Page 9

CHAPTER NINE

E tziel stood over her, his hair like ice coiling around his face, the constant drip, drip of water from the cracked roof of her prison hitting them both. Not that Maia’s torturer seemed to care. The moisture in the air thickened the scent she’d never been able to forget—sweet, ripe apples and blood. It clung to every drop of water, to the mist and mould, to her lungs until she’d never get it out.

“I think we can cut deeper, don’t you?” Etziel asked, pale head tilted as he contemplated the meat of her body, assessing her the way a butcher would a cow carcass. “It’s a good amount of blood, but shallow wounds always do bleed well.”

Maia had been here for so long that she no longer tried to run. She didn’t even shrink away when he crouched lower, a serrated blade with a wicked curve at the tip that he’d used to open a devastating wound on her thigh. She’d almost died from that one. It had almost been over. But like every other wound, he patched her up and her torture continued. The one on her stomach was the worst. And he wanted to deepen it.

“Will you sing for me, snaresinger?” he asked, what empathy or guilt should have belonged in his voice long replaced by glee and bloodlust.

At first, she’d spat in his face. She’d told him to take a short hike and throw himself in the pit of the chasm. She’d struggled and fought and she’d bled and she screamed. Now she just bled and screamed.

Don’t you dare stop fighting.

Maia jerked at that voice, smooth and full of warmth, an equal balance of rough and refined.

Az…?

“I think you’ll sing,” Etziel said, almost to himself, as he set the knife to her skin, grinning when she tensed, resigned to the pain but unable to fight her base instincts. The first cut was bearable. Her nostrils flared, her vision swimming, but she could handle it. The second tore a whimper from her, veiling her eyes in tears. She screwed them shut, shaking, gasping. The third angled deeper, widening the slice across her gut, and Maia screamed, her body curling, trying to protect itself. Etziel held her still and dragged the blade across her skin. “Louder.”

She shook her head, gasping, sobbing, tears streaking the grime the cell had left on her. She wanted to beg him to stop but she’d done that for days and it only ever made him cut deeper.

Wake up. Open your eyes, sweetheart.

Etziel twisted his hand, the jagged edge carving her open, and Maia’s back arched as the scream poured from her, the sound a wild animal, a force of nature. Her heart strained under the pressure of that pain, which made her whole body buckle.

“Princess,” Etziel laughed, his cruel face sneering, delighted. “Princess!”

That wasn’t what he called her. Maia gasped over and over, choking, blood pouring hot from her stomach as Etziel cast the knife aside and shook her shoulders, the scent of apples and blood stuffing up her nose until it was everywhere, until her ruined stomach cramped around the emptiness inside it, until she retched with bile.

“Princess!”

Power. Dominance. So commanding and guttural that she couldn’t ignore it.

Maia jolted like Etziel had stabbed her, but it was reality that harmed her this time, digging its claws and ripping her out of the nightmare and back into… well, the nightmare of her cell.

She heaved for air, gasping like she’d been suffocating. Instinct had her slapping a hand to her stomach to try and hold her ruined flesh together, to keep her organs on the inside. They fell out once; the healer had to stuff them back in.

“You were dreaming,” a ragged voice rumbled through the space, into her ears, into her soul. Maia realised she was shaking, realised there were hands on her shoulders where she’d fallen asleep on the hard stone. They tensed, pulling her up until she sat with her back against the wall, seeing the cell but not seeing it. She was still in the cell with Etziel. Her hands shook violently. She hauled air into her lungs, but it didn’t help.

“Look at me.” Breathless dominance, with a whisper of panic. Maia’s eyes snapped up and she stared at the fierce expression of the fae man in front of her. She catalogued his features, using each detail like a raft in a storm. Tanned skin stretched over rough planes and slopes, speckled with scars. A once-broken nose with a little bump in the bridge. A strong jaw covered in bristles of dark facial hair that hinted he might be brunette if he had hair. Eyes the deep, secretive colour of forests left to wilderness. Long, pointed ears with a chunk taken out of the left one. She’d never noticed that before. It grounded her, meant some of the air reached her lungs. His was a face hewn from brutality and survival, a fighter’s face, mean and stern. The antithesis of softness. Annoyingly masculine. Appealing in a way that pissed her off.

“Bastard,” she grunted, her own voice as gruff and gravelly as Bryon’s.

“I woke you from a nightmare, and you’re insulting me?”

