Page 147 of The Incendiary

They didn’t stop. They twisted my arms, pulling at the skin with their greedy fingers while the knife dragged through the skin of my thighs. Months ago, I had been cut wide open before by Molochai’s blade. At a certain point, the pain had been so blinding that my body had shut down in response to shock. This was slower. Deliberate.

I felt every single cut of this blade.

He wouldn’t stop.

Alec was right. Gavin wasn’t coming to save me this time. And for some gods-forsaken reason, I was unable to save myself.

“I’m sorry,” I wept, dizzy and delirious from the pain. “I’m sorry I told you to go.”

Alec said something, but I didn’t hear him. My pulse slowed. My body felt feeble, resigned to enduring this. Maybe, I tried to convince myself, it would hurt a little less if I let the fight leave me. Maybe it would end soon.

It didn’t.

I clenched my teeth through the tears and watched the water hitting the stone floor. The splashing drops sparkled in the moonlight that was streaming in from the hall’s upper windows. It smelled so fresh, so willing to wash away all the dirt and dust. I had a feeling I’d always loved the way the water felt on my skin. It touched something deep, deeper than my lost memories.

I didn’t love it anymore.

Another blow to my cheek, and I tasted blood from the inside of my mouth. I didn’t remember lifting my head, but the back of my head was slammed into stone, the impact blurring the sparkle of water in my vision into something dull. Clouded. Empty.

It was too much. The aches, the water, the sound of their laughter, melded together so thoroughly that I could no longer tell what was causing the pain.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please, please⁠—”

My muscles deflated in delirious relief when Gerard’s blade left my skin.

“There,” he sighed, pushing my legs open again to admire their handiwork. I mustered just enough strength to sit up and see for myself what they carved. One inner thigh, jagged and bloody, read slut while the other read whore. My body shuddered out an endless trail of broken sobs. Snot, drool, and blood streamed down my face and chin. Gerard grinned evilly, then flipped me onto my stomach. “Now you’ll never forget what you are to us.”

Words were gone from me. I felt lost again.

“If it’s any consolation, Your Highness…” Alec gripped my hair with enough force to make my scalp bleed. He shoved my cheek into the cold, wet stone, slapped my bare, stinging backside, and whispered into my ear, “You have the prettiest little cunt I’ve ever seen.”

I waited for them to spread me open and take their fill. Relief washed over me when they didn’t. When mercifully, their steps faded away. I curled into a shaking ball on the cold tile floor, too weak and horrified to rise.

“It’s over,” I breathed. But everything hurt, and it didn’t feel over. Not at all.

I crawled so my torso and thighs were fully beneath the shower stream. “Wash away,” I cried weakly, watching the red run… and run… and run down the drain. The blood served as a reminder of how else they could have made me bleed. “Wash away, wash away, wash away.”

But the blood kept coming, as did a stomach-souring, confusing and humiliating sense of… gratitude. They had sliced me up and seen me exposed, left me bleeding on the shower floor, but they still hadn’t done the worst. From the moment they approached me, naked, weak, and vulnerable, I had expected them to.

I had been beaten to a pulp and carved open while naked and vulnerable, but that was all.

That was all.

FORTY-THREE

ARYELLA

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a soft, warm bed with cornflower-blue sheets. Seagulls called in the distance, and I could hear the soothing rush of water as waves broke against a beach.

Behind me, wrapped around me, was the strongest, safest warmth I’ve ever known.

I gasped and rolled over. At the sight of his warm, brown eyes, and scarred, bearded face, I gave a broken cry of gratitude to the gods.

“You came back,” I choked. “You’re here.”

He smiled at me. My fingers brushed the faint laughter lines at the edges of his eyes. “Hello, my Ella,” he said softly.

His voice—so deep, comforting, and sure—summoned tears, flowing over the apples of my cheeks. “Are you real?” I cupped his strong jaw. “Is this real?”