CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
The parchment still sat where he’d dropped it, edges curled, blotched by damp grit. I’d memorized the handwriting already, the ache behind every loop:
Sparrow,
Time has run out. He knows. They are coming for you.
I will join you in the sky one day, as promised. For now, run. For both of us. And do not look back.
I love you,
Dove.
I swallowed, staring at the crack in the wall until it blurred. Until my mind was mere seconds into rearranging everything that’s happened into something different.
A throat cleared, closer than I’d expected, breaking my focus, Reve’s voice sliding easy from the dark. “That was a good attempt the other day, by the way.”
His sleeves were rolled, tunic tucked into loose-fitted trousers, every weapon at his hip on display.
I refused to look up. So not yesterday. How long have I been down here?
“Tugging at heartstrings,” he clicked his tongue, giving a low laugh. “Not how I pictured you playing it. Though I did win the bet on how quickly you’d scream.”
My eyes clamped shut, chains biting at wrists and ankles as I dragged myself upright as far as they’d allow.
Breathe.
A cough ripped free, harsh, before I rasped, “Did anyone bet I’d scream louder in this cell than anytime you fucked me?”
The blow was instant.
His hand cracked across my face, snapping my jaw sideways. My skull hit the stone, skin splitting open along the rough wall.
I hissed as his fingers clamped my chin, jerking me toward his stare. “Choose your next words very carefully.”
Blood and spit mixed on my tongue, and I spat it across his face. A threatening breath cut through his teeth as he dropped me, dragging a cloth from his belt to wipe the mess, never breaking eye contact.
My face throbbed, swelling, bleeding, surely twisted out of symmetry. But my stare stayed steel.
His pupils darted, studying me as though chiseling my defiance into memory. Letting out a long exhale, he turned, boots grinding over grit and dust as he crossed the cell. At the door, he paused, whistling once, the note rattling down the corridor, shredding the dungeon’s silence.
I hadn’t heard Callum since we’d been thrown down here. But I heard him now. His screams tore through stone. Echoing off the walls, the sound devouring me in my own cell.
I squeezed my eyes shut, begging the Gods, any God, to make it stop.
Reve bent, reaching into the dark near the door. My vision had adjusted, but the deeper shadows still clung to their secrets. I couldn’t see what he was doing, who he was talking to, until he stepped free of them. Two guards followed, dragging a wooden post across the floor.
And in Reve’s grip, a whip.
Its braided length uncoiled, kissing the stone as if eager.
He smiled, lifting the lash so the light caught its barbed end. “Oh, what fun we’re in for today.”
The whip came down. Again. And again.
And again.
Each crack sliced the air before it found me, a streak of sound that turned to flame on my skin, a pain that nested deep, latching to the depth of my spine. I couldn’t stop the whimpers anymore. Couldn’t swallow the shakes.
Each blow landed with the promise of another behind it.
“Confess!” His snarl ricocheted off stone, off bone, off the slick sheen of blood. “Tell us where the rebellion hides and I promise, Verena, it ends.”
For a heartbeat, his tone dipped, mercy over a malice, almost tender. But the whip in his grip told the truth; it would keep falling no matter what I said.
The leather snapped across me again, and the Gods I begged did not answer. It came even when my knees buckled, even when my body wilted against the chains, dead weight in its slack.
Still, he didn’t stop.
I clawed inward for the Viper, for the venom I knew still lived in my veins. It flashed beneath the edge of my skin, fighting its way back, not gone any longer, but imprisoned like me.
I thought of the woman from my dreams, the sound of her whisper, the drag of her fingers through my hair.
I wanted to reach for Gemma. But not yet. Not here.
The whip cracked. And cracked.
And cracked.
Until there was nothing left to flay. Until it felt like my skin had been stripped away, my bones left bare, my soul hanging open for him to lash next.
That’s when I began to float. Away from the cell. Away from the pain.
I’d expected to rise, to float past my ruined body and drift toward the Aureveil. Instead, I sank, down into a well of nothing, a blankness so vast it erased even the reflection of pain.
My arms lifted of their own accord, unbound, a smooth surface meeting my palms, humming under my skin as my body collapsed to the floor.
It wasn’t the curse I felt, not entirely.
I could die here, I thought. I would die here, if fate would let me.
