Chapter 20
My body chooses the absolute worst timing to shove me back up into the surface of consciousness.
The timing being when it feels as if liquid fire is poured over my back. My mouth opens before my eyes do, a shriek slicing into the room.
“Hold her down!”
Hands stamp over my flailing limbs. A set at each leg, each arm. More liquid fire sloshing down my spine.
I scream and cry. Beg.
“Stop! Stop! Please stop! I’m sorry! Please!”
They don’t listen. They don’t stop. I can’t get away from the excruciating pain.
What did I do? I can’t remember. I can’t remember, but I’m so sorry.
My torturers don’t stop no matter how sorry I am.
It’s too much to take. My stomach swells, packed in too tight, and then bursts open. Vomit spurts, watering down my scream, throttling me in its choke.
As if I weren’t on fire enough already, the bile burns up my throat and singes my teeth. I can’t even turn enough to heave away from myself. Not with so many holding me down.
The spew lands on the mattress mashed against the side of my face and soaks into my hair. I think someone must have iron bristles in their hand, and they’re using it to scour down my back. Tearing away all my skin. Leaving me raw.
I’m going to die.
Or maybe I have died, and I’m being punished in the hellish afterlife that burns within the earth’s fiery core.
I sputter. Tears blinding, nose wet, bile-strung spittle clinging to my mouth. “Please! I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry!”
Someone yanks up my flayed flesh and rips.
The scream that comes from me is abhorrent. Animalistic. It goes on and on and on until I have no voice left, and I know death is coming. Because a person can’t withstand this level of agony.
“I said hold her!” someone shouts.
I sob.
Then—
Something slams, loud and shocking.
“What the fuck is going on?”
I jerk at the voice. His voice.
The Piper’s face flashes behind my drowning eyes. His music lulls inside my throbbing skull.
The hands don’t simply leave my limbs. It feels like they’re wrenched away. A crash sounds across the room. A man shouts.
The Piper shouts louder.
My ears clog as I vomit again. This time, I manage to spill over the side of the bed. The bile scours my torn throat. I grip hold of air with ragged nails, tugging it down in a splintered breath.
Yes, this must be hell.
The Piper told me he would lure me back from the brink, and he’s fulfilling his promise.
He’s come to take me again.
Thief.
“My lord, this is what had to be done—”
“You were commanded to heal her, not fucking torture her.”
“I am healing her. Her entire system is infected. I had to flush it out.”
“And this is how you’re doing it? Without giving her anything for the pain? Something to ensure she didn’t wake through the worst of it?”
The pointed questions lead to a pause as I droop against the sodden mattress, my hair soaked and tangled beneath my cheek.
“Look at her!” he shouts, and his voice is so horribly menacing that even I shake. “You’ve butchered her. Is this how you would tend to me?”
“My lord, the fiend—”
There’s a noise. Choking. Something growled. Something hard hitting the floor. Then that floor seems to tremble with booted steps.
“What are you doing?” someone asks. A different voice. One with fright caught in the tone.
“Taking over. Get me supplies.”
“My lord—”
“Do I need to play a fucking song? I said, give me supplies.”
I open my burning eyes at the sound of rummaging. At footsteps.
The Piper crouches in front of me.
His face is covered in shadows that fume. In fury that smokes. “I’m going to pick you up.”
Please no.
A garbled breath is all that comes out.
“Put your hands around my neck.”
I let out a breath of shaky incredulity. Does he think I can move in my current state?
“Can’t.”
“You will.”
Fates, how I hate him.
But self-preservation kicks in, because instinct tells me that it’s better to go with him than to stay with these torturers.
Only that driving force gives me the strength to lift my arms as he picks me up.
My hands wind around the back of his neck as he does the rest. He stands, holding me chest to chest, and it’s agony.
I don’t have the strength to hold on.
When he feels my arms slipping, one of his hands fists both of mine, while his other keeps grip under me. I let my face fall against his chest.
Surely, I’m smearing leftover vomit on him.
Fills me with a bit of satisfaction, truth be told.
My body hangs uselessly against him, swaying with his movement. I don’t keep track of where we’re going, and I don’t particularly care, though every single jostled step makes me grimace.
I open my mouth to talk, if just to distract myself from how horrendously I hurt. “Walk nicer,” I rasp.
“Me walking you at all is nice, blight.”
I blink. “Blight?”
“Blight of the world. Bred from the blight of the Bane. A blight on my damn life.”
He grumbles that last part.
My back is engulfed. The only reason I know I’m not actually on fire is the fact that he’s carrying me. He wouldn’t risk flames for a blight.
There’s more jostling, and then a door opening and slamming shut behind us. “I’m going to set you down now.”
He bends his knees, and my bottom hits a mattress. Only when he steps away and I sway slightly do I realize that all this time, I’ve been topless. My bare chest smashed against his.
Things are just great.
Really, really great.
I reach up to cover my breasts, but he doesn’t even look at me. “Lie down.”
My chest hits the mattress, not just from his command, but because I can’t hold myself up anyway. But it’s soft, and I sink right in, my hair splaying around me.
I hear him rummaging around and then there’s something pressing against my lips. Looking up, I see he’s crouching in front of me again, a vial held to my mouth. “Drink,” he orders.
“Poison?”
“Probably.”
I huff out a humorless laugh and he tips the vial into my open mouth. Some of the liquid dribbles out since I’m lying down, but he presses his thumb against the corner of my lips, sealing it in. “Swallow.”
Our gazes clash. My throat bobs involuntarily. A sharp, bitter guzzle of liquid runs down my throat, washing away the taste of the bile.
His eyes dig into mine. Intense and fixed.
Unmoving.
His thumb swipes across my bottom lip, leaving a drag of the bitter herb to sting. But the movement . . . was soft.
He pulls his hand and vial away. I breathe out the heady herbs.
“Sleep.”
“Eternally?” I croak.
This time, I see it. The faintest quirk of his lips.
I must really be on death’s doorstep for him to gain a sense of humor. And I must have gone insane from the torture that the sight of that smirk makes my stomach swoop.
“Not unless I strangle you in your sleep. Which I won’t, since that’s my bed,” he answers.
“Your bed? Good.” My eyes drift closed. Whatever was in that drink is potent.
“Good?”
“Mmm,” I hum groggily, hand motioning to my hair. “I vomited before. Now it’s on your sheets.”
“Wonderful.”
This time, my own mouth quirks. The same side his thumb pressed.
I hear footsteps that drift. A door closing. I inhale slowly, sending a thankful prayer to the Fates that I’m no longer being hurt. My senses start pulling with the tide of the medicine.
The bed smells of him, the scent wedged right into the feather pillow beneath my head. It’s like polished silver warmed by breath. Sharp at first, but fading into a muskier metallic hush and tinged with a note of sugared smoke.
He smells the way he plays.
In echoed layers.
And in my vulnerable state, I can’t block it out. Instead, it seems to sink into my pores as much as I sink into oblivion.
All the way down . . .
Until every morsel of my darkness is wrapped up in him.