Page 44 of The Lost Art of Revealing Hidden Truths (The Lost Arts #3)

And then they spotted the vomit on the floor. This made desire flare higher in Venoran, making Perian shudder—seriously, what was this man’s problem—but it made Fomadin angry and a little disgusted.

“Folna,” he hollered. “Come and clean this up!”

A moment later, a mousy, annoyed-looking woman with Fomadin’s blond hair and green eyes came into the room, saw the mess that Perian had made and curled up her lip.

“You wanted him here,” she complained, “why don’t you clean it up?”

Venoran stepped closer to her and said, voice a silky threat, “Are we inconveniencing you? Do you not want to help?”

Perian watched her swallow, saw the fear that briefly fluttered across her face, and then she said, “Fine.”

It was not anything that resembled fine. Fomadin gave Venoran a shove.

“Behave,” he said. “That’s my sister.”

The threat was suddenly gone, and Venoran gave him a friendly-appearing smile.

“Did you want to clean up this mess?” he asked.

Fomadin laughed. “Of course not.”

And that, apparently, was how Venoran kept his friends? Could Fomadin really not see what was right in front of him? Perian wouldn’t want any woman he cared about to be anywhere near Venoran, ever, and he certainly couldn’t imagine bringing him to his sister’s house.

Fomadin’s sister came and cleaned up the vomit, shooting an annoyed glance at Perian while she did so. But Perian could see the strain in her eyes, and he was pretty sure that whatever was going on, she’d gotten in over her head. But she cleaned in silence and then left the room.

“So,” Venoran said, turning his vicious smile on Perian. “It seems the tables have turned. From the pet of Summus to someone who needs to be hidden away.”

Perian didn’t say anything.

“What secrets you must have,” Venoran teased, licking his lips hungrily and making another shudder of revulsion curl across Perian’s skin—but that just made the desire leap higher, and this was, truly, the grossest thing Perian had ever experienced.

What people liked when it was consensual was their business, but what Venoran liked was that Perian didn’t like it.

Perian would rather watch Molun get patched up by the doctor again. (Not hurt again, never that, but he would relive it over and over if he could just get out of this.)

How had this happened? How had Cormal connected with these men? Perian understood that Cormal hated him, but he’d always seemed to take his job seriously. Despite everything, Perian couldn’t imagine him being in league with someone who had escaped from prison.

Or had it all been a set-up? Had he really hated Perian so much that he’d set Venoran free, even after what he knew the man had done to all those people? No, no, surely not. But then why was Perian trapped with Venoran now?

The man smirked, dark and vicious. “What have you done that means we get to play with you and no one at the castle ever gets to see you again?”

Perian shook his head. “I haven’t done anything.”

A step closer, Fomadin watching with amusement on his face as Perian tried to inch further away from Venoran. The bed was so narrow there wasn’t really anywhere to go.

“Clearly that’s not true,” Venoran said. “And just look how unfair the world is. You get bundled out of the castle and are supposed to just slip away, while I’m brought right to the Queen and falsely accused!”

“There was nothing false about the accusations against you!” Perian fired back, even though antagonizing this man was a terrible idea. He couldn’t help but protest.

The man reached out and grabbed Perian’s head, yanking it back hard enough that his scalp screamed with pain and his neck hurt. Tears prickled in his eyes, and the man smiled a cold smile.

“Some people like a little pain, didn’t you know that? No one got anything they didn’t ask for.”

Perian was trying to breathe shallowly, trying to fend off that sick, dark curl of pleasure that was growing only more excited by Perian’s reaction.

His stomach heaved again, and the man correctly interpreted the expression on Perian’s face because he pulled away just before Perian leaned over and threw up again.

Venoran cursed, and Perian dry-heaved and tried not to breathe through his nose.

He slammed out of the room, and Fomadin said, “You’re going to tell us all about it, you know. We’ll make sure of it.”

Perian just shivered and was so grateful when Fomadin left and the door closed again. A moment later, it was opened by Folna.

“Please help me,” he said.

