Chapter 37
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
RHYAN
By the Gods. By the fucking Gods. My chest tightened with such visceral pain, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. Fuck. Fuck. Everything hurt. Every limb, every organ, like I was being torn apart, sewn back together and ripped through again.
“What’s going on? What the hell is happening to me?” I cried out.
Auriel appeared, my mirror image, except with hair the color of gold, and skin nearly as tan.
“What is this?” I clutched at my chest. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just your memories coming back to you.”
“But I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“No, but you didn’t cross over, you still have to experience them.”
I shook my head. “Why does this hurt so bad? What memory is this?”
“It’s the night you died,” he said solemnly. “I’m sorry.”
“No. NO! ” But there it was again. The Nutavian Katurium laid out before me.
Tears filled my vision so completely, I could barely see.
I could hear the screams in the stadiums as I approached, the yells coming from the Palace prison fading behind me.
The chains around my legs and arms clinked and clanged with each step I took.
Dust flew at my heels, further fogging my vision as I was led into the center of the arena.
The curses were coming now—the calls for my death, the condemnation, the insults. They rained down on me, growing louder and more insistent with each step. Rising to a crescendo, my father pushed me up onto the dais, my heart thundering so loud, for a moment it drowned out the noise.
Lyr. I was thinking of Lyr. Her name had become a mantra, a prayer, one I was making to her, to a Goddess. I wasn’t praying for her to save me. I was beyond hope for that. But for a distraction—some comfort—a moment to forget the pain coming for me, the humiliation, the debilitating fear.
Lyr, Lyr. Lyr, please.
But the roar of the crowd was too much, too loud, too powerful, and too violent.
It pulled me back into my body. The chains were removed.
My arms felt heavy, almost useless as they were lifted over my head and strung up, tied to the stripping pole.
A soturion came up behind me, and I heard the rip of my tunic, felt the material bite into my flesh as it was torn away.
My back was exposed. My tattoo on display.
I could almost see it in my mind, as clear as the day I’d gotten it. The gryphon—the one that had saved my life, helped me escape Glemaria, and the rope around its leg. The torn rope. The symbol of my own strength and will, the power I’d clawed and fought for.
A very different kind of rope held me down now. And with my power bound—and the chains still wrapped around my feet, I knew it was the last one. The last rope.
The one I’d never tear through.
I was shivering now, my entire body shaking with cold. There was a breeze in the air carrying a chill from the shore that lay beyond the Palace. But that wasn’t what was leaving my body trembling. Being from the North, this kind of cold was somewhat warm to me.
No. The shivers covering my skin came from my growing fear.
And within a minute, I was sweating.
The rest of my guests on the dais arrived—each one garnering their own round of applause.
Imperator Kormac—now the Emperor—and the Bastardmaker proudly stood beside my father, and fucking Kane.
And then, of course, what stripping would be complete without the Examiner.
Without the one who would execute me in the end—Kunda Lith.
The Emperor sneered, his black eyes full of sickening triumph. He’d won. He’d fucking won. And I didn’t think my father knew it yet. Not that I cared.
Because what did any of it matter now?
I looked away, trying to breathe, trying to think of Lyr, to remember her face and her smell and her voice.
I needed her in my mind, the only place I could keep her.
But she was gone. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t lose myself in her because the crowd was only ratcheting up their noise and excitement, their auras pulsing through the arena with a vicious cruelty.
The Emperor cleared his throat, a wolfish glint in his eyes as he swept his gaze over me, then began calling out my crimes. Listing them out one by one.
I scoffed. My crimes.
There were no crimes as far as I was concerned.
Being vorakh wasn’t evil, it was just who I was.
It was power. It was a gift. And loving Lyr?
Fuck anyone who called it illegal or forbidden.
As if some Godsdamned made-up law could dictate who I loved.
As if loving her wasn’t my destiny or my entire soul’s purpose in being here.
Helping Jules escape? And Galen? Getting them away from the black-eyed monster who stood before me, the one who orchestrated his own uncle’s murder, who kidnapped, raped and tortured thousands for his own gain? There was nothing more honorable than freeing them from his clutches.
If I regretted anything, it was that I hadn’t freed more from his prisons. Saved more from his grasp. That I hadn’t strangled him or cut out his heart when I’d had the chance.
