Chapter 38 – Hecate
HECATE
Hell has never felt so dark. Blood runs down my back, dripping onto the backs of my legs and splashing onto the ground beneath my feet like twisted drops of rain. I no longer fight against the ropes that bind me to these stocks. The pain has driven all strength from my body.
I only wish I could say that I didn’t scream and beg for mercy as the lashes came again and again, stripping the flesh from my back, burning into my skin like fire.
But I did.
Not for me. For Andros. My gargoyle is strapped in the stocks across from me, and while they’ve stopped my pain, they continue his. No matter how much I plead. No matter how much I sob. The whip strikes him over and over again.
His gaze is no longer focused. His body jerks each time the lashes hit his flesh. But he no longer reacts in any other way. I hope that means his mind has taken him far from here, to a place where these beasts of Hades can’t hurt him.
Already, I know there must be nothing left of his skin, and the knowledge sickens me.
We were so close. So close to freedom. So close to having a life together. So close to returning to the world of the living.
And then we’d been caught.
I wanted to believe there was a happily-ever-after for us. That one day we would be free of this dark place. But for the first time since coming here, my hope fails me. My desire to keep going is gone.
I just want this to end. For both of us.
Hades says that when Andros has remembered his loyalty once more, he’ll be his guard again, but I don’t think Andros can handle it.
Because while all these many years I’ve spent being trudged around the Underworld as Hades’s prisoner, used for my magic or left rotting in a cell, Andros has had to enforce the rules of a cruel god.
And Andros is not a cruel man.
They’re breaking him.
They’re destroying what little is left inside of him that makes him…him.
I guess this is it for us then. This life. He’ll die inside. I’ll die inside. And this place will be our immortal tomb.
Tears roll down my face and splash into the puddles of blood beneath me. The thought of ever seeing my daughter again now seems like the fantasy of a desperate woman.
At last they’ve defeated me. They’ve won.
Suddenly Andros’s head snaps up and his eyes lock with mine.
I stare back at him, a question in my eyes.
“My brother,” he whispers, the broken words coming out thickly. “He comes.”
His brother comes…for us?
My eyes lock with his, and hope is born again. Perhaps they haven’t broken us, not yet.