Chapter 16 Devil’s Words Dying
“Please tell me calling out your twin brother’s name in your sleep isn’t incestuous,” Niklaus says, voice the epitome of severe exhaustion.
Has he slept at all?
“I keep having the same dream.” I clear my throat. My voice is terrifying, like I’ve been gargling broken glass. “I hear Krimson calling for me while I’m hanging off a cliff, about to fall.”
Niklaus processes this.
“It feels so real.”
“Well, that’s…creepy,” he sighs.
I attempt a shrug. Yeah.
I almost ask him how he’s holding up over there.
That chair must be uncomfortable and I’m certain he’s probably going mad with hunger and thirst. But what the hell do I care?
I replay the look in his eyes as he shoved me into the creek.
His unforgivable words. And to make matters worse, I’m the one taking a beating!
So, he gets to sit in a chair that is making his ass fall asleep.
Am I really going to check on the well-being on his numb backside when I’m currently a human pile of bruises, swollen throbbing flesh, and possibly some internal bleeding? Nope.
“We need to come up with a plan to get out of here,” Niklaus says, breaking the deafening silence with the intrusiveness of his voice. It’s clipped and low, like he can’t be bothered to speak but is unable to stay silent either.
I pause to think. “I’m coming up empty.”
“He seems to like you…”
“I see where you’re going with this.”
“And?”
“And no.”
“Why not?”
I close my eyes. “I’m pretty sure he liked my mother too. You think if she could have batted her eyelashes and gotten him to free her, she would have tried that?”
“It was a different time then,” Niklaus responds, though he’s skeptical.
“It won’t work.”
“You’re one of the most manipulative human beings I’ve ever met. You’re not even going to try?”
“I—wow—that’s so sweet.” I raise my eyebrows.
“Wasn’t a compliment.”
“Look, I’ll give it my best shot. But only if you have another plan when that one fails.”
Niklaus exhales slowly. “I’m working on getting my left wrist out of this restraint.”
I pause.
“Hmm.” I blink slowly. “So, basically, if I fail at flirting with the captor my father permanently maimed, we’re dying in this basement.”
“Correct,” he says.
The basement door swings open, cracking into the cement wall with a boom.
“—and that girl will learn!” Agatha hollers.
Yep, that’s me. That girl.
A flood of light swarms the gloomy basement. But in this awful scenario, light bleeding into the darkness is never good. It brings terror and tormentors in its wake.
With more speed and aggression than an elderly woman should be capable of, Agatha bustles down the stairs. A bucket of water sloshes and spills as she stomps down each step with old penny loafers on her feet and a caddy of rags and sponges in her left hand.
“Oh my, I bloodied you up good, didn’t I?” Agatha stares at my face, collarbone, and ribs from a few feet away. For a moment, her thin lips pinch together, and I think she might be experiencing a touch of remorse…
“Next time, that small elven nose of yours breaks. Yes?” She shakes her bony fist at me.
“Understood,” I reply blankly.
My face is getting so swollen, I’m having a hard time showing any facial expressions at all, which can only be a good thing for me right now. It would hurt to roll my eyes, scowl, smile mockingly, or any other movement that would showcase my rebellious, pain-in-the-ass personality.
“Good. Now open your mouth. Young ladies should be put to death for using the vocabulary you displayed to me. But I won’t do that. I’m just going to scrub that filth from your oral orifice.”
My eyes widen. “Uh, no thanks.”
“No?” Agatha lifts her chin in surprise.
“I draw the line at anything to do with my oral orifice.”
Her slow chuckle is unnatural and off-putting. The powdery lines along her cheeks deepen, but that sickened smile of annoyance does not touch her eyes. They glare at me with a challenge. A deep-rooted need to break me.
“I don’t remember asking,” she says, timeworn voice like rotting carcasses in a barren, winter desert.
“I don’t remember begging.”
If Niklaus ever makes it home, I hope he’ll tell Krimson I went out swinging—not running my big mouth.
Agatha rolls up the black, flowy sleeves of her dress after setting her bucket and caddy on the floor. Her arthritic hands dig through the caddy, sorting through bars of soaps and amber bottles of solution. But she yanks out a dull, metal contraption. It has bolts and clamps and a round opening.
Damn.
I shift my wary gaze to Niklaus. He doesn’t meet my eyes but raises his brows at the tool that’s now hovering over my mouth.
“Wait. You’re not going to pick on him at all?” I stammer nervously.
Agatha glances at him in disgust. “Oh, that boy’s penance is coming. He’s got the devil in him too.”
