memory — an innocuous one from my youth — to hide the echo of hope in my chest when she opened her mouth to speak.
How long have you known?
Does it matter?
Yes.
Why?
Because you’ve been lying to me since the day we met.
Mastering the pain, I finally managed to bury the memory, but it was too late.
“How stirring,” Fleshtalker mused, a quiver of excitement threading through his voice. I could practically hear the smirk in his tone, and a fresh coil of dread unfurled in my gut. “What exactly were you lying about, my prince?”