Chapter 80
Lex
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
My sweat-soaked chest heaved as I struggled to get air into my lungs.
Air I desperately needed.
It felt like my chest was going to explode—my innards painting the black walls a macabre shade of red.
Can’t do that. They’ll just clean it up within a few minutes.
I groaned and clenched my eyes shut, baring my teeth as a sharp dagger dug its way into my side.
The blade was short. Not long enough to kill, but certainly long enough to cause pain.
The man in black robes rested the sharpened edge against my skin, just above a rib, and began slowly pressing it inside.
Sweat poured down my forehead as I tried to steel myself against the utter pain that ripped through my body and mind.
He paused with the blade halfway inside my skin before quickly flicking his wrist down, cutting a two-inch gash in my side.
I hissed, a scream nearly escaping my sore and abused throat.
The man dug the blade all the way to its hilt at the end of the incision, and this time, I yelped at the sensation.
I felt, more than saw, his grin of satisfaction before he dug the blade, twisting it until it met the bone of my ribcage.
“FUCK!” I roared, my voice nearly breaking from the force. But no one heard my exclamation over their own sounds of pain and despair.
Sessions varied by time and day—we never knew if we’d be experiencing pain, pleasure, or a mixture of both at any given time. It was a way for our bodies to “naturally” respond to the stimulus. At least that’s what the men in the black robes said.
I thought it was just another way for them to control us. To remind us where our place truly was in this whole fucked-up scheme.
Weeks had passed since I was led down here to die, and I hadn’t seen the General or Lord d’Refan since.
The only people I had for company were in the men in black robes, the other subjects, and the whores who visited for the pleasure sessions.
I never bothered learning any of their names.
We were all dead bodies, anyway.
I quickly realized why no one else cared about the man who died while Awakening.
It was because they didn’t.
Or really couldn’t.
Each of the other test subjects down here with me were just washed-out faces. Completely forgettable.
And I wanted to forget them—otherwise I’d live with the guilt of their deaths for the rest of my life.
Even the pleasure men and women that passed through here were a blend of featureless faces.
I hung onto nothing as I tried to survive this place.
At first I thought about my family to keep my mind sane and grounded.
But that quickly dissipated when I realized I would never leave this place alive.
So I did the only thing I could—I detached.
This wasn’t happening to me. It was happening to someone else.
But that only worked for so long.
Until something—like the dig of the blade against my ribs—pulled me back into my own mind.
I panted against the pain, desperate for, yet dreading, a reprieve.
Because, while this pain would end, it would only be temporary.
And tomorrow would only bring new horrors.
The man in the black robes lifted the knife from my skin and blood began to sluice down my side, mixing with the other rivulets from the hundreds of cuts that littered my torso and arms. The table beneath me was wet with it, and when I was finally released from my bonds, my back would be covered in a thick coating of my own blood, sticky and congealing.
The man gazed at my body, pressing various points and occasionally prying open a wound that was beginning to heal. That hurt arguably worse than the initial slice; it burned as he pulled each piece of skin apart, sometimes forcing the cut open further than its original length.
I focused my gaze on the light orb directly above my table, desperately willing my mind to disassociate again.
Just as the man found another space to slice open, the door opened with a bang, and the booming voice of Lord d’Refan broke through.
“Clean up and enter your observations into each subject’s journal. Bring them back to their cells. No further sessions today.” His voice was clipped, but there was a slight manic tinge of excitement beneath it all. “Once you are finished, you are to meet me in the study.”
The door slammed again, and a different soundtrack of noises began.
Instruments of torture were placed on metal trays and moved to the back, where they were cleaned and sanitized. Leather belts were released, and tables groaned as subjects shifted their weight to roll off and onto the floor—distinct thumps accompanied that part.
The tangy metallic smell of blood and nearly painful astringent scent of the disinfectants floated through the space, the smell nearly strong enough to make me gag.
The man in the black robes released my leather straps with a hurried efficiency, his paper-rough, cold hands pushing at my back until I unceremoniously rolled off the table and collapsed on the floor with a groan.