A boom cracked across the dark. The tremor moving through my hands, but the surface held. Somewhere above, Reve’s voice scratched and warped, muffled as if he were pounding at the other side.
I braced but even as it came again and again, I was immune. He couldn’t reach me in here. For a stolen second, I was untouchable. But I couldn’t stay here. My body was still there, and it could still die.
The words rose, even as my breath shook, first a whisper, then a vow. I am resilient. I am fearless. I am the force no one anticipates.
Each repetition swelled until it roared through me, louder than his whip, louder than the heartache. It lifted me upright until my spine straightened, my fingers curling into fists.
As many times as he had torn my skin, I rebuilt myself in those words.
I choose to rise. To live. To meet fate eye to eye.
And with that, I stepped out of the stillness, out of the quiet well, and hurled myself back into the fire—
The pain was instant.
“Look at you.” Reve’s fist slammed into my kidneys. White heat shot up my spine as my back bowed, the lashes across it blazing with a new burn. “I thought you liked the pain, my little beastie.” His nostrils flared, the inhale deep and starved. “Are those your tears I’m tasting?”
I still hung from the post, wrists flayed by iron, sweat-drenched hair sticking to my neck. My head tried to lift but fell limp again, too heavy for the tendons holding it.
I am resilient.
Stepping around me, his fingers skimmed the torn skin of my back, a mockery of tenderness. He bent low, thumb dragging a single tear from my cheek.
“I’m sorry, Verena. No more pain today.” A tilt of his head, almost fond, as he stood, moving toward the door. “You did well. Can’t say the same about your brother, though.”
My pulse lurched but I didn’t move. Didn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I’m going to heal you now,” he went on. “Wouldn’t want you bleeding out on me.”
I am fearless.
A cork popped. Then the liquid hit, ice first, then fire, spilling down my shredded spine. My shoulders rolled, desperate to escape the sting as it seared into the wounds.
“Oops.” His laugh cracked like another whip. “I lied.” Slowly, he poured the rest, until every nerve screamed. “There, all done.” Rubbing his palms together, he smiled before leaning closer. “Now that I know how sweet your screams can be, just imagine what I’ll coax from him next.”
When I didn’t answer, he hurled the vial against the wall. Glass burst, droplets splattering the stone where my toes grazed the floor.
He crouched in front of me, one elbow balanced on his knee. “A healer will be sent shortly to stitch you back together. In the meantime—”
Miraculously, my head stayed as he tilted it up, but my eyes slid past him to the pool of ruby at my feet. Gemma’s reflection wavered there, ghost-bright in the red, until my eyes squeezed shut and gave me only warped shapes drifting in the dark.
“Think about how much you enjoyed this,” he whispered.
“Every lash. Every breath that caught in your throat. You belong to us now. To me. And if you so much as bare a fang,” the grin turned lazy, “I’ve imagined a hundred ways we could spend our time down here.
” A finger swept a strand of hair behind my ear, an intimate touch in any other life. “Look at me.”
I didn’t.
Angrier, he said again, “Look. At. Me.”
That same finger hooked under my chin, jerking it toward him. Muscles screamed, wounds ripped open anew.
His eyes burned viciously. Mine stayed valiant.
I am the force no one anticipates.
“The king promised me you’d be all mine when this was over, and at first, I thought, why would I want a vile, broken,” he ground the last word out, “piece of beast?” A finger shot up to my face, tracing the outline of my mouth.
“But then I thought…you and me...” His smirk widened.
“And Elva. Oh, the fun we’d have down here together.
” A pause, teeth flashing. “We, as in me, of course.”
That’s when it caught fire. Not my anger or my grief—
My rage.
I used to believe it started when Gemma and Callum found me. But then they became home. Later, I thought it came when I awakened to the curse inside my skull. But then I learned its name.
In time, I blamed it on being feared—moving through the world like a ghost in my own skin. Seen by everyone yet known by no one.
Not me. Not Verena.
I sat idly, letting him draw his finger slowly across my lips, letting it fall into the gap between them.
His eyes flared as he moved to push it through them, where he perhaps thought it would be safe. Thinking I was beaten, docile.
But a serpent is always lethally still before it strikes.
And so, as Reve pushed it closer toward my throat, I bit his fucking finger clean off.