Page 18

Torture

Sallie Rose

“You have another choice to make now.”

The Stone Fae King’s smoke-and-glass voice tendrils into my ears as the shadows set me down in front of him, wrists still bound above my head.

My arms already ache from being suspended. Prickly tingles crawl up them from my shoulders.

But I grit my teeth against the discomfort and roll my eyes. “Oh, yippee. Another choice. I’m sure it’ll be fair and completely reasonable.”

“There’s that word again.” He cocks his head. “If you truly wished for fair treatment, you would not continue to invite these displays of my dominance. And you most certainly would not have kissed me last?—”

“Oh, my moons, you moist psycho.” My heart hammers against my ribcage, but my mouth refuses to shut up. “The only thing I’ve invited is a head examination for kissing you.”

He leans forward on his stupidly dramatic throne. “Kissing me twice .”

“I didn’t know that statue was the real you!”

“But you did know you were not to leave my chambers.” He regards me with a blank expression. “My note was clear and explicit.”

“I mean, sure, but you only live once. And my life is scheduled to be over by this time tomorrow. I needed to use the time I had left.”

“So this is what your defiance is about?” He lifts an eyebrow. “You believe your punishment is worth installing an unasked-for garden during your final hours?”

I mumble in response.

“I did not hear you. You will need to answer again.”

“The garden asked me to grow it,” I answer, enunciating this time. It’s the truth. The moment I touched the ground, I could feel its need as if the earth had spoken out loud. “The brambles were choking it alive. I have to save it… realize it, even if it’s the literal last thing I do.”

He tilts his head. “Your words make no sense.”

“Because you don’t have any art inside you.” My teeth clench around the bitter knowledge of him in my mouth. “Of course you don’t understand. You don’t grow things. You only take and destroy.”

It’s the worst insult I can think of. But his features remain unchanged. Not even a squint of annoyance.

Then he asks, “Are you ready to make your choice, or would you prefer to add further to your punishment?”

This moist psycho. I want to tell him off again—but my arms are already going numb. Getting on with the punishment wins out over dragging this out.

“Fine. What’s the choice?”

“My shadows can only be wielded in this manner until sunsrise,” he says. “Thanks to your so-valiantly-declared willingness to take on any punishment my staff invited with their squabbling… I can either leave you like this all night, or…”

He trails off, wielding the silence like a spirit-breaking weapon.

I don’t want to ask. Don’t want to play his cruel game.

But I need my arms to garden tomorrow. I can’t risk losing my last day of life to recovery.

“Or what?” I grit out.

He pulls out the time glass again, dark-red sand sloshing inside. “Or you can agree to let my shadows mete out your punishment. They will do whatever I want them to until the sand runs out.”

Whatever he wants. The burning in my arms turns cold, and I have to work to keep the quaver out of my voice. “Will it hurt?”

“Yes.” His answer is blunt, his black lips curving cruelly. “But perhaps not in the way you expect. They will draw no blood.”

New ways of hurting me—ways I’m not expecting—don’t exactly sound better than the ones I know.

But the garden…

“Will I be able to move tomorrow?” I ask. “Will your shadows do anything I can’t recover from?”

He actually considers the question, tilting his head. “Physically? No. Mentally?”

He shrugs. “Well, I can never be sure how easily your kind will break.”

Moons, I hate him. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone so much. Not even Princess Seraphyne and her out-of-the-blue slaps made me feel this furious.

But I know I won’t recover from a punishment that physically wrecks me. If mental torment is the price of mobility, it’s the only choice.

“Fine,” I spit. “I’ll take the time-glass option. Just know, I’ll never forgive you. After this, I’m going to hate you for?—”

“Noted and dismissed.” He flips the bulbed sand glass with a flick of his clawed hand. “Your time begins now.”

That’s all the warning I get before the shadows holding my wrists pull me back into the air, then split off… their tendrils vining down my body.

Two wrap around my breasts, squeezing in a way that feels almost like a massage.

Yet nothing like a massage.

“No! No—stop!”

The shadows freeze, then set me down on the floor, lowering my arms just enough to give me some relief from the pain of having them raised above my head.

But the king on the throne says nothing.

Leaving me to ask, “What… what are they doing to me?”

“Punishing you. I thought I made that clear when I gave you your final choice of the night.” Veyrion’s voice is dipped in condescension, like he’s speaking to a daft child.

“Too much?” he asks, lifting the hourglass as if to tuck it away. “Shall we return to option one?”

