Chapter 19 #2
“You truly have no idea how to break me, do you?” My eyes shine with amusement, despite the pain.
“Dragons have no clue. Look at the amateurish way you’re holding the whip.
If you want to shred through my skin with each blow, you need to change your wrist action.
By the Shadow Devils, stop playing with me. Harder.”
Taran stares at me. “You’re a psycho.”
“Is this news to you?”
“The savage isn’t wrong,” Maximinus’ calls from behind the bars of the cell.
“But then, how could you break someone who has already been raised by the tender hand of Nebet, as an apprentice of the Scarlet Temple? You’re still young, An.
You believe that you understand the dark methods in our realms, but you were sheltered by Vicious.
Your Guild is not the only one who likes to play twisted games. ”
Taran blushes, dropping the whip to the floor. “I am trying—”
“My pretty assassin, you have been trying for two weeks,” Maximinus interrupts, sharply. “Your usual techniques won’t work with this one. Get out.”
I slowly smile as Taran’s head snaps up at the humiliation of being ordered out of his own dungeon.
“Run along.” I drop my hands, hiding the hiss of pain at the stretch on my welts, before turning around. “It appears that the adults are about to have a talk.”
I arch my brow, making a shooing motion with my hands.
Taran glances between Maximinus and me in outrage, before he snatches up the whip and storms out of the cell, slamming and locking the door behind him.
I chuckle, as I listen to the sound of his footsteps as he runs, hopefully to cry in the arms of his Omega about his humiliation in a nest overrun with my faithful beetles.
Then I turn my steady stare on Aurelius’ uncle — the dragon who I have been determined to kill for my friend’s sake since I was young.
To my surprise, Maximinus doesn’t threaten me but instead, smiles. “Since the adults are now talking, what would you like me to have fetched for you? It’s cold. How about a blanket? Water? Food? Blood?”
“Nothing in life is free,” I reply. “What would all that cost me?”
He looks surprised, as if he expected me to be easy to trick. “Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Sweet vampire, how about seeing it this way?” Maximinus moves closer to the bars.
“It comes with an offer. You’re the top assassin in the realms, and I have a secret core of workers in this court who are loyal to me, including assassins.
You must have figured out that the intention is for you to die in this dungeon.
I am offering a way out of here for you right now.
You simply need to make an oath to work for me. ”
Rage swallows me. My shadows lash out, flapping around me.
I straighten with a grimace, feeling every burning welt now like my back has been lit on fire.
“You would dare ask me to be loyal to you,” my eyes glow red, “when I know what you have done to Aurelius — what you have always done to him. I made it law in my kingdom that people like you would have their knots hacked off, before their vile heads.”
For a moment, Maximinus appears confused and then he pales. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do.”
“Who told you…?”
“I have spies.”
My moths told me what they saw when I was brought to the Shadow Court with Nebet.
My moths shared secrets that despite all the confessions that we whispered to each other in the rose garden, Aurelius was still unable to voice.
I couldn’t protect him then. I have dreamed of being able to do so every day since.
“He’s your enemy,” Maximinus sneers. “Why do you care? Don’t you hate him?”
“You have planned it that way, haven’t you?”
Maximinus gives me a long look. “You are not how I imagined.”
“And you are just the Alpha I thought you would be. So, I have a counteroffer. You beg me for mercy now, while your heart is still light enough to imagine mercy possible. Then I rip it from your chest. By the time, however, I send your heart to be weighed by the Shadow Devils — because your Gods will have no use for such a blackened thing — I suspect that even they will throw it to burn in disgust with the rest of you.”
“Insolence.” Maximinus slaps his palm against the bars, which is a victory to me.
“I will teach you manners, Blood. I did the same to the fae. I needed to strip away his power in the most painful way. I simply need to find the right pressure point because everyone has one, then all pets can be taught to behave.”
“I am not a pet.” Then a sickening memory hits me. “You truly did poison my Raven. Blinded him. You’re the reason that he’s dying.”
Maximinus gives a satisfied smile. “All fae deserve to die. Their lands belong to Draca Kingdom. We are going to build a beautiful empire on them.”
With a howl, I throw myself at the bars.
My fangs and claws extend, and I battle the cursed magic that is restraining me, as my shadows raggedly climb the walls.
I shove my arm through the bars, not caring that my skin is sizzling against the silver, attempting to grab hold of Maximinus, the murderer of my Blood Lover.
Maximinus stumbles back out of my reach. His skin is pale and clammy.
I swipe my claws at him, feral with righteous rage.
“Beast.” Maximinus runs his hand over his sweating bald head. “You will change your mind. You know why? Because I hold a secret that I know you need more than blood.”
“I don’t need anything from you.”
“Even news about your missing twin?”
I still.
Slowly, I lower my arm.
I move back from the bars, holding my burned arm to my chest.
My heart is beating rapidly.
It’s a lie.
A trap.
But on the Void, what if he does know where Lazarus is?
I wet over my dry lips. “Tell me.”
Maximinus’ eyes glitter like he knows that he has caught me.
“The funny thing is that KalaKant believed that your brother was the docile twin, while you were the strong one. But you remained under the control of those who trained you, while Lazarus never did. He behaved because he was told that it was the only way to keep you alive, but as soon as he heard that you’d become King, he ran. ”
My throat is tight. “I don’t believe you.”
Maximinus gives a cruel laugh. “Why? Did you believe that your brother was a good little sacrifice? Happy to throw himself into the Void?”
I had.
I’d been prepared to sacrifice myself.
Pride rises in me that Lazarus valued himself enough not to.
Yet is any of this true? I can’t trust Maximinus. I don’t trust the Void Devil, however, who claimed that my twin died either.
Hope still surges through me.
What if Lazarus is alive?
“You told him to run to Draca Kingdom apparently,” Maximinus replies. “You insisted that he would be safe here. He wanted to seek help for you.”
My breathing picks up. “Please, is he here? Is he all right? Where…?”
“If you’d made an oath to serve me, then I would have told you.
Too late.” Maximinus wanders to the base of the steps.
“When you think about it, I suppose it makes it your fault that he came here. I welcomed him in, of course. He was so sweet and innocent after all that time hidden away by the Void Cult. He didn’t know that he should set up protections or deals to stop himself from being hurt.
But I was generous enough to promise to bring his brother to the Shadow Court.
” He gestures at me. “I didn’t say that you’d be here as a guest, rather than a captive.
But that can change. You’ll learn that to a vampire, rather than a fae pet, I can be kind.
I can reward, rather than punish. Take up my offer.
I’ll give you some time to think about where your allegiances should lie.
I’m the one who saved your brother, while Aurelius… ”
“What?” I rasp.
I won’t believe a word that Maximinus has said until I see my brother with my own eyes.
I won’t bind myself to serve Aurelius’ enemy.
But what if after more than a decade without seeing Lazarus, the other half of my soul, I finally get to see him?
My eyes burn with the tears that I am holding back.
“Hmm.” Maximinus mounts the first step. “Maybe the problem is that you’re being kept in solitary.
It would be better to give you some company and remind you what it feels like not to live as an outcast. It may encourage you to remember what it felt like to grow up with your twin, and why you should be fighting harder to get him back. ”
When he disappears up the steps, I burn my hand, slamming it into the bars.
“Where’s Laz?” I roar, unable to hold back the tears. “Where, you venomous serpent?”
Maximinus’ voice drifts back to me. “And you boasted that dragons didn’t know how to break you.”