She shot him a resentful look. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” Perian agreed. “If you could just get a message to the castle—”

But there was a short, sharp negation of her head. “They won’t let me leave. Can’t risk it. You don’t know—”

She shivered, but the thing was, Perian did know. Fomadin might be blind, but Perian wasn’t.

“Please,” he whispered. “We can both get away.”

But she shook her head, hurried up with her cleaning, and then slipped out of the room again without another word, closing the door firmly behind her.

She was scared, and Perian couldn’t blame her.

He’d caught only a glimpse of the rest of the house through the door as they left, but he didn’t think it was very large.

How did Perian think they were going to sneak away?

Perian was so tired, feeling it pull at him, a desire to sleep even though his head throbbed and he was cold and terrified. But it was a bone-deep sort of exhaustion, and was it because he hadn’t had sex? Did he need to feed? But it hadn’t been that long since he’d had sex with Brannal, surely.

Maybe he was actually hungry? His stomach seemed to be uncertain about this, whirling a little, and Perian grimaced and decided not to think about food.

Now Perian had made himself thirsty, and he realized just how gross his mouth tasted, still coated with bile.

He swallowed, grimacing, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.

He tried to focus on his restraints, but they really were solid and metal and looped through the main cross-piece of the headboard. Perian tugged and tugged, but all this did was rub his wrists raw. The solid wood didn’t move at all. The chain was too short to let him get off the bed.

He was trapped in a tiny bed in a narrow room in a small house with people who wanted to hurt him.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Venoran came into the room alone and firmly closed the door.

Perian knew that he was in trouble. When the man smiled his terrible smile and Perian’s heart jumped, that terrible desire grew.

When he stalked closer and Perian tried to back away, desire leaped again, making Perian feel sicker and making the other man feel more desire.

He squished himself back into the corner, curled up his legs to make the smallest target possible, tugging on his restraints again even though it hadn’t worked before.

Venoran’s awful smile deepened. “You’re going to need a little convincing to tell me what I want to know, aren’t you?”

He reached for Perian, and Perian kicked out as hard as he could, missing the man’s groin dead on but still managing a glancing blow.

The man leaned over with a grimace of pain, but without missing a beat, he slapped Perian with a hard, savage blow that made Perian’s face explode with pain, his ears ringing.

He tried to shake the foggy vision away, tried to focus, but it was almost impossible.

“You’re going to pay for that,” the man ground out, and then he was reaching for Perian again, grabbing his legs, and the more Perian struggled futilely, the more the other man liked it, fingers digging into Perian’s skin cruelly tight, making him flinch.

He was grabbing at Perian’s sleep trousers, yanking them down, getting more excited as he did so, and Perian’s panicking mind had a sudden moment of clarity.

What did carnalions do? They drew energy from people.

Perian could feel all the desire coming off the other man, and it was dark and twisted and one of the most terrible things that Perian had ever felt, but it was still desire .

Perian had never knowingly done this before, but it was what he did , wasn’t it? And so Perian stopped struggling, closed his eyes, focused on that terrible feeling of rotten desire, and pulled .

He’d never tried to draw it into him before, but it had apparently happened without his even trying in the past. He didn’t want this desire, didn’t want to feel any of it, but he needed to, needed to stop this man, needed to stop him from hurting him, from hurting anyone, from going free.

Venoran’s grip loosened a little, his purposeful movements faltering. “What?”

Perian’s eyes popped open to see the man shaking his head, paler than he had been, blinking in confusion.

He refocused on Perian, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

“Leave me alone,” Perian told him, panting. “Just… just go!”

Instead, Venoran dove for him, getting his hands around Perian’s neck and squeezing .

Perian’s vision began to narrow, and he pulled harder at all that desire.

He was a demon, apparently, and he was trying to stop a very bad man from hurting people.

Perian was pulling and pulling and pulling, was trying to fill himself up with the grossest, most terrible desire that he’d ever felt in his life, but if he could do that, if he could pull it all out, if he could stop it, then he would be safe, then Fomadin’s sister would be safe.

Then everyone else this terrible man might encounter wouldn’t need to be afraid.