My warm and sticky back met the cool air of the room, and I shivered as I pushed up to my knees and, finally, to my feet.
“Come, come. We must move quick today,” he croaked as I pushed my sweat-soaked hair out of my eyes.
“Shower?” I rasped through my dry and abused throat.
“No,” he clipped, and I closed my eyes on a sigh.
Of course not.
I shuffled slowly behind the man, falling into line with the other subjects as we were led out of the torture room and through the door at the back, into the dimly lit space that functioned as our “home.”
It was really more like a prison.
We were kept in separate cells, unable to touch each other fully—only enough to grasp hands or arms through the metal squares of our cages.
None of us really wanted to touch, anyway.
In each cell was a bed of straw and a blanket in one corner, with a chamber pot in the other. It was primitive and barbaric.
But at least it was cleaned each day.
Lord d’Refan couldn’t have his test subjects dying from infection, after all.
I blinked against the dim lighting, willing my eyes to adjust as I was pushed into my cell. The door closed and locked behind me before I even had the ability to throw myself onto my bed of straw.
I groaned again as the multitude of cuts on my body pulled with each movement, each breath that I took.
I lay face down on the straw and prayed to any of the gods listening for sleep to take me.
Blessedly, one was listening.
I woke to the feeling of something small and bony prodding the muscle on my right shoulder.
Groaning, I attempted to roll and swat at whatever it was, but the sensation just moved lower to my back and, eventually, my butt.
Poke.
Poke.
Poke.
“Hey.” A whispered voice.
Poke.
Poke.
Poke.
“Hey.” Louder this time. “I know you’re awake now.”
Poke.
Poke.
Poke.
“Shtappokingme,” I grumbled, my words slurring together from both sleep and the pain of the previous session.
Poke.
Poke.
Poke.
“Well, then wake up,” the voice said again.
I swatted at whatever was jabbing me and rolled over in an attempt to get it to stop.
But whatever, or whoever, it was simply tapped my arms and chest before getting my cheek.
Poke.
Poke.
Poke.
A finger.
As that offending finger came back to prod me again, I reached my hand out, quick as a cat, and caught it midair.
“Ow, leggo.”
I squeezed once before compiling.
“Then stop poking me,” I mumbled.
“Who are you? Where are we?” the voice asked, and I cracked one eye open.
Through the dim lighting on the walls, I could just make out the figure of a woman. She was tall and skinny, with wild black curls and light-brown skin. Her body was turned toward the wall that divided my cell from hers, completely unabashed in her nakedness.
My eyes unbiddenly traced her barely there curves, noting her small breasts and hips. Either she had small tits, or she was young.
“Who are you?” I fired back at her.
“Faylinn,” she whispered, clearly not wanting to disturb the others. “I tried to wake the girl on the other side of my . . . cage, but I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
The way she deadpanned the statement had me thinking this girl had seen and experienced more than she should have in her life.
I pushed my hands against the mattress to raise my torso slightly, just enough to see past Faylinn’s shoulder. I squinted in the dark, looking to see the rise and fall of the other girl’s chest, but saw nothing.
I lay back down, moving my back and head against the straw in an effort to get comfortable before folding my hands against my chest.
“Looks like it,” I replied.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her brows furrow in confusion.
“You’re not . . . concerned?” she asked, chewing on her lower lip while she fiddled with the straw of her own mattress.
I simply shrugged, the motion pulling at my half-healed incisions.
“Not really in a space to care,” I admitted.
She hummed, a silence that wasn’t altogether uncomfortable falling between us.
“What’s your name?” she asked again.
I paused for a moment, debating telling her, but ultimately deciding that one connection in this place wouldn’t destroy me.
It might actually help. Both of us.
“Lex,” I said to the ceiling.
“Pleasure to meet you, Lex. How old are you? I just turned eighteen. My . . . parents,” she halted over the word, “brought me here on my birthday.”
I turned my head toward her at that confession.
“Your parents brought you here?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
Faylinn shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t ask me. They didn’t reveal their reasoning before they unceremoniously dumped me at the doorstep of the Academy.”
