Page 31 of The Queen’s Shadow

I didn’t want her to waste energy worrying about what was happening to me. I needed her to focus, and continue what she was doing without distractions. The faster she could get the shadowstone forged into weapons, the faster we could prepare to truly make a stand against Ash Nevra. It broke my heart to leave her there, alone. But I needed to compose myself, or she would suspect that things were more dire than I had led her to believe.

Fuck, she was incredible. She had tamed a literal Titan, and single handedly discovered what very well could be the key to our salvation.

I would never understand why The Origin had chosen someone as unworthy as myself to be her mate, but I would be damned if I did not do everything in my power to earn even an ounce of the love she seemed to so freely offer me.

“Stand up.” The Siren spat, and the bond compelled me to my feet. It did not matter that my body was in shock from the hours of torture I had endured. I was forced to obey the command. She watched me, with that cold expression of hers, before cocking an eyebrow.

“What? No witty comment or snarky insult?” She asked dryly.

I just stared at her. I didn’t have the energy to play this game. I needed a few moments to recover. My hands were screaming in pain, and it was taking everything I had to keep my body from visibly shaking in agony.

I would heal, I just needed to catch my breath. Daemons could withstand quite a bit of damage, and we healed faster than humans did, though not nearly as quickly as shifters.

Happily, Raven had never been injured enough to need it, but I had always been somewhat glad she had bonded to Rycon, despite his… unpredictable nature. His regenerative abilities would be invaluable in keeping her safe as we moved into wartime.

A look of something akin to disgust flickered across The Siren’s face as she regarded me.

“Pathetic.” She sneered. I absorbed the insult silently and waited for her to give me another order. “Follow me, our Queen has prepared a room for you.”

How kind of her. I thought bitterly, as the slavery bond roared to life and forced me to follow The Siren out of the torture chamber.

The hallway was just as dark and dank as the stone room had been. There were no windows and no way to discern where it was I was being kept. We passed several heavy wooden doors that I assumed were cells of some kind.

“How does it feel, Prince of Darkness, to finally feel the burn of the slavery bond?” Nytara asked me, her voice like steel.

“Fuck The Origin, Nytara, you’re feeling chatty today, aren’t you?” My tone was as dry as hers, bored, even. However, my patience was wearing thin. The constant and excruciating pain radiating from my fingertips was making it difficult for me to keep my mask in place.

We stopped before one of the many identical doors that lined the stone hallway, and she opened it up, gesturing for me to enter. The moment I did, I narrowed my eyes.

The bed was much too large and luxurious to make sense for a prison cell. There was a fireplace against one wall with thick animal pelts scattered across the ground before the crackling flames. Ash Nevra had even given me a small table with chairs and some reading material.

This was not good.

A shiver of dread coursed up my spine as I took in my surroundings. Nytara spoke again from the doorway.

“I’ve always hated you.” She told me, her voice flat and emotionless. “The way you walked among us, lording your freedom over our heads, all the while acting as if you were just as tortured and trapped as the rest of us.”

Before I could stop myself I barked out a surprised laugh.

“If that’s what you think, then you are even more blind than I originally gave you credit for.”

Her expression remained stone cold. “You had the power to free more, yet you only chose to release Dossidian and the chameleon. Your perfect little circle of friends tasted what the rest of us could only dream of due to your favoritism.”

I snorted, allowing my mask to shift from cold indifference to amusement.

“Jealous, Nytara?” I sneered. Her eyebrow twitched and I reveled in the fact that I was able to draw even that small reaction from her.

“Do you know what happened to those that had considered themselves to be under your protection after you left?”

“Of course I know.” I snapped at her, not even caring anymore that I was allowing her to see a sliver of my true self. I didn’t need her judgement. No one hated me for my failures more than I did. There was nothing she could say about it that I hadn’t already said to myself. I couldn’t fucking save everyone. Right now, I couldn’t even save myself.

I resisted the urge to physically shake my head to clear it. The pain had not begun to fade as I had hoped it would. It seemed to be getting worse.

“You knew, and yet, you still left them.” She looked at me with such disgust, I wondered for a moment if she was going to drive her rapier into my throat, as she had done to the Obeah Man. I was in so much pain at the moment, I would have welcomed it.

“I’m confused, Nytara, as to why you’re bothering to bring this up, considering you’ve done what she did to those daemons and worse, during your ruthless piracy of The Obsidian Sea. Do not think I haven’t heard the stories, or pretend you have any sort of moral high ground to pass judgement from.”

“That was different.”