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Chapter 15

Adrian

O siris hadn't come.

No matter how much I begged and pleaded, no matter how much time passed or how strong I tried to stay as hit after hit came, bones cracking like what was left of my will to fight.

Osiris hadn't come. No one had come .

Then again, when I looked at the clock that shone on my torturer's chest … I wasn't sure why I'd even expected someone to. Three hours and thirty-six minutes. That was all the time it took for me to reach my limit. The invincibility surrounding me had faded. The Vampire stripped away to nothing more than a scared boy lost in the streets of London all over again.

That was how long I'd been ripped apart, how long I'd had only the company of my screams. I missed the silence; I missed the quiet guards and the weeks that had passed in Archon's lamp.

The sharp bite of a serrated knife dug into the flesh of my arm, reaching bone with a pinpoint accuracy. My throat had gone raw, my lungs seizing as the air was ripped out of them yet again.

The man above me hummed, his face obscured behind a bloody doctor's mask, slicing through me as if I were nothing but butter.

"Fuck!" I managed, bowing on the table, the restraints unyielding. "No one's ever accused you of having a light touch. Have they?"

The mock humor was the only fight I could manage.

I'd stopped pretending to be unfazed as the methods grew increasingly sadistic. I stopped holding back screams and pleas when he'd stopped using his hands and started bringing in tools, devolving into a begging mess the first time he'd torn me open.

Hysteria the next.

How long had Ascension had Aaliyah for, again? How long had they kept her strapped to the table, knives digging in? If we made it out of this, they were dead. Every single fucking one of them. Just like the man who hovered over me, a halo of light around his head like he wasn't holding a bloodied knife in his hands.

"So soft," he whispered, dragging a gloved hand over my arm, digging his finger into the hole he'd just made there before it had the chance to heal.

"You can't just say it like that, you fucking psycho!" I shrieked, panting when he finally pulled his hand back.

No response, just more fiddling as he set the knife down.

It clattered against the table, and already the wound was closing. More fresh skin for him to fillet like I was a fucking fish. I didn't watch to see what else he might pull up, didn't want to have the anticipation. I closed my eyes and thought of better things.

Of my kitchen, the soft scent of fresh food. Aaliyah, as she danced around me. Burned risotto that tasted better than any meal I'd ever had.

The soft flow of her white hair, and the little hums she made when she sat at the table, her nose in a book. She did it often, a cup of tea by her side sweetened with copious amounts of sugar as she glanced at us over the cream-colored pages. She wanted to be near us while still being lost in her own little joys. I treasured every moment of it, sneaking kisses when I could, savoring every adoring look she'd send my way.

"Easy, we're just having fun," the doctor's voice broke in, cracking my little distraction, ripping me back into the real world as something touched my neck.

I'd never before questioned what it was like to stick my finger in an outlet, but I imagined it'd be just like this. I contorted in the bindings that held me down, writhing so hard I felt a pop in my leg as the bone broke and electricity torched my nerves. I couldn't even scream, my mouth foaming as my eyes rolled back far enough that I worried I might tear something in them.

When it finally pulled away, I gasped.

The reprieve was short-lived, as the device trailed a path down my exposed chest, and I jerked away from it, waiting for the shock to begin again. I wanted to be brave, to throw another joke or spit in his face.

It came to a jerking stop between my third and fourth rib before it started up again. I choked on my own spit, twitching and squirming in the worst kind of agony.

I wasn't the fucking fighter.

I was going to die here … or worse, I wasn't , and this would only continue.

"I can't! I can't ?—"

"You know … I can take it all away, if you ask," a sinful voice whispered through the wretched agony.

Shaggy brown hair dusted over gleeful eyes, and the scent of sour gold replaced the stench of blood and fear. Archon's hands came to my shoulders, rubbing the muscles there that still quaked from the aftershocks.

The tempting press of a deal was almost too much. I sucked in a breath, biting back the need to beg that had stolen my voice. It was everything my pain-riddled body wanted, and it was everything I couldn't accept. A deal with a Djinn, with the Djinn Eternal ?

It was stupid. The stupidest thing I could do.

My mind was a haze, too disjointed to come up with a plan that could use it to my advantage. The risk outweighed the reward … I knew that.

Sweat came to my skin, my fangs permanently down as they sliced into my lips when I tried to thrash against my bindings again.

"Did your information not warn you about this, Collector? Did your power as a Vampire cloud your mind so much you thought you were the top of the food chain?" he asked, goading me as he squeezed until I yelped.

I wasn't made for torture.

"Ask, and it can stop." A promise that tempted me, that destroyed the walls I'd built around myself.

Another shock, this one lingering until I smelled the burning of flesh in the air. The limit that I'd ridden so closely to now seemed like it was a breath away.

Three hours.

The plea burned in my throat.

Thirty-six minutes.

I wanted to be strong like Fallon. I wanted to growl and snarl at him like Eirik. I wanted to stand unmoving, even in the face of the sun, like Nero. I wanted to kill them all until even Osiris was silent in shock. I wanted to spit in their face, and laugh, to be the man who would do anything to stay strong.

I wanted to smile, to hold on to myself and not fall apart at the very seams as the next shock went straight through me. I wanted to live, to not lose a part of me I'd never get back in the face of something worse than death.

I wanted to be a survivor, like Aaliyah .

But I wasn't that man, wasn't a fighter, and coming to terms with that was almost as terrible as the pain. This was all I could take, all the torture my body could endure. It weighed down on me almost as much as the whisper of a begging, cowardly word.

