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The title slammed him back into his body. “Who wants to know?” Orpheus snarled, staring at the ring.

The bearded man didn’t react. “Answer the question.”

“How about you go fuck yourself?” He wrenched in the Myrkur’s grip, gasping when he was suddenly jerked back. Pressure rode the edge of his shoulder sockets, a shooting pain that turned his vision white.

“Hold his head up, and whatever you do, don’t let him cast.”

All hells, if only he could! “I can’t—”

But language left him when the Myrkur snapped the ring finger of Orpheus’ right hand.

He screamed. Birds swept from the trees, the sounds of the forest silencing, the echo of his scream curdling his ears. Didn’t stop until the same was repeated to each finger before moving onto his right hand.

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” the bearded man drawled over the clanging in Orpheus head, but he made no move to stop the Myrkur.

A scrape against bone. A sever of sensation. Then Orpheus’ hands were as useless as the magic these people thought he still possessed. Pain lanced through his palms into his wrists, flaring hot with nerve fire that would not end. Where his high collar circled his throat, sweat beaded, his stomach tossing as reality reared its ugly unwelcomed head and Fenrir’s absence became all the more acute—particularly when a hand buried in his hair and yanked his head up.

“It is him, right?” Another figure stepped up beside the bearded man. Another human. Scarred face pale beneath the shadow of his hood, lips twisted into an unnatural grin where his skin had come together off-seam, he would have been handsome once. Instead, he simply looked monstrous—an impression that festered deeply when he tapped a knife against Orpheus’ nose.

Orpheus recognized it immediately—this was him. The man from the crowd.

They have been hunting you.

“Gwen?” the bearded man called.

“It’s him.”

Orpheus couldn’t look at the girl if he wanted. The two men crowded close, silver ring glinting in the sunlight, now joined by an apparatus of leather straps and a heavy iron frame. It swung ominously in the cheerful light, a spider web of metal and straps and sigils that—at any other time—he would have been eager to study.

Now he only felt terror.

Fenrir! Where in all hells are you?

“A little room, Duluth, if you please.”

Orpheus gritted his teeth as his head was yanked back. Squinting to stare down the ring—the collar—the bearded man thumbed a hidden clasp and one side cracked open on an invisible hinge. The man said nothing when Orpheus bared his teeth and snarled. He slipped the ring around his neck and fitted the ends back together seamlessly, then gripped Orpheus’ jaw so hard that, when the scarred man slid the leather harness over his head, he couldn’t fight the thick bit of leather forced between his teeth.

A collar and a muzzle, fit for the dog he was—her dog—but not anymore. Didn’t they know? Not anymore—

Atticus swept a thumb through the blood on Orpheus’ chin, then smeared it over the collar. “If you would do me the honor, my darling.”

Gwen shimmied down from the rock and Orpheus couldn’t even look at her—let alone do something as pathetic as beg.

Cold fire brushed his skin again, so much closer than before. Tears beaded his eyes, swam through his vision. Purple fire licked him cold when Netherflame tumbled from Gwen’s hand to crawl across the engraved spell. And by then it was too late. The spell caught, and the fire evaporated, all that aching cold replaced by a deep and desperate longing.

Fenrir, he could no longer scream. And why hadn’t he when he still had the chance?

Orpheus ground down on the leather between his teeth, the taste of salt and iron heavy on his tongue, saliva pooling over his lip to drip off his chin. Whatever power his glare might have held dissolved in the steadfast disgust the bearded man leveled on him.

Whatever hope he may have had of rescue withered when he spoke.

“Orpheus Zon Ziffler, Master Dark Wizard of the Empress’ Exalted Court, I hereby declare you guilty of crimes against humanity and sentence you to death by public execution.”

There were moments in Orpheus' life that had begun to outshine the darkness that had consumed so much of his earliest memories. Bright spots that had chased the shadows from his darkness and offered a warmth he’d never before known. Sacrifices he’d made that had, he’d thought, secured him a future despite the mistakes he had made, and the people he had hurt.

You fool, his mind hissed, that old voice rising from the receding tide of light—a snake that still hid within his depths. You hells-damned fool.

Chapter VII