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The prince swallowed, and said, “Can either of them be saved?”
Because he knew, then. What this was.
Balkazar offered a tight-lipped smirk full of pity but did not tear his gaze from the sands beneath them. Waiting until the gate opened once more, and another male was shoved through. Waiting for their private show to start before he let his sling spin in a lazy arc above their heads.
Dressed in identical chains, both Anhur males were prisoners of house Zaganos. Sentenced for crimes neither he nor Balkazar might ever know.
A roar shattered the silence, and without an ounce of awareness, the feral Anhur charged toward the prisoner. Claws fully extended, tail standing tall in a bristling flag, his mane was a patchwork of ill-health. Cock a bloated monstrosity that bobbed and led him into battle.
Sinadim turned away before they clashed. “Do it,” he said because there was no saving the beast.
A whistle sliced through the air, followed by the dull thud of a lead ball striking bone.
Then… nothing.
Nothing but the sounds of ragged breathing from below, for the prisoner remained.
Nothing at all, until a haggard wail shattered the hush.
Sinadim turned just as a wraith appeared through that heavy curtain. Sailing toward them as if weightless.
Tiny, as all Hathorian females tended to be.
Gaunt, as only those who’d endured true suffering would ever understand.
Her knees went weak before she staggered and fell, before either Sinadim or Balkazar might catch her. Uncaring when her cheek met the stone, she clutched instead at her breastbone. Clawing at pale, translucent skin, she wailed and it was a heinous, wordless thing. Writhing and twisting in a heap of silks. Peeling herself bare before them, ragged fingernails left jagged red lines in tender flesh.
Moving as if through wet sand, Sinadim knelt at her side and caught flailing wrists. Easily restrained, he peered into vacant, hollow eyes, and asked, “Can she be saved?”
Balkazar knelt. Pushed locks of sweat-damp hair back from an elegant face, and exposed another horror. “No,” he said, thumb brushing over her lips. Where her mouth gaped, sucking back huge, heaving breaths of total devastation.
“Her teeth,” the prince gasped, and that something cold became something sick. “They’ve taken her teeth.”
“So she can’t mark another,” Balkazar explained and let clawed fingers sink into her hair. Cradling the back of her skull in a tender touch. “So she remains pleasing in all ways.”
With a grimace, Sinadim swallowed the cold bile scalding the back of his throat.
“Hush, now,” Balkazar murmured, pulling her from the prince’s hands. “It’s over. You’re free now.”
She made no indication that she understood. That she could hear him at all.
Because she was already gone.
But when the war chief’s claws sunk through bone and severed her spinal cord, there was an instant that Sinadim thought he’d seen the ghost of a smile touch her lips.
It, too, was a smile he mimicked…
… before he let the bloodlust breed with the burning drive for vengeance.
Before he let his wrath swallow him whole…
7
Carnage.
It splattered the walls. Soaked through the dirt floors deeply enough to drip from the ceiling on the lower levels.
The brothel had been utterly unprepared for what the Karahmet prince had unleashed.
