Page 71 of Degradation (The Brethren Lords #3)

Pailtyn

I press my face against the cold stone and try to remember what sunlight feels like. The memory is already fading, becoming as insubstantial as smoke.

Did I ever really feel warmth on my skin?

Did I ever really see colours other than this endless, suffocating black?

Maybe I’ve always been here. Maybe everything else, the betrayals, the abandonment, the slow dissolution of everything I thought was real, maybe that was the hallucination.

Maybe this darkness is the only truth there is.

The thought should terrify me, but instead it brings a strange sort of peace. If this is all there is, then I can stop fighting. I can stop hoping for rescue that will never come, stop believing that somewhere beyond these walls, people who claim to love me are working to bring me home.

“I trusted you.” I say to the darkness, because the darkness is all that’s left to talk to. “I trusted all of you.”

I curl into a ball on the floor, my ruined hands tucked against my chest. The blood has stopped flowing, or maybe I’ve just run out.

My body feels disconnected from my mind, like a machine that’s running on fumes.

Every breath is an effort. Every heartbeat feels like a choice I have to consciously make, and I don’t understand why I haven’t just stopped it.

Stopped it all. Stopped breathing, stopped pumping blood around myself, just fucking stopped.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”

But even as I say it, anger flares in my chest like a struck match.

Sorry? Why should I be sorry? I didn’t choose this.

I didn’t ask for my mind to fracture, for my reality to become this nightmare of isolation and never-ending pain.

And I didn’t ask for the people who were supposed to protect me to turn their backs when I needed them most.

The anger feels good. It feels clean and bright and real in a way that nothing else has for so so long.

I grab onto it, feed it, let it burn through the despair that’s been drowning me and suddenly I’m not fighting to get through the waves, I’m an inferno. I’m a thing that can’t be stopped and it feels both exhilarating and horrifying all at the same time.

I lean my forehead against the wall. The stone is warm here, almost body temperature. But that’s wrong. Stone should be cold, it is cold, especially in a place like this. Unless...

Unless this isn’t stone at all.

I press my ear against the surface and listen. There, faint but unmistakable, is a rhythmic thumping. Like a heartbeat. Like breathing.

The wall is alive.

I jerk backward, nearly losing my balance. And those chains rattle worse than ever. My rational mind tries to reject what I’m perceiving, but rationality feels like a luxury I can no longer afford.

In this place, anything is possible.

In this place, the walls themselves might be part of some larger organism, some entity that feeds on fear and despair.

“What are you?” I ask the darkness. “What do you want from me?”

The thumping grows louder, more insistent. It’s definitely a heartbeat now. There’s no denying it. The sound reverberates through the floor beneath my feet, through the air around me. I am inside something living, something vast and something so very very hungry.

The realization should drive me deeper into madness, but instead it clarifies something for me. This isn’t random. I’ve been fed to something, offered up as a sacrifice by the people who were supposed to care about me.

They didn’t just abandon me. They delivered me.

I think about my mother’s face again, but this time I see it differently. The expression I read as disappointment, what if it was guilt? Guilt at betraying me, guilt at delivering me to this fate, this destiny.

The betrayal runs so deep I can taste it, metallic and bitter on my tongue. But beneath the pain, there’s something else growing. A cold, calculating fury that makes my earlier anger seem like a candle compared to this raging fire.

If they want to feed me to the darkness, fine.

But I won’t go quietly.

I won’t curl up and die like a good little sacrifice.

I’ll find a way to survive this, and when I do, there will be a reckoning.

I place my palms against the living wall again, but this time I don’t claw at it.

Instead, I spread my fingers wide and try to understand what I’m touching.

The surface is warm and slightly yielding, like soft skin over muscle.

The heartbeat is stronger here, so strong I can feel it in my very bones.

“I know you can hear me.” I say. “I know you’re aware of me.”

The heartbeat falters for just a moment, missing a beat before resuming its steady rhythm. Good. I have its attention.

“They gave me to you because they thought I was broken.” I continue. “They thought I was weak and useless and disposable. But they were wrong.”

I start walking again, this time with purpose. If this is a living thing, it has anatomy. It has systems and structures and vulnerabilities. And if it has vulnerabilities, it can be hurt.

The thought brings me a savage satisfaction. Let them think they’ve disposed of me. Let them sleep peacefully in their beds, believing they’ve solved their little problem and all the while, they have no idea what they’ve actually done.

My fingers find a seam in the wall, a place where the surface dips inward slightly. It feels different here, softer, more sensitive. I press against it experimentally and the heartbeat quickens. The entity around me shudders, and for a moment the darkness seems to lighten just a fraction.

“Found something, didn’t I?” I murmur, feeling suddenly exhilarated by this.

I dig my ruined fingernails into the seam, ignoring the fresh pain as I work to widen the gap. The entity writhes around me, the walls contracting and expanding like breathing. Whatever I’m doing, it doesn’t like it.

Good.

Warm liquid begins to seep from the wound I’m creating, not blood, but something thicker and more viscous. It glows faintly in the darkness, the first light I’ve seen since arriving in this place. The sight of it fills me with a fierce joy that borders on madness.

I can hurt it.

I can make it bleed.

The entity’s distress is palpable now, communicated through vibrations in the walls and floor. The heartbeat becomes irregular, frantic. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. This is the first real power I’ve had; the first time I’ve been the one inflicting pain instead of receiving it.

“How does it feel?” I ask the darkness as I work my fingers deeper into the wound. “How does it feel to be helpless? To be weak?”

The glowing fluid is flowing more freely now, pooling around my feet and casting eerie shadows on the walls.

In the faint light, I can see that my suspicions were correct, the surfaces around me are definitely organic, ribbed like the inside of some massive throat or stomach.

I am inside something, and that something is now bleeding because of me.

The discovery should horrify me, but instead it fills me with a cold satisfaction. They wanted to feed me to the darkness? Fine. But I’m not going down easy. I’m going to tear this thing apart from the inside.

I reach deeper into the wound, feeling my arm sink up to the elbow in warm, yielding flesh. The entity’s screams echo through the space around me, not sounds, exactly, but vibrations that I feel in my bones. It’s in agony, and I’m the cause.

For the first time since arriving in this place, I smile.

“This is just the beginning.” I promise the darkness. “This is just the start of what I’m going to do to everyone who put me here.”

The light from the entity’s blood grows brighter, and in its glow, I can finally see my own reflection in the wet walls. The face looking back at me is gaunt and wild-eyed, streaked with luminescent fluid and dried blood.

I look like a madwoman.

I look like a monster.

I look absolutely fucking perfect.