Page 33 of Tick Tock, Darling

No screaming. No cursing. Nothing.

Just the sound of it landing, and him looking at me while it did.

Wendy came and stood by my chair. Her fingers ran through my hair and I jerked my head away. She laughed if you could call it that. It sounded more guttural than a human laugh.

“Spin him around,” Pan ordered, running his palm down the whip.

His men turned Caspian where he hung. His back was bare. Scarred and broad and nothing over it.

Pan drew the lash through his fist and it moved wrong. Not like leather. It hung off his hand and poured, black and slow, and where it crossed the lamplight the light didn’t land on it — it went in and didn’t come back.

I knew what that was.

Shadow. He’d made a whip out of his own shadow, or a piece of it, and he’d been carrying it this whole time.

Which meant he’d never been fully cut from it. Not all the way. He had a scrap and he’d kept it and he’d braided it into something he could hit a man with.

The Star came up hard behind my ribs. Not to heal anything. It came up the way a dog comes up off the floor — the two of them knew each other, the light in me and the dark in his hand, and neither one liked what it was looking at.

Pan slashed the whip.

It made no sound coming down. That was the worst of it. No crack, no whistle, nothing — it went through the air like it wasn’t there and then it opened Caspian’s back from shoulder to hip.

Blood sprayed.

He didn’t move. Couldn’t. His hands didn’t even close.

I made myself watch and I made myself keep my mouth shut, and the thing beside me chuckled.

The wound stayed open. I waited for the edges to draw and they didn’t, and they weren’t going to. Whatever that lash was made of, it didn’t let flesh knit.

He was going to carry that for the rest of his life.

I inched forward in the chair. The magic inside pushed as if it wanted to get to Caspian.

“Pan,” Wendy said. This time her voice sounded like a woman’s. But not excited—worried.

I glanced up at her face. Her eyes weren’t all black, more gray. But why?

The lash came down. Caspian’s body jerked. More blood trickled down his wound.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

The words echoed through my mind, but Pan showed no mercy. This wasn’t rage. He’d have kept going all night and gone to bed fine.

My chest tightened and my throat ran dry. I pulled on my magic again and again. The Christmas Star surged inside me, burning hot. Sweat trickled down my face and my body shook. But the chains fought back, digging deeper and deeper into my flesh.

Caspian’s back turned into a bloody mess. The blood ran down him, over his jeans, and dripped off the toes of his boots onto the floor.

He hung there like a slab of beef. Never moved. Not once—the whip came down and his body took it and swung a little and that was all, and I had no way to know what was happening to him.

He could be dying and I wouldn’t know until he stopped breathing. He needed blood. He was a vampire, bleeding out at the end of the chain, and Pan wouldn’t allow any of us in this room to give him a single drop.

There’s no worse death for a vampire than thirst. My silence would kill him. I didn’t want Pan to win, but I couldn’t let Caspian die.

I pulled at my wrists. The manacles drew tighter. I pulled harder and they answered, biting down until my hands went cold.

Someone pounded on the door. “Captain. Captain.” The voice was excitable.