Chapter 57 Black Widow
Niklaus
It’s my fault.
My fault.
My fault.
“Where have they taken her?!” I step into Jack’s personal space.
Jack puts his hand on my shoulder, and I shove it off.
“Your wife harmed a member of the Blood Family. A Guardian. It depends on how angry they are with her. The punishments vary…”
I push him to the wall. “Give. Me. Your. Best. Guess.”
Jack is just a teenager here. A child. But it doesn’t make a difference to me right now. He could be a sentinel standing in my way for all I care. I see a tunnel of red. She cried for her brother as they ripped her from me and dragged her body like a corpse…
“Uh, the Black Widow Room?!” Jack blurts out in exasperation. “But it’ll be more extreme than that probably. A Marionette Theater within the Black Widow Room.”
Fury and hatred warp my memory recollection.
“What the fuck does that mean?!”
“Well, it…it means…”
It all comes back to me.
Marionette Theater is the House of Jester Night when a female inmate has to let a line of men please her in front of an audience. The Black Widow Room is where they drug the female inmate to be so aroused she touches herself in front of a small, intimate audience of soldiers.
“No.”
“Niklaus, I know this is bad, but—”
I could slam his head against the granite wall.
“Bad?!” I growl, balling my hands into fists. “Bad? That’s my wife they just hauled away from me. My. Fucking. Wife. If you think I’m letting another man touch her, you’re either experiencing psychosis, or you are an idiot.”
“They are not going to kill her,” Sophia says, as if for a moment that makes it all right.
“No? But they are going to sexually assault her.”
Jack and Sophia have nothing to say to that.
My world burns around the edges, going up in a hazardous storm of smoke and debris. I can’t let this happen to her. Christ, she was only trying to protect me. Why the fuck didn’t I just go in? Why was I being such a coward?
This is my fault.
My fault.
My fault.
Sapphire, baby, I am so sorry.
I’ll fix this.
I am going to fix this.
“Tell me where they’ve taken her so I can fucking kill them.”
Sapphire
“Wait. Please someone just explain to me what’s going on!”
Sentinels chain my arms to a table. A soldier in black leather and cables prepares a crow’s mask, connecting it to some sort of tank. It holds that fucking arousal drug…doesn’t it?
The room pulses with an oppressive rhythm, like a heart that continues to beat after death. The charcoal walls glisten with moisture and centuries old blood.
My legs are spread, and my ankles are shackled down.
I feel sick.
“Hold on. I won’t do it again, okay? I made a mistake!” I try to keep my voice steady, but the panic leaks into my tone, quivering my speech.
A hand swings into my jaw, hard enough to sink my teeth into my tongue.
“Speak when spoken to, Demechnef Whore!”
Tears involuntarily flood to my eyes.
My red uniform panties are ripped off, making me scream, and leaving a pink mark around my hips. I drop my head to the table and hyperventilate, staring at the yellow and red bulbs hanging from the ceiling like the garland of a grotesque carnival canopy.
I know what this room is now.
Soldiers are seated and standing, flicking their tongues between two fingers to taunt me. Their dull lip piercings, tattoos, and brown teeth send a pulse of bile splashing along the back of my throat.
The vulgar words and belittling jabs all blend together with the wheezing moans of the glitching music. An organ and trumpet playing off key in obnoxious intervals.
This is the Black Widow Room.
Crude circus masks meant to scare me are pulled over their faces. I focus on the sulfur-halos around the men’s boots.
My face wrinkles together like a young girl. And I don’t even feel the fiery sting of the glistening wounds from being dragged through the halls anymore.
I know I am about to be assaulted.
I know I will be powerless to stop it.
The table gives a low, metallic groan as my straps and chains are secured.
I inhale sharply, pulling in the unforgettable stench of grease, copper, and burned sugar.
My mind wages through a million possibilities. I could try and travel right now to get myself out of this. But what if I end up leaving Niklaus behind? I’d never forgive myself if I lost him. I’d never be able to look his mother in the eye and tell her I left him in the Vexamen Prison to die.
I watch with pleading eyes as they walk the tank and haunting crow mask to my table. Cheers. Laughter. Applause.
Screams.
My screams.
The shrieks are broken and hoarse, stinging my vocal cords until I make unrecognizable, animalistic noises out of sheer terror.
This isn’t like what Apple May did to me in the asylum.
That was with Niklaus.
He is no stranger to me.
These men are brutes. Wild and cruel.
I’m howling words. Sentences strung together out of begging for freedom. And nothing—nothing in this world can compare to praying not to be molested.
A blast of air hits the sensitive skin between my legs.
A brass door crashes against the wall.
I lift my head off the table to stare into Niklaus’s red, devastated eyes as he sees all of me exposed on the table.
A commander shouts at him, pointing and drawing a weapon to attack the unwanted intrusion.
“Niklaus!” I wail, crying so hard my brain swells and pulses against my skull. “Niklaus, please! Don’t let them hurt me!”
His deep-sea blue eyes fill with tears.
“I will take her punishment.”
My stomach drops.
Wait…
That’ll never work.
They won’t want him for this.
The sentinel glances back and forth between us with intrigue. A curly eyebrow is lifted as he points to me with his baton. “This your wife?”
“Yes.”
The sentinel translates to the small audience of high-ranking officers.
Their reactions are both disappointed and humorous. They shout and laugh, throwing their masks off.
I perk up. Maybe this is a benefit of being mated in this prison? Maybe this just saved me! I watch the leading sentinel like a hawk, waiting for the verdict.
He strokes his beard, thinking, weighing his options.
And with a lift of his chin to the sentinels behind me, I’m unstrapped, and the chains are unlocked.
My backside squeaks against the table as they pull me off it.
My hands shield my lower half, fingers shaking and twitching while I pinch my thighs together.
Men shackle Niklaus’s hands together, holding them outward. He’s directed to the table I was once exposed on.
“He will take his wife’s punishment!”