CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #2
Raoku watched, amusement dancing behind his eyes as I attempted to hold in my screams. Heat overwhelmed me.
Fire roared against a boulder at the far end of the room, conjured and sustained by a figure standing before it, their power spilling outward in flickering threads that reached toward me like searching fingers.
The bones around my head dug into the skin of my face, ripping the gash along my cheekbone further.
Tendrils of yellow power extracted from my body and soaked into the metal below my stiff tail.
He drained what I had never been able to use. I never had the chance.
But I wouldn’t allow him to see me miss it.
Pain never bested me. I’d cheated death many times in my life, but I promised myself that when the torture was over, I would then deliver it to everyone who deserved my rage.
The electrifying pain stopped, and I gasped for breath.
“You are going to fight on our side, or I will kill them all. Every single one of them. Slowly.”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe enough to put forth the words.
“Starting with this one,” Raoku said and a young mer appeared beside him, summoned by the commander’s power.
The mer fought against the rope binding his arms and legs together.
The drenched prisoner sluggishly writhed against his grip, but he looked so weak—so ready to give in to the torture.
His mouth was gagged, but his whimpers found my ears.
“No,” I whispered, but Raoku only laughed.
“You actually care about this mer? You don’t even know him.”
I did. I saw the fear in his eyes—the life he was desperate to grasp.
Raoku continued. “I forgot to tell him that I killed everyone he loves months ago.”
The mer cried—sobbed. He fell to the ground in a heap, his body shaking in emotional convulsions. Raoku pulled his sword from the hanging sheath on his hip.
“Let him go,” I croaked.
“I guess this is how he found out,” Raoku replied heartlessly.
He slid a dagger across the mer’s back, and the poor prisoner thundered in pain. Raoku cut again. The prisoner begged. Another slice through the meat of his back. The mer kicked his feet, attempted to scoot away from the blade, but the commander followed. Slice after slice Raoku tore into him.
“Leave him alone!” I roared, but that only fueled Raoku and tempted the helm to tighten around my head.
He paced around the mer and brought his sword down through his throat. Blood sprayed, coating the glass cylinder that held me inside. The innocent’s head thudded against the floor, scarlet honey pooling quickly.
The helm became too unbearable as I screamed, bursting my eardrums with the echoes and nearly shattering every bone in my skull.
I attacked the glass in silence instead. My hits were slower, the water’s resistance weakening them.
Raoku only grinned and walked out of the double doors.
Torches dimmed by the hour, eventually leaving me, the unconscious mers in silos, and the dead mer’s lifeless body in the dark. It was a gratefulness I’d never imagined myself wanting—the inability to see the blood and separation of the mer from his head.
I couldn’t sleep. Not with the constriction of the bones that dug into my skull. Or the images that kept replaying in my mind. It wouldn’t be the end of it all. Raoku would return for more power, and I had a terrifying feeling he was only getting started.
I worked to mentally build a barrier between Noctis and I.
The shackles along my wrists blocked our connection anyway, but it calmed me only slightly, knowing he didn’t have to feel my pain.
If he even could with the damper of our bond.
We couldn’t communicate, so I couldn’t tell him I was okay…
even though I wasn’t. I felt better knowing that if I died, he wouldn’t know the extent of the torment I’d experienced.
He wouldn’t know the hell it took for my body to finally give in.
No more walls. Promise me. Noctis had begged, but I just couldn’t survive knowing he was ravenous in my name and fueling it with my own emotions. He would save me. I knew it, but tears threatened to fall from my eyes when I questioned why it was taking so long.
Silence broke in the night, slowly filling with aching moans, cries, and gurgling as the glass silos holding my kind awoke.
I couldn’t see anyone, but the sounds would haunt me forever.
Hours ago, I thought the breathing, living stone chamber would kill me, but that changed when that guard dragged me here.
I wouldn’t let Raoku see me break, but I was already nearing that point.
I yanked at the bone helm, but it held firm. Each tug tightened the ivory constrictions around my head. It dug further into my skin and throat, and nothing I did lessened its grip.
Footsteps approached, thunderous hits against stone, and I straightened in the water. My head nearly reached the capped metal roofing of the chamber, but I poised with confidence.
Torches lit on command as a shadowed figure walked forward dragging his feet leisurely. Each step slower than the last, kicking with exaggerated coolness.
I overlooked the blood coating the outside of the tank, but my lip quivered as the person who neared became visible.
Duscharne cocked his head in wicked delight, stopping inches from my tank. His black coat trailed behind him like an onyx train, shimmering lilac particles floating around him.
“No rescue mission, yet?” he quipped, attempting to anger me. He knew I wondered the same. His canines flashed when he recognized my hesitation.
“Why are you here?”
“You know why. I was actually sent to propose something.”
I seethed. There was nothing he could offer that would make me fight on their side—not that I would be much help without powers anyway.
“You’re a coward,” I spat, and he laughed.
“Contrary to your beliefs, I am here to negotiate terms you will like. I could find a way, if you give me just a little trust, to make sure you survive.”
“I will die keeping the realms safe from you and the Royal Vanguard.”
“Then you will die. And we will win. Is that what you want? It's sort of a double loss for you and everyone if you ask me.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“We will release her—” he said, and a torch illuminated and flashed at my right.
Evelyn floated unconscious in a tank far in the distance, and my heart dropped.
She was there. And alive. Barely. “—if you sign a peace treaty after helping us defeat the Thal’Maruun.
If you ever make it out of here alive that is.
We have some insight that proves that you have a hand in the impending war, but we cannot see further. ”
“Parchment will never stop me. Release her, and I’ll kill all of you quickly. No hesitations. No slow, painful death. Ocean Mother and all.”
“I was hoping you’d choose otherwise.”
“You want me to help you defeat Thal’Maruun, and then what? Let you all walk free? Continue turning a blind eye to the torture of my people? Let you all dominate the realms with stolen power?”
“Exactly.”
“Enjoy your power while it lasts. We are coming for everything it brought you.”