Chapter 29 At What Cost?
Chapter twenty-nine
At What Cost?
The first thing Greyson became aware of was the pain.
It radiated through his skull, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat, dragging him up from the black depths of his unconsciousness.
He tried to lift his head, but the small movement sent agony lancing down his neck and spine, wrenching a groan from his throat.
His tongue felt thick and dry in his mouth, tasting of copper. Of blood.
He forced his eyes open, blinking against the harsh light that stabbed at his retinas.
The room swam into focus slowly, details emerging from the painful brightness.
A glass box. A single light recessed into the ceiling, too high to reach even if he could stand.
And he couldn’t stand, he realized, because he was tied to a chair.
No, not tied.
The word was too tame, too civilized. He was bound. The same thick red cord used to tie rebels bit into his wrists and ankles, immobilizing his limbs. Sick symbolism courtesy of his father.
More cord wrapped around his chest, his waist, his thighs, welding him to the chair as if it were trying to consume him. He could feel the bruises forming beneath the bonds, his skin screaming at the pressure.
He tested his restraints, straining against the cords until his muscles burned and skin bled.
The chair didn’t so much as budge. He scanned the floor, eyes catching on the bolts, the thick rivets securing it to the concrete.
An interrogation chair. A chair for traitors and rebels, designed to hold its occupant in place no matter how they struggled, no matter how they fought.
The irony wasn’t lost on Greyson. How many times had he stood in similar rooms, interrogating rebels who were strapped into a chair just like this one?
He’d always thought there would be a certain dignity in it, a stoic resolve in the face of death.
He’d been wrong. There was no dignity here, only fear and fury, and the dawning realization of his own helplessness.
His head ached, the pain sharpening as his senses returned.
He could feel dried blood on his face, cracking as his jaw clenched.
The memories were hazy, fragmented. The Veyra descending on them in his father’s office.
Shadera’s fingers being ripped from his as they were dragged away from each other.
Shadera.
Her name was a jolt to his system, a spike of adrenaline that cleared the fog from his mind. Where was she? Had they hurt her? The questions churned in his gut, dread mixing with the hot flush of rage.
A sound interrupted his spiraling thoughts. A thud, muffled but unmistakable, coming from his back. From the cell next to his. He went still, straining his ears, hardly daring to breathe.
Another thud. Then another. Then a cry, high and thin, quickly cut off.
No. No, no, no.
“Shadera!” Her name tore from his throat, raw and ragged. “Shadera!”
Only silence answered him. Silence, and then the distinct sound of flesh striking flesh, and a whimper that knifed through him, flooding his veins with terror and fury.
They were beating her. The knowledge settled in his bones like ice, freezing him from the inside out. She was a mere wall away, enduring blows that should have been for him.
This was all his fault.
“Stop!” The word ripped from him, tearing at his vocal cords. “Stop it, don’t fucking touch her!”
His voice bounced off the glass, echoing back to him in mocking repetition. Useless. He was fucking useless.
“I’m right here!” he yelled, straining against the cords until he could feel them cutting into his skin, slicing through flesh.
Pain shot up his arms, his legs, his chest, but it was nothing, nothing compared to the agony they would put her through.
“You want to hit someone, hit me! Hurt me instead, you fucking cowards!”
His only answer was another blow, another muffled cry that shredded something fundamental inside of him. She was trying not to scream, he realized. Trying to be strong, to not give them the satisfaction.
But he could hear the toll it was taking, each suppressed whimper, each choked off gasp. She was breaking, cracking, crumbling under their brutality, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.
“Please just hurt me!” he shouted, his voice cracking.
He wasn’t above begging. Not now, not with her pain echoing in his ears, reverberating in his skull. He would grovel, plead, debase himself in any way they demanded if it would make them stop. If it would spare her.
A new sound snapped through the air—the impact of something harder than a fist. Shadera’s pained gasp this time was followed by the unmistakable sound of bone cracking.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Greyson screamed, fury unleashing through his body. “Every last one of you. I’ll hunt you down and cut your throats myself!”
