Page 66 of Degradation (The Brethren Lords #3)

Devin

I ’m thrashing, jerking, trying to get my arms free but the jacket they put me in keeps them pinned to my sides. God only knows how they found a thing big enough to fit me.

I’m in a padded cell. It’s big enough that I can do a running smash into one wall and then the other. But all I do is faceplant against the cushioned sides. I don’t even know where the door is, it’s concealed by the giant squares of foam.

By the time it opens, I’m fully feral.

I snarl up, preparing to launch myself at whoever the fuck walks in.

Only, it’s Magnus.

He takes barely more than a stride into the room and the look on his face, I know that look, that mixture of contempt and disappointment.

“You took your time.” I mutter.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “So you’re rational enough to speak, I see.”

“Get me the fuck out of here.” I bellow back.

He shakes his head at me. “No can do, brother.”

“Excuse me?”

“I warned you.” He snarls. “I fucking warned you for months. You think I didn’t see it. You think I couldn’t tell that you were losing it. That you were turning into her.”

I blink back as I realise what this is. Why I’m here. He thinks I’ve lost my mind, he thinks I’ve succumbed to the same condition our mother had. “You did this. You had me locked in this place.”

He nods. That tiny little movement that feels more condescending than anything else.

“You brought this on yourself, Devin. I tried. I fucking tried to help you, but you wouldn’t listen, and you wouldn’t take your meds.”

“I don’t need meds.” I snarl back. I’m not fucking insane. I’m not.

He lets out a cruel laugh. “Says the person in a straitjacket.”

“Let me out, Magnus. You don’t understand, you don’t understand any of this.”

“Oh, I understand alright.” He says, pulling his immaculately pressed suit trousers up enough to allow him to squat down without putting any creases into them.

He gets right into my face, which despite the level of my incapacitation is still a damned bold fucking move to make.

“You were fucking her, fucking that girl.”

I don’t respond to that. It’s not like Gunther didn’t know. Hell, he let me spend more than enough hours punishing her, just as he did the other guards too.

My face twitches as I recall it, that scene in the guardhouse.

The way he’d let us all fuck with her one after another.

The way she cried and she sobbed and the way her perfect little body looked as those fuckers stuck their putrid damned cocks into her mouth as if they had a right to touch her.

As if they had a right to even look at her.

She’s mine. She’s always been mine.

And she will always be mine until the day she dies until the day she draws her last fucking breath. And I intend to be the one to take it, to take her life, her soul, every last bit of her. Every last slice.

He slaps my face, slaps me hard enough to jerk me right out of wherever I went to.

“Her cunt was that good, was it? That fucking sweet that you forgot who you are, what your duty to this family is?”

“Gunther was passing her around. We all had her at some point.” I spit back. It’s the truth and it’s a lie too. She wasn’t just a cheap whore, at least not to me.

But she killed him. That stupid bitch killed him and she tried to set me up for it.

“Gunther is dead.” Magnus states, as if I didn’t see his body myself. “The Senate have stepped in. There’s an emergency council in place while they establish a new Chapter Lord…”

He continues on as if I give a fuck about any of it. As if I give a fuck about the Brethren and who our new leader is.

I need to get out of here. I need to get to wherever the fuck Paitlyn is. Desperation claws at me and it’s a feeling I’m not used to. A feeling that makes me feel weak, useless.

And then I remind myself that those feelings are traitorous, wrong. She’s not my love, not my joy, that bitch tried to ruin me. She tried to destroy me.

I glance down, trying to pull my arms free for what must be the millionth time. If I can just get out of this stupid jacket, then I can get myself out of here. I know I’m strong enough, I know I can take on whoever is the other side of that door.

“Are you even listening to me?” He snaps.

I blink, looking at him, seeing that same twisted anger our father used to have.

“I need to get out of here.” I state. “I need to get to Paitlyn.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. The wrong fucking thing. I’m not thinking straight, I’m not thinking rationally at all. My mind feels like it’s whirling. I feel like the entire world is spinning around me and I need it to stop. I need everything to just fucking stop.

I need to get to her. I have to get to her. I’m going to make her pay for what she’s done.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Magnus replies. “Paitlyn is gone.”

“Gone?” I repeat. What the fuck does that mean? Has someone taken her? Has she been sent to our Grand Master? She’s a Founder, do different rules apply to them?

His hand slaps my face again and I growl at him this time. I swear to God if he does it again I’ll bite his fucking fingers off.

“Forget the damned girl.” He spits. “She’s a whore. A useless, good for nothing whore. You need to focus on our family right now. Focus on sorting your head out.”

“I need Paitlyn.”

“She’s dead, Devin. The bitch is dead.”

Dead? No. No she can’t be. They wouldn’t have killed her, they wouldn’t have.

I start thrashing, start losing control. It feels like the entire world opens up beneath me and I’m falling through, falling into the abyss beyond.

“Malktā.” The name slips past my lips. It feels like a curse now. Perhaps it always was and I just didn’t realise it.

The door smashes open. Two men come rushing in. They’re dressed in white tunics. White to match the walls. White to match the jacket. White to match the colourless nothing left now that she is gone.

One of them jabs at me. I try to jerk away but I’m lopsided without my arms and I fall face first into the stupid cushioned floor. A sting flicks against my neck and I know what they’re doing, what this is.

“No.” I growl. “No.”

If they drug me, then I can’t get out. If they drug me then I can’t get to her.

Dead. She’s dead.

I don’t fucking believe it. I won’t believe it. Not until I see her body, not until I see her rotting fucking corpse.

My anger fizzles out. My emotions flatline. I slump over, roll over, stare up at the ceiling and realise that’s cushioned too but it’s so high up I doubt anyone could even reach it. Are they worried we might fly? We might rise up and escape through the rafters?

A face peers over me. It’s fuzzy. Hard. Fuzzy hard, and I know it’s my brother. That the bastard is still here, watching this, witnessing this, allowing this to happen.

“Get well, brother.” He says as if he gives a shit about my wellbeing.

“Pait…” I can’t even speak her name. can’t even form the syllables. My mouth refuses to work. My throat is locked up tighter than Oblivion.

“She’s dead.” Magnus states. “Dead or as good as.”