Chapter 56
Rafe
Excitement tingles through my body. My bones rattle in glee. The watch in my pocket ticks with the steady beat of inevitability.
Almost time.
I pretend to busy myself with this morning’s Chronicle, perched on the corner of my desk, but not a single word sticks.
It all blurs into meaningless smudges. Too preoccupied imagining the blood I’ll spill, the screams I’ll hear, the tears I’ll watch flow—crimson mixing with salt water.
Such a beautiful colour. Such a pure shade of consequence.
The bell above the door rings.
A death knell in miniature.
“We received your message.”
I don’t look up right away.
“You have news on the wench?”
Lina’s husband and mother-in-law step into my office, dragging a grey cloud with them. His eyes alight with a hope I know where Lina is.
I don’t.
Dropping the paper on my desk, I place my hands in my trouser pockets and offer a solemn nod. “Yes,” I say, pressing my lips into a flat line. “I need to show you something.” I gesture to the open portal, and like lambs they follow.
Little do they know I’m luring them to slaughter.
We land on a lonely, bog-bound island in Winari. Not a soul for miles. Just water, moss, and mud. A perfect place.
“She’s here?” His brows scrunch, gaze swinging in all directions.
“She will be,” I say, peeling off my waistcoat and rolling up the sleeves of my white tunic. “One day.”
“What?”
His mother huffs, turns and slams straight into my brother’s chest. She staggers back, shuddering beneath his deadly gaze.
“What is this,” her son spits, narrowly missing my shoes.
I don’t appreciate that, they’re newly polished.
“This? Just something to pass time.”
“Or brother bonding time,” Sam chuckles, cracking his neck as I do mine.
“We do have a lot to make up for, Chuck.”
The mother backs up a step, and Lina’s husband makes a break for the portal. They don’t get far, not when Sam grabs the wench’s hair, and I grab the husband by his shirt, belting him in the gut. He folds like a wet paper towel as I drag his sorry carcass to the chains around the tree up ahead.
Through their kicking and screaming, cries and pleas, both Sam and I work as a well-oiled team making sure they’re secure, complete with nullifying cuffs in case they get creative with their power.
Though mid-tiered folks aren’t a match for the higher-tiered.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he coughs, blood flecking his lips.
“You are here for redemption. Or damnation. I haven’t decided.”
“For what, you fucking lunatic!”
“For touching what’s mine!” Spit flies from my mouth, my nose almost touching his as my chest heaves. “For abusing her.”
His eyes narrow. “Thealina?”
“Anyone else you’ve been abusing for decades?”
His jaw slackens, his eyes downcast. “I can explain it all.”
“Till your hearts content for all I care,” I murmur, crouching down beside the sack Sam brought.
“It’s why I struck our deal. I wanted to undo it all!” he screams; I don’t care. He chose to abuse her in the first place, he needs be punished.
“What am I doing with her?” Sam calls.
I glance over my shoulder at the trembling wench hanging from the other tree calling for her son to save her. “Did you know the forehead is particularly sensitive to pain?” The old hag’s face sours. I smirk, then look at Sam. “Shave her head and carve Thealina into her forehead.”
She cries and pleads, protesting her innocence.
“Please, leave my mother out of this. I’ll deal with her.”
The mother is half the rot.
Sam runs a razor over her scalp, slow strokes peeling away what little life clings to her hair. She sobs as each strand falls like brittle ash. We did her a favour; she barely had any. Dull and lifeless.
Still, she weeps.
“Seriously,” I raise a brow. “Your mother’s been the puppet master. She doesn’t get to walk away unscathed.”
“Why… why are you doing this?”
“I already told you. But if you need more meat on the bones… it’s because I know Lina won’t.”
“She’s come to you?”
I nod, lifting a saw up from the soil, the sharp teeth eager to taste flesh and blood.
“You fucking my…”
“Shhhh…” I press my finger to his split lips. “What we are to each other isn’t your concern. You lost the right to her the moment you abused her. The moment you cut out her tongue.”
He barks a laugh in my face. “The tongue you told me to cut out?”
I smile, not with happiness, with guilt and acceptance. “Yeah. And I’ll never not carry the guilt. Until my last dying breath.”
“People saw me enter your office. They’ll report me missing. Lead the authorities to you. This is madness.”
“Well, we all go a little mad sometimes.” I wink, bringing the saw to his fingers.
“Wa… wait. Wait!”
I look him square in the eye. “No.”
“WAIT!”
“Did you or did you not use your fingers to touch Lina?”
His face twists. I lean in close, resting my forearm on the bark above his head. “Have you, or have you not put your grubby fingers on or inside Lina?”
“She is my wife.”
I smile, wide, full-toothed, bringing the saw to his knuckles once again. And begin sawing.
He splutters and pleads, screams blending with his mother’s.
“You see, you’re about to lose every single limb and appendage that has touched her.”
“You’re fucking crazy. She’s my wife!”
“And you didn’t take care of her!” His guttural cries are like music as I hack his digits one by one.
“You ever put your hands on her?” Sam asks the woman, gripping her jaw. Her glassy eyes wide. She shakes her head.
I don’t believe her.
“Take a finger too, Chuck.”
He laughs through her cries, and it makes me snicker too.