Beyond that my only other regret was that I lived in a world that made doing the right thing—that made being on the side of justice and goodness—a crime.
I held my head up, realizing that that thought alone had given me courage. Had made me feel strong again. That and knowing just how deeply and well I’d loved Lyr, and how much she loved me back, accepted me, all of me.
But a look from my father, from my own blood, the one who captured me, who turned me in, who’d been the one to damn me, and it all went to shit. Even I could only be so strong. My mother was gone. It was just him. And he hadn’t just abandoned me. He’d damned me.
Something inside of me broke.
Auriel flashed before me.
“Am I done?” I asked him. “Is it over?”
He slowly shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. I’d trade places with you if I could. But I can’t.”
Kunda announced the first strike of the whip.
Immediately I tensed, and tried to breathe, tried to prepare.
I could withstand this, I could bear the pain.
After all, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been whipped before.
Sometimes even just like this, with my father and Kane looking on.
I just had to brace myself. I had to breathe.
But then the pain came. And, fuck.
I couldn’t do it, couldn’t withstand it. I was wrong. So fucking wrong.
I panicked and bit my tongue. I could feel the whip not just striking and wounding, but pulling my magic out of me, like someone had taken a burning poker and sliced me open with it, poking and prodding, searching inside of me, my skin, my muscles, my bones.
I screamed, feeling the whip retreat. Feeling my magic go with it. Part of me. Part of my essence, part of who I was. Part of what made me Rhyan. It had been taken. It was gone.
The crowd roared, and blood dripped down my back as I spat. The whirring in my ears as the whip came again was worse the second time. Even worse was the third.
The fourth strike.
I wet myself.
They cut off my pants next—leaving me nearly naked, save my underclothes.
I heaved my guts up. My stomach roiled painfully.
I was weakening. Dying. Closer to death with every strike. Losing my soul. I knew it was coming. I knew how this ended. No one survived the stripping. No one survived the pain, the rearranging of their insides as their magic was torn out.
I knew there couldn’t be much left when my father laughed. By now, I welcomed it. I wanted it to be over. I wanted it to end.
Someone screamed. Someone in the crowd. It was strange— strange that someone else seemed to be in pain—someone who wasn’t me. More yells followed, more cries of terror, and then there were cries for help.
I stared at the ground, feeling a ball of sweat collect on my chin.
I waited for it to drop, to splatter to the ground, to mix with all the rest of my bodily fluids.
It seemed like almost every kind I could make was at my feet.
Blood, sweat, tears, urine, vomit. Fuck. All I had to do now was shit myself.
And then the Emperor shouted, “Lyriana Batavia.”
My head lifted at once, my heart pounding.
“Wh-what?” I asked. But my voice was so hoarse from screaming, my throat so raw, I could barely hear myself.
“Lyr,” I said. “Lyr.” I didn’t know if I was talking to her, or asking for her, or simply saying her name because it was all I could manage at the moment.
But then the whip came again, biting into my skin, digging into my flesh, searching through me. My head fell, and a scream tore from me as the whip pulled away, taking more of me with it, along with any conscious thoughts.
The ground swayed beneath me, my vision blurring. There was movement on the dais. Bodies shifting, auras panicking. The Emperor was gone. The Bastardmaker, too. I noticed then, in my peripheral vision, a flurry of soturion boots running away. The crowd was screaming now, but not at me.
“Protect His Majesty!” someone cried out.
“Guard His Highness!” came another shout.
I thought my father had said Lyr’s name again, I thought he was speaking to her, but I was so far gone … I was no longer processing thoughts. No longer able to discern reality from pain.
“End it. Kunda, now,” he commanded.
No! No!
But he did it anyway. He took what little remained of my magic, my power.
Blue light flowed from the end of the whip into a box. All of my magic, all of my power, all of me, stolen, trapped and contained. By my father. And a scream tore my throat. A sound I’d never made before.
“I thought I was dead then,” I said.
Auriel frowned. “You almost were.”
“Why didn’t I die?” I asked.
“Because she came,” Auriel said, showing me a brief vision of Lyr fighting through the arena, her hair a fiery red, her hazel eyes like golden flames as she stabbed every soturion in her way.