Page 207 of Jagged Souls

I try to control it.

Somehow manage it as the hours pass.

I just need to get her away from here, away from him. Then I can help her through her trauma. And I don’t even care if she leaves me then, if she wipes her hands of all this and walks away with just Dayne and Lou. The gods know she cannot be blamed for it, for seeking out a life of peace and healing. It’s all I want for her – to be happy. Not this twisted version of Stockholm syndrome and a broken shell so desperate to please her enemy to stop the pain. I want her happy. I want her safe.

I need to find a way to escape…

There’s another pain deep in my chest, a reality I don’t want to face, so I shove it down and try to concentrate. I didn’t just jump into the teleportation circle without a plan. Dayne tattooed me with a tracking rune, the same as he gave my wife. It’s under my right armpit, hidden in the hair, an unlikely place for Antonio to see. So he can feel where I am, and he won’t stop coming for Micha.

But the issue remains of how he – and the rest of my brothers can get here. Before I can come up with any sort of plan to help them though, the door to my room opens, and Antonio walks in.

My stomach twists in fear about whatever new horror is about to happen even as my rage ignites. I have given up struggling against the nails. More of them have been added anyway, and both my arms are pinned down again. I need to save my energy to do things that actually matter. I have so little left in the bank…

“Today is your lucky day,” Antonio says. “I could use you back on the outside. It isn’t mandatory.” He cocks his head to the side and shrugs. “I will find another way to release Terra’s disease on your family, but I’d like it if you carried it to them. It’ll be such a fitting end, don’t you think?” He grins like the wolf he is. “Not that it will be enough to kill them. It’ll just weaken them enough that I can get to them one by one even without the help of a Family behind me.”

He stops in the middle of the room this time instead of coming to my bedside to torture me. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel a thousand times worse. I know he has something planned. I can take the physical torture. I deserve it after everything I’ve done to my wife. But the emotional shit he attacks me with…

My thoughts go back to Rudy, of seeing him vivisected and raped on screen, and he doesn’t even have the luxury of dissociating. He has to stay completely aware so he can stay completely in control of his chaos magic, or everyone on this boat will die.

Including me. Micha. The dog he’s trying so hard to protect, every life mattering to him. Everyone.

My heart breaks for him, wishing I’d been more open about how much he means to me in the time we had.

“But first, you’re going to make a decision,” he continues. “To get your freedom, all you have to do is give me an answer.”

“My answer is… fuck you.”

The fact he smiles chills my feverish skin. “You’ll want to think this through better than that,” Antonio says. “But the rules are simple. You will have two choices. One will die. The other will live.”

My heart beats rapidly, my brain sluggish but still able to understand. One choice will be Rudy. The other Micha.

He’s no doubt using this as a way to show her that I’ll always hurt her. That when it comes to my family, I will choose them over and over, just like I did with Khalid. It’s not true, but in this instance, logically, I have to choose her to be the one to die. Because I know he won’t hurt her. I can see his obsession of her clear on his fucking face. Choosing her will only hurt her emotionally, but it’ll mean they’ll both still be alive. Because if I choose Rudy, hewillkill him.

“I’m not playing your fucking games.” My voice cracks, splinters, shatters all apart, but I don’t care. I can’t do this. I won’t do this to her. To him. To fucking me. I can’t survive knowing the decision was mine.

“Oh, you will,” Antonio says. “Because I won’t just be letting you out. I’ll be letting you leave with her.”

I surge forward before I remember the nails embedded all down my arms. They remind me with gut-wrenching agony, and I collapse back in bed, panting hard. “You’re a liar.”

“Not in this. I think it’ll be fun to watch you suffer.” He grins. Shifting his right index finger into a claw, he carves an A into his arm and says, “With the gift of the gods, I bind their blessing to my oath.”

My stomach drops in horror. He’s making a fucking blood oath. He’s giving me an actual way to escape with my wife. I’ll be infected, a carrier for a disease that will cripple my family, but he doesn’t know we have Cara Jervis. She can undo whatever Terra makes – maybe. Hopefully. The two were evenly matched when they went to war and killed millions of people when their disease magic took on a mind of its own. And I’m certain he’s hoping to use her as a mole, a sleeper agent perhaps, so confident she will choose to help him from inside – and that I won’t tell my brothers, won’t tell the reaper because I’ll be too desperate to save her. Too hopeful that I can.

My stomach twists at the cruelty of his plan. And the knowledge that I will damn well choose… I just need to make sure that even if I choose her and he fails to kill her, that the blood oath will still demand he lets us go.

“I’ll let you and Micha Shadow –” My last name is hissed out between his teeth. I hope it fucking hurts him to know that she’s still mine – at least in that. “– leave this yacht in the condition you are now in” –he carves a G next to the A– “after you choose who will die.” He smears the blood from his cuts into a silence rune over his initials.

My heart is racing hard. He didn’t make it part of the blood oath that one would have to die. I just need to choose. And picking her will make her hate me, but it’ll save him and get her out of here alive. Then Rudy will be free to let his chaos magic out, and we will all reunite at home. I try not to smile. But Antonio doesn’t know what shitstorm he’s about to release on himself. Rudy’s secrets have always stayed within the family.

“K,” I say, keeping my tone flat, my thoughts hidden. But I know that reply will piss him off, especially after he’s been so theatric. I know because I’ve been on the receiving end of it enough times with fucking Aleric. Genuine annoyance seeps into me at the mere thought of him, which just goes to show how terrible of a person he is that even when utterly drained and tortured, I can still find it in me to hope he gets run over by a bus that then reverses.

Antonio’s lips tighten. But he doesn’t react other than that. Instead, he merely says, “So tell me who you choose to die.” He looks towards the door. “Rudy,” he says as Eduardo wheels him in. He’s strapped to what looks like a dentist’s chair that’s been modified to be even more terrifying, with multiple tools of torture attached to movable arms. Our eyes meet as Eduardo walks out again, and my baby brother still tries to smile at me, tearing my heart from my chest.

“Or Dayne.”

My head whips to him in horror, wondering when the hel Antonio caught him but able to imagine it all too easily. He was able to feel me through the tattoo he gave me. Fuck the odds, he would’ve come for her the first chance he got.

Antonio smiles at me, wide and feral. But my attention is pulled from him as another chair, so much like the first, is wheeled in.