Chapter 14 #2
“We’re not here for a midnight picnic, Kormac.” I approached him, my boots echoing like my laughter. There were no words for him now. Tears threatened to spill from me again. He could not see those. Him or the sorcerer.
I turned my back on him. Guards tore open Ren’s shirt, exposing his scrawny flesh.
“Please don’t…” Kormac said.
Amid all my sadness, my lips spread into a grin. I enjoyed the sound of his pleading. It made me hungry for more.
“Allow me to tell you a story,” I said. “Not a story really. More of a statement.” I waited a moment, for the suspense. “Your stunt in the forest killed my friend. He was more than a friend, though. He was my everything. I’m sure you can understand I’m deeply upset by this.”
Jangling chains. The sounds of more struggles. “As if you haven’t taken those we love!”
My muscles tensed. “Such bravery from behind me.”
“Fuck you! Tie me to the cross! Take me!”
I listened to the fists strike him, his grunts.
Take him? Never. Not now. Boyd’s death had mixed the wax seal with stone. Never to be broken, regardless of any tingles between my legs.
“Such a brave and loyal friend,” I said, not turning around. “But this is a dark place, Kormac. Your friendship isn’t what you think it is. This is no fairytale where the power of love wins out in the end. I know that all too well now, don’t I?”
He didn’t respond, and I didn’t expect him to.
“My friend was stolen,” I added. “Now is the time to pay for such a theft.”
My father’s orders were moot now. This Fomorian would not live to see tomorrow evening. He wasn’t a commodity but a danger. I saw that now. I should kill him this instant, remove him now. But first, I wanted to hurt him.
“Don’t… Please…” Pathetic, raspy pleading once again from the human.
“I could simply feed him to my garden,” I said. “But where would be the fun in the expected? Is that what you were thinking, Kormac? A return to the orchids? First the sorcerer, then you. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
“Please…”
I whipped around and came at him, kicking him hard in the chest. He went down on his back, cracking his head on the stone ground. I didn’t care. If he died in this cavern now, so what? My plans for the fighting pit were trivial.
I returned to Ren, drawing my sword. Clad in my black armor again. I’d decided it asserted the seriousness of the situation. No more silk, only violence.
With no more words, I positioned myself behind the splayed sorcerer, choosing the perfect place to strike. Arms? Legs? Which one? In my head, I went between them, reciting a rhyme from my childhood for when Boyd, Maeve, and I played games of tag and chose the one to be ‘it’.
I lifted the blade, bracing myself for one swing.
I’d made my choice. Pouring a fierce amount of energy and rage into the strike, I brought the sword down below his right wrist. A direct and smooth hit, cleaving off his hand.
It fell away, blood spurting from the wound in a wonderful spray.
Just as wonderful as his agonizing screams.
Thinking of the pain he must be in from the migraine, and now this, granted me a smidgen of joy. A grain of sand in size because nothing would truly ease the agony around my heart.
The doctor who’d treated Boyd burst into the room with a nurse on her heels—prearranged by me earlier. They immediately tended to the wound with herbs and potions and bandages.
I stepped back, admiring my handiwork.
The first stage.
“You fucking monster!”
Kormac again. I turned to face him, offering him the sweetest of smiles. Slowly, I approached him, taking my time as he glared at me. On his knees.
Where he should be.
I brought the blade with its crimson stain to his neck, slowly dragging the point across his skin. Enough to nick and draw a rivulet of blood. I moved it down to his chest, slicing through his dirty rags.
“Yes, I am a monster,” I said. “I am your worst nightmare. I am the prince they speak of with the cruel appetites. With you being my enemy, human, you are perfect prey for those inclinations.”
He didn’t speak but met my gaze with the same determined anger he had before.
“Lick the blade,” I commanded.
That determination flickered within those twin azure orbs. “What—”
I moved to lay the sword flat to his lips, positioning it at the perfect distance for his tongue. “You heard what I said. Lick the blade. Taste the blood of your friend.”
He tried to pull back, the guards holding him steady. There was a cut on his left eyebrow, blood leaking into his eye. Fresh bruises were beginning to come out across his neck and face.
To think I’d wanted this human to ravage me. To think I’d shown mercy, genuinely wanting him to be my slave and come around to my way of thinking. Mold him, convert him, bring him under the banners of the seelie court.
Fool me once… and I lose a friend.
My mercy was over. Once again, my heart reassured me of its steel.
It only softened for my two friends. Wreathed in shadow, it ached so terribly, spread its darkness through me worse than before.
Grief had destroyed any barrier in an instant, any semblance of gentleness.
A light had been snuffed out. A precious light. Its extinguishing required payback.
Kormac still hadn’t licked it. “Don’t defy me.”
“I’d rather lose my tongue than lick it.”
I nodded at Maeve, who thrust him forward, crushing his lips to Ren’s blood on the blade. She squeezed his mouth open, forced his tongue out with tongs she’d had tucked into her belt. Maeve always carried instruments of torture on her. A walking inventory of pain for these situations.
Kormac struggled, of course. Tried his best to resist. All in vain.
His tongue touched the blood. Maeve dragged it back and forth, locked between the tongs.
Kormac cried out, trying to curse me. I had to hand it to him—he never averted his eyes from me.
I was the target of his hate, and he held onto that.
When I gave another guard the nod, his determination to stare me down broke. I supposed having your tongue sliced off would do that.
Goodness. There was so much blood being spilled in the cavern tonight.
My guards cut Ren down after the doctor finished with him. Carried him back to his cell to await the second and final stage I had planned for him in the morning.
The doctor focused on Kormac, bleeding profusely on the ground.
“Be sure to pump him full of everything you have,” I ordered. “I want him fighting fit for tomorrow.”