The threats poured from him, vicious and detailed. He described precisely how he would end each of them, how he would ensure their deaths were witnessed and remembered. The words flowed like poison, like blood, like all the darkness he’d kept contained for so long.
But his words fell on deaf ears. Or perhaps they simply fell on cruel ones, ears that reveled in his desperation, in his anguish. The blows continued, relentless, merciless, each one a fresh hell, a new lesson in the depths of his father’s brutality.
Between his screams, between her gasps and the blows and the all-consuming rage, another emotion began to take root in the center of Greyson’s chest as he listened to them torture her. An emotion he’d been denying, suppressing, hiding from.
Strapped to this chair, listening to her agony, that emotion demanded to be named.
Still he refused to acknowledge it.
Her cries were weakening now, fading into little more than ragged breaths and soft, broken whimpers. Greyson’s heart seized at the sound, at the wet rattle in her lungs that spoke of internal damage, of injuries that might never heal.
“Shadera,” he breathed, his voice cracking into shards on her name. “Hold on. Just hold on. I’m here. I’m right here.”
The blows finally ceased, leaving a ringing silence in their wake. Greyson held his breath, straining to hear any sound, any indication that she was still breathing, still fighting.
Then, out of the terrible quiet, a new sound emerged. Footsteps, slow and measured, echoing in the space beyond his cell. The deliberate tread of expensive shoes on concrete, each step a declaration of power, of control.
Greyson knew that walk. He’d heard it on marble floors and parquet ballrooms, had felt it vibrate through his bones as he hid in closets as a child.
It was the sound of his nightmares, of his darkest fears and deepest shames.
The sound of his father.
Maximus Serel stepped into view, his golden mask gleaming in the harsh light. He stood before Greyson’s cell, his posture relaxed, almost lazy in its arrogance. When he spoke, his voice was the rich, smooth baritone of a practiced orator, a charismatic leader. A lie given form.
“Oh, my son.”
Despite the pain, despite the fear and the soul deep anguish still reverberating through him, Greyson felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl. “I am going to fucking kill you.”
Shadera was caught in a world of blood and pain, each nerve ending shrieking in agony. The blows stopped suddenly, the absence of new pain almost as shocking as its infliction. She drew in a shuddering breath, tasting copper on her tongue, feeling it bubble in her lungs.
She blinked through the swelling around her eyes, squinting against the light. Her cell resolved itself in increments, the details filtered through a haze of concussion and Maximus’s best efforts to break her.
She would not break for the devil.
Red cord bit into her flesh, weaving across her body in a grotesque web, binding her so tightly she couldn’t tell where her battered skin ended and the restraints began.
She was no stranger to pain, to imprisonment, to the unique cruelties the Heart reserved for those it deemed enemies. But this . . . this was new. This was intimate, personal in a way that chilled her beyond the freezing cold of the cell.
This wasn’t an interrogation. It was a message. A promise of the suffering to come, meted out not for information, but for the sheer vicious thrill of it.
Her vision focused as she spit blood onto the floor, raising her head as far as she could to see Maximus standing on the other side of the glass, staring into the two cells, surveying her battered form like a craftsman admiring his handiwork.
And to her horror, some part of her felt relief at the sight of him. Relief that his presence meant a respite, however brief, from the brutality. Relief that maybe, just maybe, he would end this, if only so he could be the one to begin it again.
Self loathing rose like bile in her throat. Was this what it took to break her, to make her grateful for the crumbs of mercy from a monster’s table? Is this how Greyson had felt, all those years under his father’s thumb, enduring who knew what degradations and disfigurements?
She thought of Lira, of the confessions torn from her throat in that shattered apartment. The abuses she’d suffered, the wounds she’d hidden, all in the name of survival in this gilded cage of a city.
And for the first time, Shadera truly recognized it. Recognized the impossible choices they’d faced, the parts of themselves they’d had to carve away to endure the unendurable. Maximus hadn’t just broken their bodies. He’d broken their spirits, their wills, their very sense of self.
No one survived the Heart unscathed. Not the princess in her tower, not the Executioner on his platform, and not the assassin in her cage. They were all casualties of this man’s cruelty, this man’s megalomania.