“Now,” I say, turning back to my own play toy. “Where were we... ah yes, parts of you that’s touched and abused what’s mine. Let’s think here. What about these lips, they kiss her?”
He doesn’t respond, but I don’t need him to. Trading my saw for my onyx dagger, I slice off his lips in one fluid motion.
Vomit gushes from his throat, but it doesn’t deter me.
“You ever smell her scent? Her citrus scented hair?” I don’t give him a chance to answer—off with his nose.
“Lick her? Taste her? Use your words to make her feel inferior? Worthless? Ugly? Stupid?” I shove my fingers down his throat, balling my fist to open him up wide.
“The healers section told me females feel pain more than males,” I whisper as I slice through the meaty flesh of his tongue.
Now unable to speak, but not unable to make those stunning screaming sounds.
I flap the flesh in front of his face, slapping him across the cheek with it.
“Now… imagine how that felt for Lina.”
His garbled sounds roll over my head as I slice through his clothes, stripping him of all his dignity.
“Take a good look, mother dearest. Like what you see?”
She sobs, and it takes all my strength to not march over there and slap her silly. Pathetic.
“Heard from a few folks you’re emotionally in love with your son. Manipulate him enough to abuse his own wife… little tag team, huh.”
I lean close to her face. “Bet you sniff the sheets after he’s done jacking off don’t you.”
I nod to Sam. “Take her tongue too. Slow. Let her feel each slice, Chuck.”
“Aye, brother.”
She gurgles, eyes bulging.
“You like using your mouth for lies?” Sam croons, a bead of sweat trickling over the pulsing vein in his temple. “Let’s see how you sing without it.”
As he gets to work, I turn back to the bloodied excuse of a man chained up before me.
I lift his shrivelling cock with the tip of my dagger. His mangled mouth gapes open, but he holds himself still, doesn’t even take a breath.
“This thing… touched her too.” I almost vomit at the thought. He coughs and splutters, but with no voice, he has no words to plead his case—shame.
His cock drops to the floor after my dagger slices through his meat like silk. Eyes roll to the back of his head, and he passes out. The air smells like iron and ruin.
Sam chuckles behind me, deep and hearty, abruptly cut short when he sees what I picked up, stepping closer.
“Really?”
I shrug. Torture never appealed to me until I met a woman worth burning worlds for.
“You in need of a tongue, mother dearest?” I say, slapping her cheek with her son’s severed cock. “Bet you always wanted to get your vile mouth around this huh? Jealous of Lina being married to your son? No matter, you get to have him now.”
She chokes around her son’s appendage I force down the back of her throat. I remove it, allowing her to breathe before ramming it back down again. She turns blue as I lose my grip on the flesh, needing to fist her mouth to dig out her son’s cock.
She gasps as soon as I’m able to remove it.
“How was that for you? Good? You want more?”
She shakes her head, tears mixing with saliva and blood coating her chin.
A groan echoes behind me, mother’s precious boy finally wakes.
“Hey,” Sam calls to him. “Want mommy to kiss it better?”
Fuck, I missed my brothers laugh.
Lina’s husband convulses, his head rolling to the side. I grip the bastard’s ear, yanking him upright.
“You had the gift of her voice once. You stole it from her.” I slice down, taking the ear completely off.
I move to the other side. “Why? Why after hearing her beautiful sounds, would you want to silence her?” I take the other.
The man’s in so much pain his screams are now groans and grunts, eyes rolling with delirium.
“We finishing the mother?”
“Leave her be. Let her watch her precious boy die.” I turn back to the bleeding mess one more time. “Was it worth it? Hmm… doing what you did to her for all these years?”
His tears, blood and drool make up for his lack of answer.
“This was cathartic. I needed this. Now, this version of you and your mother stays, I’ll sever time and leave this as an echo, so you see, I will get away with this.”
Sam joins in with my snicker.
“One day Lina might want to see this. Join in on this retribution. But at least I’ll always have this.”
Sam shoves the mutilated cock in the mother’s mouth one more time before following me through the portal to my office.
I clench my fists a few times, crack my neck, stretch my shoulders and pace. Anything to dissipate this lingering adrenaline that has me wanting to go back there and destroy them a little more. Anything to stop me roaming the streets to pick a fight with the next arrogant meathead I find.
“Here.” Sam shoves a glass of amber in my face. I neck it back in one swallow and rub my sternum, against the erratic beats of my heart.
Fuck. I’ve never done anything like that. Never.
“How long you gonna give it?”
I glance at my pocket watch, splatters of blood decorating the gold engraved rim. “Another hour so she can watch him die.” And when the hour is up, I’ll cut time, create an echo and travel back to this morning, before I called for a messenger.
Lina’s husband and mother-in-law may get to live to see another day, but not in this branch of timeline.
“Don’t forget to show me the echo once you re-write,” he winks, clearly loving this shit.
And maybe so do I.
“Did you bring it?” I ask Sam, washing my hands in a bucket of water.
He jerks his head to the small vial on my desk. “What’s it for?”
“Ava. There’s an agenda there. And I’m going find out exactly what.”
“Cunning, I like it. But what if she…”
“Not happening. I lost you once, I refuse to lose you again.”
I won’t tell him if it comes to it, I’ll cut Ava down. His life for hers, but I don’t need him thinking I have a taste for blood now.
I very much do not. I think.
But I meant what I said. I protect what’s mine.