Breathe. One. Two—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe. Dahes was choking me, cutting off my air.
Hael’s eyes were desperate, pleading with me to do something. “You have control, Nollie,” he spat, still trying to fight through the sentries, but more kept flooding into the throne room. “Use your Token!”
My Token.
I focused on my heart rate, on trying to slow the beating against my chest, but the searing pain at my throat was jarring, clawing at myattention. It felt like acid was pouring down my lungs as I choked on nothing. Air refused to come, and panic pressed into me faster and faster with each passing second.
I couldn’t do it?—
Hael’s words at the cabin came crashing back to me.“You’re in control of yourself, Magnolia. No one can take that away from you.”
I was powerless, my choices had been ripped from me seven years ago, my free will stripped bare until I was nothing more than a puppet on strings. Dahes controlled me, but not my Token. It was the only thing he couldn’t take through our deal. The only thing that was still my own.
I could still turn transparent.
I focused on it, on bringing myself back to that moment in the bathroom with Hael, and trying to only think of that feeling…
Of wanting my Token, of welcoming it…
Dahes growled the moment my transparency emerged, but it wasn’t staying long enough to be effective. It kept flickering on and off, gray, then solid, gray, then solid.
Focus, Magnolia.
I can do this. It’smybody,myToken…
“Turn it off,”Dahes sneered into my mind, cutting off my thoughts.“Same rules apply from Perinth. If you don’t want me to rip his fucking heart out and serve it to you for dinner, then TURN. IT. OFF.”
I immediately stopped trying to call it forward.
“Good girl,”he whispered, but his voice was still too cold, too dead, too removed. His breath hit the curve of my ear, his chest flush with my back. His hand was still around my neck, pressing too tight, holding me in place.
His other reached over my shoulder, trailing down the front of my dress, ripping the flimsy fabric as he went. Cold air immediately hit my chest as I arched away, but it only caused me to slam my back against his chest.
No. No. No. This wasn’t happening.
“You’re mine, Magnolia,”Dahes’ voice seethed into my head.“Only mine.”
Any chance I had at holding back my tears were gone as I sobbed.
“Shit,” Hael cursed. “Don’t fucking touch her!” He broke out of his hold from the sentries, punching one in the throat and another through the gut, but it was only making his own knuckles bleed. The sentries staggered backward, but their armor was impenetrable.
“Your body is mine. Your mind is mine. Your fucking soul is mine.”Dahes’ voice was lethal, drowning out Hael’s screams.“Do you understand?”His hand tightened around my neck before I tried and failed to nod. My vision blurred as more and more tears streamed down my face and I started seeing spots.
The gown fell off my shoulders at the same time Dahes flipped me around.
“I’ve always wanted to take you on my throne.” He said it out loud now, and I knew it was intentional. He wanted Hael to hear.
Flashbacks from the first time he tried to do this were mixing with the present, but this was worse, so much worse.
“I’LL KILL YOU,” Hael screamed. He made it to the steps before the chains bolted into the stone stopped him, giving the sentries enough time to reach him and knock him back down. “Don’t lay a fucking hand on her!”
Dahes’ grip slackened around my neck as I soundlessly inhaled. If it weren’t for his hand around my waist, I might have fallen over. My breaths were ragged. I knew they’d be echoing across the room if I could speak.
Dahes pushed me down onto his throne, my thigh snagging on a thorn as it cut my leg.
I screamed, or tried to.
I couldn’t breathe. I was past the point where my exercises could calm me down. This was hell. Dahes took the first night and warped it. If I turned my head, I’d see the prisoner’s vacant eyes still impaled on the throne. If I looked down, I’d see Hael forced to watch. And if I looked up… I’d see the monster finally getting what he tried to take from me all those years ago.
