Page 55 of Devoured

But something shifted in his posture—not anger. Recognition. Like I’d said something worth remembering.

I tried to step forward, but pain exploded in my back. Lightning under my skin. I felt the infection creeping. My hand came away from the wound slick with blood.

The Executioner moved. Two strides, and he was on me.

I scrambled back, heart pounding, but there was nowhere to go. Just more metal. More instruments. More horror.

“Stay away from me!”

He didn’t stop. I dodged, but my injured leg gave out. I hit the ground hard, jarring my spine. Then his shadow fell over me.

He grabbed the waistband of my scrub pants.

“No!”I kicked at him, clawing wildly. “Please, no, don’t—”

He yanked. The fabric shredded like paper. I was left in a tattered scrub top and underwear, exposed, shaking—waiting for him to take what he wanted.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he knelt beside me and examined the wound.

The carved V felt worse than I’d imagined when air hit it. And now I could smell it—the sweet, rotting scent of infection.

“You were there,”I whispered, rage and fever fusing. “When Varnar did this. I saw you watching.”

He said nothing.

“You liked it,”I spat. “Watching them torture me. Carve his fucking initial into my back like I was livestock.”

Still silence.

Then he reached for a tool—a thin rod, glowing white-hot at the tip.

“This will hurt,”he said.

“Good,”I hissed. “Maybe you’ll finally get off on my pain instead of just watching—”

He pressed the rod to the wound.

I screamed. The sound bounced off the walls, came back warped, like I was hearing my own death from outside my body. My back arched off the ground as agony ripped through me, pure and incandescent.

When it was over, the wound was sealed—burned shut, but clean. No more infection. Just a scar that would never let me forget.

I lay on the cold metal floor, drenched in sweat and tears, my body trembling from pain and exhaustion.

He set the rod aside and looked down at me. I stared up, lips parted, throat raw.

“You disgust me,”he said.

“Then why heal me?”

“Because no one else will.”He stood at rigid attention.

“That’s not mercy.”

“No,”he agreed. “It’s control.”

My jaw clenched. Anger simmered beneath the pain. “You think you own me now?”