Page 114 of The Enslaved Duet

Even the wind died suddenly, and the animals obeyed, frozen in the trees like ornaments.

I let the banked rage at losing Cosima overcome me as I lifted my arm and brought the deadliest whip in my arsenal down on Simon Wentworth’s back.

His screams exploded in the silence, louder than my command, filling the quiet like a waterfall into a cup, his agony so forceful it seemed to tear through my eardrums.

I continued ceaselessly.

My mind focused not on the wet thwack and thud of the whip on his torn back or his banshee wails but on the face of a woman who was young enough to be a girl but wise enough to be a goddess.

I thought of the way she slept curled in my arms as if I was her protector. For a girl with a life filled with monsters, the idea that she thought I could keep her safe from harm was so heady, it made my head fucking spin.

I thought of her hair wrapped around my fingers as she babbled on about her day cooking with Douglas, attempting needlepoint with Mrs. White, and fencing with Riddick. How those words gave life to my house, to Pearl Hall, in a way nothing ever had before. How her words made my house a home.

I thought about Cosima until my arm was weak with strain and my white shirt was stained with red like a Jackson Pollack painting. I thought of her as Simon Wentworth’s breath turned to a wet rattle, and then I thought of her as my mind seized with the knowledge that this person she had turned me into could not live with beating Wentworth to death for committing an act I was guilty of myself.

“Davenport?” someone called.

I realized that my arm had dropped, and I was heaving for breath as I stared at the mutilated mess I’d made of the man before me.

“Can’t stomach it?” Sherwood asked smugly.

If I couldn’t, I would be signing my own death warrant.

I looked up at him, trying to veil the hatred I felt for him and his well up like a spring river over the protective banks I’d erected over the years.

“I have a better idea,” I said softly, dropping the whip, ignoring the way my hand cramped into a curled position from holding it so tightly for so long.

The Order watched wearily as I moved around Wentworth, dropping to my knees before I called to Noel, “Bring me a knife.”

My father strode forward as if he had been prepared all along for this exact eventuality, a gleaming hunting knife with an ivory and golden handle already brandished in his hand. It was the knife passed down the Greythorn line since its inception in the 1500s.

The handle was warm as he passed it over to me, his eyes cold with violent pride as he placed his other hand on my shoulder, and said, “That’s my boy.”

That’s my boy.

Proud of me for one-upping the Order’s prescribed punishment to one even more cruel, even more steeped in the society’s brutal history.

I cut my gaze from my father and looked up at Simon Wentworth, whose face was pale as a blank page and just as undone.

“Do it,” he mumbled. “End me.”

“I won’t,” I told him, my voice strong enough for the Order to hear it. “Because you don’t deserve it. For the crimes you’ve committed against the Order of Dionysus, you’ll be gelded.”

There was a collective gasp and hum of approval from behind me, but Simon Wentworth’s eyes only widened as he panted and gaped at me.

“This is for trying to rape my wife,” I said quietly, just for him.

And then I fit the knife up behind his balls andcut.

Blood poured over my hands, wet and warm like a Satanic christening while Simon’s screams rent the fabric of the air again and again until they stopped with a whimper, and he fainted in his bonds.

I stepped back, turned with the bloody knife, and wiped it on my father’s shirt before he could move out of the way.

He bared his teeth and growled at me, but I was already stepping away, handing both the knife and the offender’s wet mass of testicles to Sherwood.

“Your price for the crimes committed,” I told him, layering my voice with meaning as I pinned him in place with my glacial regard.

I took primal satisfaction from the way the rail-thin older man paled.