“No!” I blurt. “I don’t want to hang here all night!”

“Then you will need to be a good princess and take your prescribed punishment.” His voice is almost gentle.

A healer informing a patient about why they must swallow down a foul-tasting syrup.

But his face remains colder than last night’s bath water.

“We cannot have another outburst asking me to stop. Otherwise, I will reset the glass and start again.”

Which would mean the original time… I realize. Plus, however long it takes to refill.

“Do you understand, princess?”

His tone is casual. Almost bored.

But the threat pulses in the air between us, and the shadows twist tighter around my breasts, squeezing almost to pain.

Will it hurt? Yes. But perhaps not in the way you expect.

A cold realization crawls up my spine.

“Do you understand?” he repeats.

Tears sting my eyes—but I refuse to cry. I will not cry in front of this kinghole.

I turn my head to the side, away from him, and give a small nod.

“Eyes on me, princess.”

He waits until I drag my reluctant gaze back to his dimmed red one.

“I will need to hear your acquiescence out loud,” he says, pitiless. “So there is no confusion. You can cry. You can plead. You can beg. But any word that causes me to stop will reset the glass. Do you understand?”

“I…” I swallow, choking on the words. “I understand.”

His lips curl again. Then he picks the twisted glass device back up.

“Fortunate timing. It’s ready for you to try again.”

He flips it over.

And I clamp my lips shut, silently vowing not to open them again as the shadows haul me back into the air.

They once again slither around my breasts—circling, squeezing, teasing the tips until my nipples harden under their touch.

And something pulses between my legs.

Liquid. Shameful.

More shadows rush toward it—while the others continue to plump and stroke my chest.

Suddenly, they’re between my legs, peeling me open. Like they’re tattling on me.

I twist in the air, turning my face into my shoulder, squeezing my eyes shut.

But I can still feel his red-eyed stare, heavy on my bare, trembling sex.

And of course, Veyrion is too much of a kinghole to let me hide.

“You’re sensitive, princess. Already wet—just from shadows playing with your breasts.”

I hate that the little nub between my legs swells at his words. That I feel myself getting wetter. Even though I’m nowhere near that time in my cycle, when I sometimes touch myself in the bath just to take the edge off.

“And what is this?”

The shadows pull back my hood, revealing the exposed nodule underneath, and Veyrion’s eyes glow a bit brighter.

“Is that…?”

I whimper and kick when his shadows flutter across it, circling the swollen button and baring it further to the chamber’s cool air.

“How curious,” Veyrion murmurs. “An odd place to put such a sensitive organ. Our females keep theirs much deeper, where it is not so vulnerable.”

His voice drops lower. “I wonder what else my shadows will find.”

A choked gasp tears from me when the shadows push past my folds and fan out inside me.

I can feel them.

Inside.

Sliding along my inner walls, pressing into the tiny hole I use to pee. Exploring. Finding secret places I didn’t know existed.

Then—

They hit something. A particularly sensitive spot.

And the pleasure rips up my spine like a scream made of lightning.

“I see,” Veyrion says from his throne. “You already have another pleasure center where our females keep theirs. Fascinating.”

The tendril inside me grows more substantial, pressing into that same spot again—while others continue working my breasts, flicking my exposed button, and applying pressure to that other small hole, the one that’s supposed to be used for nothing but practical things.

Fire ignites inside me. My skin flushes, and a moan escapes, pleasure lighting me up like I’ve been set ablaze.

Oh moons. I’m going to orgasm. I’m going to climax while hanging in the air, with nothing but my quickly unraveling pride to clothe me.

“Un… uh…” The sounds spill from me, wild and ungoverned. I can’t help it—I look down.

The shadows writhe over and inside my glistening sex like a mass of sentient smoke-vines. It’s a nightmare to witness. And yet I’m creaming, leaking all over my thighs as the sensations ripple through me, deeper and deeper.

Veyrion watches like a scholar observing a specimen, his lips curled in that mean not-quite-smile.

I hate him.

I hate myself.

I twist my knees together, trying to hide my clenching sex from his cruel eyes.

“No, princess. Don’t ruin my fun.”

More shadows lash down my legs, winding around my ankles—forcing my bottom half wide open for him.

Moons be composted… That strange, shameful heat inside me only flares brighter .

So bright I can barely breathe. My lungs stutter.

I’m going to?—

“No, princess.”

Suddenly, every shadow pulls back, except the ones around my wrists.

I’m set back on the ground, and the shadows at my wrists pull my arms into the space between my breasts.