Page 66 of Devoured

I shook my head quickly. The thought of wandering these corridors alone, facing more of those things without him, made me shiver. I’d do anything but roam alone. I needed him, and we both knew it.

Then, without warning, he shifted back onto his heels and in one fluid motion, lifted me off the crate. My weight didn’t slow him. Before I could protest, he hoisted me over his shoulder like a sack of grain, yet somehow with care. He angled me so my injured side faced outward, my stomach resting along the broad line of his shoulder blade.

His hand steadied me at the small of my back as he stood in one smooth movement. All one-ninety-six pounds of me. The floor fell away beneath my feet, my head hanging down his back, blood rushing to my face.

The muscles beneath his scarred skin didn’t even flex.

He adjusted his grip once, ensuring my wounded ankle hung free, then began walking. Calm, deliberate, like carrying grown women over his shoulder was routine.

I should have fought. Should have screamed. But I didn’t. This was better than walking on a ruined foot.

As we moved through the hallway, something gnawed at me.

“What did she mean?”I asked, voice muffled against his back. “Why did she call me Bride of Sorrows?”

He went silent.

Only the sound of his footsteps echoed in the dark.

“Tell me,”I demanded, gripping his shoulder tighter.

“The Judge wants a bride,”he revealed finally. “Perhaps she thought it was you.”

My whole body tensed against him. “No.”It came out a whisper, then louder: “No, no, no—”

I thrashed on his shoulder, trying to get free. “I won’t, I can’t, not him—”

His grip tightened. “Stop moving,”he commanded.

“The Judge can’t have me! I won’t be his—”

“He won’t take you,”he growled, voice low and fierce. “Not while I draw breath. Not while I still stand. I swear it.”

I forced myself to go still, though my heart hammered in my chest. Fear and fury churned together. “I still hate you,”I muttered.

“I know,”he replied, and kept walking.

Chapter 21

He carried me through corridors I didn’t recognize, past doors older than the hospital, down staircases that shouldn’t have existed. Finally, he stopped in front of a door marked with symbols I couldn’t read.

The smell hit me first when he pushed it open—like a butcher shop on the hottest day of summer. Then I saw what hung from the ceiling.

Bodies. Dozens of them, suspended by hooks through their shoulders. Some were fresh, still dripping. Others had been there long enough to change—skin gone waxy, features frozen in expressions of eternal suffering. This was his workshop.

But they weren’t corpses. At least not all of them. As we passed beneath them, I heard whispers. Soft pleas for mercy. For water. For death. Eyes tracked our movements, some still flickering with sparks of consciousness.

“They’re still alive,”I whispered. “Why not just kill them?”

“Death would be mercy. Mercy is not mine to give,”he answered.

Tables lined the walls, cluttered with tools I didn’t want to name. Blades, clamps, and devices with too many moving parts. Everything was stained dark with old blood. Steam rose from drains in the floor.

In the center of the room stood a massive table made of compressed bone. Its surface was blotched with stains that told stories I never wanted to hear.

“I want to go back,”I said, panicking.

“Back where? To the chamber you couldn’t wait to leave?”He set me down near the bone table. I pulled the black sheet tighter around myself.