“Just let me have this one,” she muttered, processing how it felt to be in a body that wasn’t wracked with pain, wasn’t gutted and pouring vital blood. His hands lightened on her shoulders, and Maia found her fangs snapping at him in warning, a snarl in the back of her throat she refused to interpret.

Don’t you fucking dare let go.

He resumed his grip, and neither of them acknowledged the way his thumbs stroked her shoulders, just once. The spiky panic released her; she sank back against the wall, focusing on her breathing.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in a quieter voice than she’d heard before.

“Do you want me to cut your dick off?”

“With what knife?”

She held up her fingernails, the tips sharpened to points.

“Trying to get your hands on me, princess?” he asked with a deadly little smirk. Goddamn, she hadn’t expected him to flirt.

“Nails would hurt a lot more than a knife.”

“I don’t doubt it. What did you dream of?”

“Saints, you’re a busybody,” she grumbled, slanting a look at him as he knelt before her, his hands on her shoulders because she’d practically begged for them to stay there. She remembered his patience and stubbornness earlier that day, the way he’d forcefully ripped her out of the darkness where she’d been drowning. “It’s a recurring nightmare and none of your damn business.”

Maia pretended not to see the arched eyebrow, convinced herself he couldn’t possibly be hinting that she was his business because of a certain bond.

“Unless you wanna open up about your own trauma, don’t expect me to confess mine.”

His smirk deepened. She didn’t like that one bit. Liked it even less when he leaned closer, fangs bared. “Try me.”

She wanted to try him in a different manner of the word, but she already had five mates and one of those was a raging dick who’d abandoned them to be murdered by a saints' circle. Fuck Isak. Not literally. She wouldn’t touch that diseased cock if someone paid her.

“You’re in my personal space,” she remarked, his scent swirling into her lungs, soothing woody cedar and fragrant rosemary banishing the memory of apples and blood.

“Yeah. What are you gonna do about that, princess?”

She gave him a look. What was up with him today? He’d been… supportive, and reassuring, and almost nice in his gruff, battle-hardened way. “Has your mind finally broken under the weight of that enormous ego of yours?”

She saw the retort he almost formed—it caught like sun on verdant leaves, making his eyes twinkle. He didn’t speak the words, but Maia noticed and heat crept up her ears. She was sure his ego wasn’t the only enormous thing about him.

“Something you wanna say, old man?”

“Keep your mouth shut, princess.”

Maia grinned. She didn’t mean to, hadn’t thought she could with the darkness of her nightmare clinging to her, raking up every memory she had of that bloodstained dungeon and Ismene’s pet torturer. Just like Maia was her pet manipulator. Her grin fell.

Knuckles rapped against her head, the noise echoing through her skull. Maia snarled, her face jerking forward to threaten him with her fangs, less than an inch away from ripping his face off.

“You still in there, princess?” he asked, his stare intent on her face. Fuck, they were too close together. Heat crawled across Maia’s cheeks, and she put her fangs away.

“More or less,” she muttered.

“You dream of Enryr?”

She shook her head, hair falling over her neck in a brush that made her shudder. “Years before that.”

“Your aunt?” he guessed. He really should have given her some space. His breath fanned over her mouth. Dangerous. Lethal.

“Close.”

“Who?”

Her chest tightened. “Why do you care?”

“Give me a name so I know who to hunt and rip to shreds when we get out of here.”

Butterflies. A whole riot of them in her stomach. “That’s optimistic. What makes you think we’ll get out?”

“We’re supposed to check in with the compound next week; if Azrail misses that, General Caliax will bring the rebel army and break us out.”

“Then they’ll all die,” she said flatly, keeping her eyes on his through sheer force of will. It hurt to think of Zamanya coming anywhere near this place, hurt to think of Evrille at the mercy of saints, not just for their sakes but for Azrail’s. He’d take every bit of blame and guilt on himself.

“Don’t be so defeatist—”

“We’re the captives of saints, for fuck’s sake, Bryon.”

There was a flash of a sharp, pearly canines when he spoke and—fuck, now Maia was looking at his mouth.

“Princess,” he warned.

“Hm?”

Rough fingers caught her chin, lifting her eyes up to his. The look in his eyes was so far beyond lethal that Maia’s heartbeat kicked up, a little flutter going through her wings.

“Fuck it,” he growled, and kissed her.