One I held back until steps echoed in the air, the sound of a body moving away from the table while another hand reached for me, a knife once again held in deft fingers. It went for my face—the blade gleaming in my eye like he planned to cut it out.

" Please. " It was drowned out by the bubble of blood in my mouth as I coughed. My left lung had been punctured some time ago, and the bone sat wedged inside of it, unable to rectify itself and heal.

My voice was a sham of what it had been, the sound so muddled by the tears in my vocal cords that I wondered if they'd even heal right again.

"Please what?" Archon asked, back in a blink, leaning over me. The voice was a curse and a blessing, a cease to the onslaught, a moment to breathe as I tried to see through red-rimmed eyes and a bloody haze that had covered my face. "What, no more snide remarks?"

No deal was worth it. Even in death, it could ruin us.

Tears wet my eyes. I couldn't handle more.

I was past the time for pleasantries. Even the need to jolt back with a quip of my own tempered down beneath the pain. Archon had stripped that away until I was exactly what he wanted.

Broken.

"What do you want?" I asked, sagging into the table.

Silence, his favorite means of control. That silence was a tactic all on its own, the anticipation of pain mind numbing as I sucked in sharp breaths that seemed useless as my vision blotted.

"Ah, but I told you what I wanted. Didn't I?" Archon asked, tapping the table by my ear.

Nothing less than the downfall of Osiris Vivas.

"Please . " I hated that I begged, but I couldn't find it in me to keep it back anymore.

I needed the pain to stop.

"My, how the great Vivas Crypt has fallen." The clank of steps around the table would haunt me for the rest of my life, the shuddering feeling of a hand on my ruined shoulder nearly making me puke. His squeeze was a warning, like the heat of his breath on my cheek. "But I'm nothing if not a merciful man. All you have to do is ask . I don't need all of you broken. I can free you, Adrian."

Archon's grin was gold foil on nuclear waste, but the man that had been carving me up for hours pulled away, and in that moment, I knew I'd do anything to get him to stay that way.

Pathetic.

"A deal. I want to make a deal ," I whispered, sealing my own fate with words I hoped would be enough. "Stop the torture."

"And what's in it for me? I can't very well make a deal with nothing in return." Archon's words were honeyed, jabbing at me with a fake concern that made me want to gag. "Tell me, what do you have planned for the Eternium? This is my price."

Our plan, the one that depended on Exilium. The one that already teetered on the edge of success. The fact that it was still a secret was a trump card, one I couldn't give. "Not that."

"Are you in a position to bargain, Collector ?" Archon clicked his tongue, grabbing my hair and forcing me to look him in the eyes. When he glanced up, I shivered, already knowing what he was signaling for. "Maybe you need a few more hours to think it through."

I was silent for a moment, staring into the lights that blinded me, before I caught on the clock that still counted down on my torturer's chest. Three hours and thirty-six minutes. It was likely approaching sunrise.

I couldn't last through the day, and there was no way Osiris would be here any sooner than just after dusk. I wouldn't last that long.

I wasn't a fighter.

"No," I whispered, closing my eyes as my head sank into the steel. "Fine, you'll get a word. One . "

The ramifications were heavy, the pain in my throat sour.

Archon pulled away, and I was left strapped to that table, questioning my own worth as he waited. Everything else that I could have done, everything else that could have been said, flashing over my mind now that the chance was over.

"Fine, one word. What are your plans for the Eternium?" he asked.

And I gave him exactly what he wanted.

" Exilium ."

It gave him everything. It was enough to satiate him, hopefully, without completely ruining our plans. A final brush of gold sank down from the air, dusting over the exposed skin on my chest as the pact sealed. I felt the deal like it was a physical thing, a branding on my skin, in the space over my heart. It seared, no doubt leaving a golden mark in its place.

It traveled down my veins, lighting a fuse on the bonds in my chest, down to my wrist where Aaliyah's mark kept me functioning. It was like it ate them, swallowing the ties to my family whole, destroying the last of what made me Vivas.

The first one to snap felt almost worse than the blade I'd fought so hard to get away from. My breath was stolen on the next, and the next . Until only Aaliyah remained, and I was left staring in horror at those obnoxious lights as I felt it fizzle away. Ash filled my mouth, my body going lax against the table as all my strength left with that mark.

I was split off from the others, completely isolated in my own head, forced into silence … stuck with only my own broken thoughts. I'd made a deal with Archon, with a Djinn . I'd known it wouldn't be that simple.

And I'd fallen headfirst into his trap, anyway.

Archon's laugh was a mockery as the man that had torn into me for almost four hours leaned back in. My heart caught, my mind racing as the knife touched my skin. There was a brief moment of disbelief, the fear unlike anything else. I'd told him what he'd wanted, sold out our plans.

"No, we made a deal!" I hissed, jerking away as the blade sank bone deep.

There was a spray of blood, the deafening slice of flesh, but there was no pain.

My vision blackened, and I nearly laughed at my own stupidity. Archon was a Djinn that preyed on weakness, that wanted to break Osiris. He'd told me how he planned to do it. The knife sliced again, easier now that I wasn't struggling.

And he was going to use us exactly like he'd said.

"Oh, but we did, Collector. A deal is a deal. No more torture. That is what you asked for. I took away your pain," Archon said, nonchalant. I choked on my breath as he walked away, still laughing. "It's mine now."

I'd made a deal with a Djinn, breaking one of my many rules in doing so. The knife slid deep again, the color of the room fading as the clock I was forced to watch continued to track each second I was trapped here.

I'd made a deal with Archon .

And it was a deal I'd lost .