Light spangled across Perian’s vision, which was going hazy, and just when Perian was sure that he was going to lose consciousness, the grip on his neck suddenly loosened, and the body on top of him went lax.

Perian gagged, managed to wiggle his legs, get them up, push with all his might, and shove the man off of him. He fell to the floor with a crash, which Perian realized belatedly was probably a terrible idea, but he needed the man to be off him.

The door crashed open a moment later, and Fomadin was there. He stared in horror at the scene.

“What did you do?” he yelled.

Perian was already leaning over the bed, dry-heaving again, because this was the most terrible, most awful thing that had ever happened.

Fomadin came into the room and reached for his friend, checked for a pulse, and then his eyes widened with fear, and he scrambled away from Perian.

“What did you do ?” he shouted, scrambling to his feet.

“Let me go,” Perian pleaded. “I just want to leave.”

“What did you do! ”

That was enough to get his sister in the room, and she gasped at the body on the floor.

“He’s dead,” Fomadin said. “He killed him. Fire and water, he’s dead .”

“What are we going to do with a dead body?” she demanded, eyes wide and scared. “What are we going to do?”

“Just let me go!” Perian begged.

But they were nearly hysterical. He saw the moment Fomadin had the idea. He ducked into the other room and came back with a lamp.

His sister’s eyes went wide. “This is my home!”

“And you want to explain why there’s a dead body in it?” he demanded. “Why there’s two dead bodies in it?”

She shook her head, mute, and Perian pulled frantically at his restraints.

“Just let me go!”

Fomadin didn’t listen, eyes full of hate and fear as he threw the lantern into the corner, where it smashed and the fire began to immediately eat up the wooden wall.

No stone here.

Not the castle.

Not safe.

“Please don’t do this,” Perian begged.

They closed the door, and then they were gone.

Perian tugged harder at the restraints, but there was still no give in them, there had never been any give in them.

Smoke soon began to fill the air, dark and oily because this wasn’t a nice fire in a fire pit or in a fireplace, this was a fire that was consuming a house, that was eating everything it found, and it was going to find Perian.

It was already hotter and harder to breathe.

Was this what it had been like for his father, dying in the house of pleasure? Perian had always hoped he’d died in his sleep, unaware of the terrible fate that was coming for him. That fire had happened in the very early hours of the morning, an accident according to the papers.

More desperately than ever, Perian hoped that it hadn’t hurt, that he’d been unaware of it, and that it had been over quickly.

Perian could now attest to how terrible it was watching those flames get closer, the heat growing suffocating even with the cold in his bones that nothing could touch.

He kept pulling on the restraints, his wrists stinging and burning, and then he twisted around and tried to kick at the wooden bar with his feet.

It creaked but didn’t move. Sweat was trickling down Perian’s face and into his eyes.

His feet kept slipping. His stomach roiled.

He tried to expel the desire he’d fed on. If only he could do that, maybe he’d feel a little better. Or maybe he was about to die with the body of the man he’d killed stretched out of the floor beside him and beginning to catch fire. Maybe there was no feeling better.

Perian wasn’t a Warrior or a Mage Warrior. He’d never thought there’d come a time where he would kill anyone.

But Perian wasn’t just Perian now, was he? He wasn’t just not very good at training to be a Warrior. He was a carnalion, and he’d been able to pull the energy right out of a man—because he’d desired Perian in a sick and twisted way, and Perian had been able to use it against him.

The smoke was getting thicker, and Perian’s breaths were growing labored, interrupted with fits of coughing. His eyes stung from the smoke and from the tears he didn’t even realize at first that he was crying. He hadn’t wanted any of this, but he hadn’t been given a choice.

Was this always how it was going to end? He still didn’t understand , not really, but they said carnalions were susceptible to fire. Maybe it was fitting, after all, that this was the way Perian was going to die.

The world had gone all hazy, his stinging eyes not able to process anything anymore, the wall of heat so intense that it was like a blanket, a searing blanket pressing up against him, choking him.

The door suddenly burst open, making the flames leap and swirl even higher, the wall of heat and smoke suffocating, and blackness reached out and grabbed Perian.

He wished he’d gotten to see Brannal one more time.