“But his mouth and vocabulary are way filthier than mine!” I yank on my restraints, unraveling as the tip of metal grazes my lips. I don’t even care that I’m trying to sell him out. My body is a lightning storm of bruises and burst blood vessels. That thing is not prying my mouth open!
“I’m flattered,” Niklaus says with a bored expression. “But I think everyone agrees you take the cake, Sa—Audrina.”
I whimper as Agatha dips a piece of wool that looks like sandpaper in the bucket of soap, water, and God knows what else…
“But maybe she’s right, old woman.” Niklaus’s eyes flicker to me with only the briefest flash of uncertainty beneath that deep water in his irises. His jaw flexes. “My mouth needs cleansing. You’d blush if only you knew where my tongue has been.”
Agatha hisses as if his words and the visual that is entering her mind has burned her.
Is he…is he trying to take the heat off me?
“Shut it, boy!” The foul old woman pries my teeth apart with the metal tool. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Jesus, deal with him now! Please!
Despite my greatest efforts, my jaw is stretched wide open. The force is beyond my own strength without the threat of breaking a tooth. I even try to thrash my head back and forth, but Agatha has put a strap over my forehead to hold me in place.
“I usually use this device for force-feedings,” she muses, wringing out the wool sponge. “But it does what I need it to for this.”
I pinch my eyes shut and squeal in distress, unwilling to watch those gray, frail hands shove anything into my mouth.
The odor is acrid and sharp, like wound antiseptic gone sour or a tin bucket left in the sun.
The scraping motion starts on my inner cheek with the wet, scratchy material scrubbing the soft tissue raw.
My tongue darts around to avoid the putrid taste of soap and old coins soaked in vinegar. A chemical. A chalky paste.
It’s as gross as having your mouth washed out with soap can be—
Wait.
The pins and needles of the rough gravelly sponge sting, yes.
But it changes so swiftly, biting into my gums and tongue with a wild, mind-numbingly painful burn.
It’s not heat, but a shriveling, tightening, stabbing sensation on the most sensitive flesh I have.
It’s as if each taste bud is curling in on itself, retreating from whatever chemical is doing this to me.
My teeth ache and grind against the metal clamp, causing my nerves to scream.
“Here we are,” Agatha grumbles, stretching the corners of my mouth wider.
And it hits like I’ve been lit on fire without a flame.
The moisture in my mouth evaporates in seconds. My tongue, cheeks, uvula, and throat stick together as if all my mucosal membranes have shrunken and died. My saliva glands simply stop producing.
I scream and gargle the chalky soap.
That deadly sponge drags across my tongue like it’s trying to steal my voice.
“You feel that, girl?”
Tears well from my eyes even though I squeeze them shut, blocking out the image of Agatha’s scornful, craggy face.
“That’s the devil’s words in your mouth dying one by one.”
I swallow involuntarily, immediately seizing as the soap and chemicals slither down my throat. My body bucks against the mattress, choking and coughing up nothing. I’m going to die. I’m going to choke. My throat is closing. I’m dying.
Krimson! Please! Can you hear me? Help!
Niklaus
That fucking sponge is drawing blood.
My shoulders sear with pain as I flex my back in anticipation. How long is this going to last? How much longer can she stand this?
Sapphire whimpers and chokes. The muscles on her stomach coil tightly together. Every time Agatha scrubs at a new spot in her mouth, that sponge is like a live wire. It sends volts of agony through her body that are palpable to everyone in this room.
She’s had enough.
Agatha pauses to dip the wool sponge back into the bucket of whatever that shit is, and Sapphire looks at me once.
A spark of eye contact. Bloodshot corneas.
Swollen, black and blue skin. She’s in bad shape.
That quick glance isn’t a pleading look for help or mercy, it’s a mere acknowledgment that I’m seeing her as low as it can get.
I almost call out her name.
But my teeth are wired shut.
My breathing is heavy, labored, and my pulse kicks when she gags.
“Try not to swallow it,” Agatha instructs, bearing down against Sapphire’s feeble attempts to whip her head away from this evil fucking baptism.
That slight twinge of guilt hooks into my chest because it’s her getting the beating again.
Not me. Her. It makes my stomach twist and turn sour.
But she brought this on herself by running that mouth again.
These are the consequences of her actions.
I’m not responsible for her if she decides to be an idiot in a dire situation that could cost her life.
It doesn’t matter that we grew up together.
That my mother would wring my neck for not protecting Aunt Skylenna’s daughter. This girl means nothing to me.