“So, you have a Pleasure affinity?” I asked, suddenly curious.
“No, I don’t have any affinity.” There was something forlorn in her voice, but she covered the emotion on her face quickly.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” I admitted.
“Apparently, neither had Lord d’Refan’s scholars,” she said dryly.
I chuckled lowly at that.
“So you’re here as a freak experiment like the rest of us.”
Faylinn shrugged her shoulders again.
“It would seem that way.”
We lapsed into comfortable silence again.
“How did you end up here?” she asked quietly.
I chuckled again.
“Getting right into the deep stuff, aren’t you?” I teased.
When was the last time I teased someone? It felt good. Foreign, but good. Even when I took care of my siblings, I rarely teased, rarely laughed.
“I’m sorry. Should I ask you your favorite color, then? Or perhaps your dick size. Though I can see it clearly through the wall, so that would be a wasted question.”
A laugh barked from my chest completely unbidden, and Faylinn smiled at me in return. She was radiant, even in the dark.
A few of our cellmates grumbled at the sudden burst of emotion and noise, and we quieted for a bit, allowing them to fall back asleep.
“I volunteered, I guess,” I said.
“You guess?” Her question was laced with disbelief.
“I was voluntold.”
She hummed as I recounted the story of how General d’Alvey found me on the streets.
Faylinn said nothing during my story, and it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders the longer I spoke.
Her presence was cathartic—a balm for my soul that I didn’t know I needed. She was comfort and light in this continuously and depressingly dark place.
I worried the dark would steal her light completely.
We lapsed into silence again after I concluded my sordid tale, and for a bit, I thought she may have fallen asleep. I felt my own eyelids growing heavy, my breaths evening out, as I found solace in Faylinn’s comforting presence.
“Do you blame him?” Her question was whispered into the dark, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear her.
But I did.
I rolled my lips and adjusted my position on the straw bed, mulling over her question and my feelings.
Did I blame Rohak?
“No,” I finally answered, and was relieved to feel the rightness of my answer in my soul.
“You love him.” I turned my head toward her at that quiet confession. Faylinn was lying down on her straw bed, just on the other side of the cage. If there had been no bars to separate us, our shoulders would have connected.
How I longed for connection that wasn’t forced, that wasn’t with a faceless whore I was forced to fuck for Lord d’Refan’s experiments. It wasn’t even about sex or fucking at this point—I just wanted someone else to touch me, hold me.
I felt my fingers reaching through the gaps of the bars involuntarily, startled and pleased to feel Faylinn’s fingertips just on the other side. As if she desired the same thing. As if she were waiting for me.
Neither of us said anything when our fingers connected. We simply laced them together as best we could between the walls of our cages. Her hands were small, fingers thin and long but warm and steady, with a few calluses along their lengths, as if she weren’t immune to work.
I held her fingers tight as I gave her my next truth.
“I do,” I admitted to Faylinn and the dark. “He rescued me and then condemned me to death. And, still, I would follow him to the ends of this earth and back.”
Faylinn brushed her thumb against my knuckles in a soothing motion.
“Do you love your parents? Do you blame them?” I asked when she didn’t respond to my confession.
She shrugged her shoulders, the motion causing the straw to rustle beneath her and pull her fingers a bit out of my grasp, though she continued to hold on as if I were a lifeline.
“Yes and no. To both,” she clarified. “I understand why they did what they did. But I don’t understand why it had to be me.
Seven mouths is a lot to feed, especially in our little northern fishing village.
But I didn’t ask to be born without an affinity.
I didn’t ask to be different.” She whispered the last part, and I squeezed her fingers tightly, unable to find words of comfort for her confession.
So I offered it in the only way I really knew how—through touch.
Neither of us said anything more, lost in our own thoughts and trauma.
But we clung to each other throughout the night through the bars of our cage.
Two souls lost and adrift, but tethered together by Fate or some other design.
Either way, I was glad to have her here with me. Even though I hated what we both would have to experience.