The Dungeon
Tobias writhed as the warden strapped his ankles and wrists to the stone slab table.
It didn’t do Tobias any good, as his strength had long been depleted.
Every inch of his body was on fire, debased and violated in some manner.
His fingertips and toes were coated in blood, scabbed over where his nails used to be.
Gashes atop gashes crisscrossed his back, a mess of tatters that left little of his flesh unmarred.
He’d lost count of his broken bones, and dirt festered in his seeping wounds.
If Brontes’s goal was to strip him of his humanity, he had achieved it.
“You’re testing my patience.”
“Your life is of little import. I believe I’ve made that clear.” Brontes stalked closer, stopping at his warden’s side. “If anything, your death would give me great pleasure.”
“So kill me, then.”
Brontes’s eye narrowed. Tobias was shamed by how much he’d come to fear that expression, but next to the hulking warden and his haunting leather mask, the sovereign was meager in comparison.
“Where is my daughter?” Brontes asked. “The woman who abandoned you. The very reason you’re here with me.”
Tobias braced himself for whatever was to come next. Brontes waited a few agonizing seconds, then nodded at the warden, who pulled a long blade from his belt.
The steel tore slowly through the dirtied skin along Tobias’s ribs.
He’d tried to stifle it, had bit down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood, but a cry ripped from his throat.
Sweat stung his eyes, but he fought to keep them open, glancing between Brontes and the warden, the crown and the mask.
“She did that to you.” Brontes leaned in close enough for Tobias to feel the heat of his breath. “Each broken bone, each mark on your flesh was Her doing. Had She never plagued your life, would you be lying here?”
Tobias stilled himself, looking Brontes hard in the eye.
“End your suffering,” Brontes said. “Tell me where She is.”
Tobias said nothing, already readied when the blade carved into his body, its sharpened tip moving with excruciating slowness that left him rasping for air.
“You’re wasting no one’s time but your own.” Brontes spoke impassively, taking root against the wall once again. “Whether it’s today or tomorrow, I will find Her.”
Tobias grunted past his pain. “If you’re so confident, why do you need me at all?”
“My army will scour—”
“Your army is shit,” Tobias hissed. “All these soldiers at your disposal and nothing to show for it. She’s evaded you for months.”
“They found you.”
“I thought my life was of little import?”
Brontes’s unblinking gaze bore through Tobias, burrowing into his empty gut. This look was unfamiliar, and it terrified him.
“His manhood.” Brontes turned to the warden. “Cut it off.”
Tobias lurched from the stone slab, pain be damned.
The restraints kept him contained, but that didn’t stop him from wrestling and pulling, reopening each wound that marked his body.
The masked man grabbed the front of Tobias’s pants, cock locked tight in his fist, and Tobias couldn’t stop the scream that bellowed from his throat.
As tears sprang from his eyes, the warden positioned his blade at the base of his shaft, ready to carve through it.
He stopped short, frozen while Tobias squirmed in his grasp.
“You hesitate?” Brontes said.
“He will die from the loss of blood, Your Majesty.” The warden’s voice was deep, muffled by the leather covering his mouth. “Is that what you desire?”
The silence howled in Tobias’s ears. He trembled against the slab, overwhelmed by the instinct to fight or flee, his wrists worn raw beneath their restraints.
Brontes growled and turned away. Only then did the warden release Tobias’s manhood, but the relief was short-lived as Brontes’s voice rang out.
“Grab the pliers.”
The warden disappeared from view, only to return with a new device in hand—rusted metal spattered with browned blood.
“Open him up,” Brontes ordered.
Large fingers dug into Tobias’s mouth, and though he tried to force his jaw shut, it didn’t take long for the masked man to pry his lips apart. Tobias hacked and choked as Brontes stalked into view.
“The next time I see you, I want you to think about this moment.” The sovereign’s tone was impassive. “Only you can end your suffering. Remember that.”
He leaned forward, pliers in hand, and Tobias shook within his restraints.
The metal made contact with his teeth, and he screamed as they ripped a molar free from his gums, a slow torment that vibrated through him.
Brontes set his sights on a second tooth, then a final one, and Tobias’s throat turned raw from howling, his tongue swimming in the metallic taste of blood.
Tobias was barely aware of his surroundings once the torture ended, overwhelmed by his agonized jaw and heaving lungs.
Bearlike hands untied his restraints and pulled him from the table, and he didn’t resist, not while he was dragged across the floor nor while the door was locked behind him.
The world thrummed around him, and he wasn’t sure if seconds or hours had passed when the dungeon finally began to take proper shape.
The cells were lined up like soldiers, each just like the next with its own waste bucket and stark black bars.
He’d expected the view to change. Maybe he’d find himself in bed with Leila, roused after a horrible nightmare.
Instead, he vomited hot blood, reigniting his countless wounds with aches and pangs.
A soft sound stilled him. A whisper. No, a whimper.
All that surrounded him were the hard dirt floor, the bars of his cell, the discarded pile of rags in the cell beside him.
Another quiet moan broke through the silence, and despite his swollen eyes, Tobias could’ve sworn the rags trembled.
The pile was a woman huddled on the floor, hands clasped over her head.
Matted blonde hair poked out from between her dirtied fingers, and blue-green eyes rimmed with tears gazed back at him.
Tobias sucked in a shaky breath, barely able to croak her name.
“Pippa?”