Page 46 of Drown Me Gently

He’d been so in love with a fantasy that he didn’t see the monster behind the smile. Ulric warned him. Again and again. Told him humans consume beauty.

And now…

Now, he was a science experiment. A curiosity to be sliced apart and studied.

Auren sobbed as Elias wiped the blood with a linen cloth, humming a sickeningly cheerful tune. His short gasping breaths and tear-filled eyes did nothing to slow Elias’s examination.

“There, there now, my beauty. It’ll fade. Or you’ll get used to it. Regardless, the first time is the worst. Take heart in the fact that the more I learn, the less I’ll have to cut.”

Auren grit his teeth so hard his ears rang.

He thought of Ulric. Thought of his voice. His eyes. His inked skin and the way he’d looked at Auren as though he were in pain.

I should’ve listened.

If he had his voice—if he could speak one word—he wouldn’t scream.

He would beg Elias to end it. To slit his throat and be done with it. Because this wasn’t life. This was punishment.

And he was a fool.

Auren didn’t know how long he had been unconscious. Only that he woke in bursts. Pain was the tide that carried him through the waves of torture—dragging him under and spitting him back out.

Each time his eyes opened, the firelight blurred and spun. His thoughts were fleeting and stripped to just sensation. He couldn’t tell if it had been hours or days. If Elias ever left. If he was still… himself.

The next time he woke, something burned along the side of his ribcage. His vision cleared enough to see the gleam of neat stitches—black thread pulled taut over angry, raw skin. He was sewn shut. Fresh panic clawed at his chest. What had Elias done? What had he taken? His head lolled to the side. Glass jars lined the shelf like trophies. One was filled with a faintly blueish tissue.

Is that mine?

The next time, his eyelids fluttered open to the cold kiss of metal against his collarbone. A sharp pinch. Another cut. A tug. The smell of blood filled the room again. Auren wanted to thrash, to scream, to die—but his body wouldn’t obey. He whimpered before blacking out again.

When he woke next, he was colder.

Lighter.

His whole midsection ached like he’d been gutted and stitched back together. He didn’t know how much was gone. He didn’t want to know. The pain was constant now. Barbed around the edges, dull in the center. There was a sick kind of rhythm to it. His body pulsed in time with the pain. His breath. His heart. All of it synced to agony.

Elias’s voice was the only thing that broke the stillness.

“The elixirs I’ll make from this…” he mused aloud, scribbling into a leather-bound journal with one ink-stained hand. The other held a vial—Auren’s blood, thick and red and glowing beneath the firelight. “I’ll need to increase your iron intake. You’re running a little dry, sweetheart. Don’t worry—we’ll fatten you up again. I have so many more jars to fill.”

He didn’t look at Auren as he spoke. Just talked around him, like he was already dead.

A specimen.

Auren stared blankly at the rafters above. They swam in and out of focus. Was that supposed to be comforting? That Elias would keep him alive? That he wouldn’t take enough to kill him? Auren wasn’t sure anymore. Death felt less frightening than this slow unraveling. At least death would end. Maybe if Elias slipped, he’d cut too deep. Sever an artery. Let the blood run free until the world finally went dark for good.

Auren prayed for it. For mercy.

But Elias’s hands never faltered.

Time twisted. Collapsed in on itself. Auren was losing track of who he was. What he’d been. Just another piece of flesh on a table. Another wild thing caught in the net.

Dark hair swayed with the tide, and eyes darker still—like they had swallowed the ocean depths whole. A place where light didn’t reach. Ulric’s reluctant smile. His wicked smirk, sharper than his teeth. The way his onyx-black tentacles had held Auren so gently, with more care than any human touch. Arms that wrapped around him like they were made to fit.

Why now, of all times, did those memories rise to the surface? How much more was he meant to suffer? To regret?

The memories came one after another, but not the way he wanted, not wrapped in warmth or fondness. It felt like pressing on a bruise, like a hook buried deep in his ribs.