Chapter 27
“You act as if you know me, child,” Nix’s future captor, Lemmuns, told her in that same amused voice that made her nauseous.
He stood at the counter, with his back to her, mixing together a concoction of potion ingredients like she had watched him do so many times before. In the past. Or the future. It all blended together.
It’s really him.
She glared at him. Tired of tears. She gripped the bars, ignoring the searing pain and smell of her own burning flesh as she pulled at them, trying to bend them and escape.
She had vowed that if she found him in this second life, she would kill him. She had hoped to master fighting or potions by the time she ran into him, but…she would either kill him now or die trying.
She would never let him turn sunshine Persius into the dark and jaded man she knew in captivity.
“You do know me,” Lemmuns told her, shocking her.
Stunned, she stopped yanking at the bars. Does he…know? Did he know their future together? How?
“I’ve worked for the Oadess family for years,” he admitted.
Oadess. Adar. Her love.
Her future captor worked for them.
She clutched at her head as her thoughts ripped through the pink veil of love for Adar. Had the Oadess family known what happened to her after graduation? Had anyone gone looking for her?
Did they really sell me to him?
“Kellan Oadess has funded much of my research,” Lemmuns rambled excitedly. “A remarkable man, your adoptive father is.”
Nix ground her teeth and began pulling at the bars again, hoping he could not hear the sizzling of her flesh as she gripped the rods of iron.
“I met you when you were a young child,” Lemmuns said cheerily as he worked on grinding some herbs together in a bowl. “Kellan was concerned you were not fitting in with his clan. He had me concoct your special, weekly illusion potion. Though I heard you had stopped taking it recently?”
Lemmuns turned to look at her, and she quickly released the bars and hid her bleeding hands.
He turned back to pour a vial of blue liquid into the bowl and mixed again, whistling like he had no worries in the world.
The whistling. She could never have forgotten it. Certain tunes always hinted at what experiments he would perform on her.
Persius used to tell her he planned to break all of the scientist’s teeth from his mouth and rip his tongue out so their torturer would never whistle again.
If only.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon after I arrived,” Lemmuns said. “And to have you left so helpless, caged in iron, where no one could hear you?” Lemmuns turned and walked his bowl toward her cage. “I am a lucky, lucky man.”
Just as Nix summoned her fire, Lemmuns blew out a blue-tinted powder from his bowl into her cage and over her face.
She choked as she inhaled it, feeling her lungs and heart stall. Her limbs went numb, and she slipped to the floor of the cage, twitching as the mystical blue powder infiltrated her system.
“Kellan may not like me starting earlier than we planned, but he won’t have to know. I’ve worked many memory loss potions in my day, little birdie. You won’t remember a thing I do to you.”
As her breaths smoothed out, and her body went limp and motionless in the cage, a tear fell down her cheek.
“There we go, nice and easy,” Lemmuns muttered happily to himself and grabbed her ankle through the cage. The men had not left him the key to the lock, but he could easily reach her between the bars.
I will never forgive them.
He tugged her limp body to the edge of the cage and dug into his pockets for a small switchblade. He calmly began cutting her blouse from her back as her face pressed to the cement floor.
Though she could not move, her brain was fine. Her body still felt what was happening.
She begged the gods to stop him.
“Now, let’s see what we can do about these wings.” Lemmuns went back to his counter and returned with a different bowl.
He scooped up clear salve and slapped it onto her spine, running it over the back of her shoulder blades.
“This stuff is my best invention. Forces a shift, no matter what state the shifter is in.”
Her shoulder blades throbbed like her pores were ripping apart. Rip. Rip. Pain.
“There we go,” Lemmuns hummed. “What a pretty little birdie you are.”
Pretty little birdie.
Every horrific memory came flooding back. The years of pain. The years of begging for it to end. The years of his proud laughter.
Her red feathered wings sprang from behind her, leaving each sensitive feather free and vulnerable. They fluttered and stretched, unaware of the damage he would do to them.
Her skin crawled as she readied herself for what came next. This is all too familiar.
“I will only take a few for now. Kellan won’t know,” Lemmuns said as he held one of her wings down and…
Pluck.
She cringed and gagged as her stomach turned.
Pluck, pluck. Blood rose from the pores where the roots of her feathers were ripped from her tender skin.
She had finally had wings. Full, beautiful, and powerful wings. And now…
Pluck. Pluck.
She silently wailed and cried, her vocal cords numbed by the blue powder.
I will kill him. I will kill him.
Pluck. Pluck.
Blood dripped down her back.
This is their fault. They left me alone with him. How can they say they love me when they locked me in a cage, vulnerable and…
She had promised herself to never be helpless again.
She focused on her breathing, trying to strengthen the inhales from the shallow, sleepy breaths the blue powder caused.
She stared at her arm, which was bent at a weird angle near her face from how she had fallen.
Fire. Flames. I need you. She begged her body to act, to defend, but it remained docile and limp.
Pluck. Pluck.
She squinted at her arm. He thinks you are weak. He thinks he can do whatever he wants to you.
Even your mates think they are smarter than you, that they know better than you. Why? They think they need to protect you, even when you tell them not to. Why? They think it is better to hide you and your powers away than to end the people who would do you harm. Why?
“What pretty, pretty feathers.” Pluck. Pluck.
She tried to flex her fingers and bunch them into fists. Move, she commanded.
Part of her wanted her mates to return to her and find her bleeding and scarred because of their choices for her.
Part of her wanted them to return to her and find her covered in Lemmuns’s blood like a feminine rage vigilante.
She wanted them to fear her. Not pity her. Not protect her.
She wanted them overflowing with guilt and regret and to fall to their knees and beg forgiveness for putting her in the position of reliving her worst nightmare.
Pluck. Pluck.
It’s time to move, she told her body. You are not a pet, puppet, or an object for men like this to use.
She was a phoenix. Possibly the last of her kind. Representing immortality and rebirth, and having favor from the god of the sun. She was one of the most dangerous paranormal shifters, known for limitless destruction.
You have power, she reminded her body. Now. Move.
Her finger twitched. Just a little. Yes.
“Hmm, I should take just as much from the other wing. To make it look even.”
Pluck. Pluck.
Her lips vibrated as she tried to scream, but still no sound came out.
Move. Yes. More.
Her finger extended and curled. Yes.
More blood trickled down her back.
She managed to flex her jaw enough to bite at her lips.
Pluck. Pluck.
She would not relive her horrible past and lose her new chance at a future.
He will not break me. I will kill him first.
She remembered his past laughter when he ground up bits of iron and blew them onto her skin, burning her until she was covered in boils and scars.
She remembered the way he whistled while he plucked her wings until they were bare, cracked, and chapped.
She remembered the life fading from Persius’s eyes in his cage as Lemmuns looked at his empty syringe and said, “I guess Pegasi can’t survive that.”
“Gonna…kill you,” she managed to say between numb lips.
Lemmuns scoffed. “I will be done well before the boys return.”
Right. Because he thought she meant, “My mates are going to kill you.”
His mistake.