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“Grab a knife and dip it into that bowl,” Everett instructed. “The blade needs to be submerged into the brew completely.”
“O-okay.” Fingers fumbling because they shook so badly, Afton did as he was told and pulled a dagger from his pocket before soaking its blade. Everett did the same with a knife he produced. Once they both had their blades dipped in the magic potion, Everett turned to me.
“We need to cut her simultaneously. The first incision will be on the sides of her eyes, vertically along her temple. Only one to two inches long, remember?”
Afton’s head quivered up and down, the jerky version of a nervous nod. “How…” He paused to lick his lips. “How deep?”
“Not very,” Everett answered. “We don’t want the blood to flow too thick. It just needs to be a steady, slow but constant drip.”
“Right.” Stepping forward, the assistant lifted his blade and accidentally met my gaze.
When his eyes pleaded forgiveness, I couldn’t help it. I began to beg. “Please,” I rasped. “You don’t have to do this. Please. Stop. Stop him. Help me.”
But my pleas had the very opposite effect of gaining his mercy. Gaze hardening into a glower, he sneered at me. “You told Everett that Axel begged for his life, too, didn’t you, you Graykey whore?”
I blinked, not having an answer for that.
“Well, Axel was the love of my life.” Shaking his head, he growled, “You never should’ve killed him.” And he lifted his attention to Everett, stone-cold rage flooding his stare. “I’m ready when you are, sir.”
Everett smiled in approval. “Now, then,” he answered.
They came at me in unison, one on either side of me. A single cut would’ve been bad enough, but two slices at the same time were unbearable. I screamed as my flesh was forced open and split apart. Even after the blade was removed, the stinging in my tormented flesh remained.
“Good, good,” Everett murmured, studying his and Afton’s handiwork. “Now, you make an X over her heart while I get the tongue.”
The next round was worse than the first. And I didn’t even feel the X that was made on the top-most swell of my left breast, just above the metal clamp. When Everett grabbed my chin and forced my mouth open, I tried to hide my tongue deep into my mouth, but he didn’t seem to mind slipping the blade between my teeth and gouging.
I gagged and moaned at the same time. Blood filled my mouth until I coughed, spitting it up to keep myself from choking.
“We’ll need to hurry through the rest. If she gags to death before we flip her, we’ll have to find a new test subject, and this one was already too much of a sacrifice to catch.”
The incisions that came to my hands and feet were made quickly and efficiently, yet they still hurt like hell. I moaned through a mouth full of blood, not sure how to reason through all the pains and injustices being done to me.
“And for the final touch,” Everett told his assistant as he grabbed my face, digging his fingers deep into the joint of my jaws to force them apart. “We need to put this retractor in here to keep her mouth open so she can’t swallow the blood that needs to drop from her tongue.”
I wished I could’ve struggled more to fight them off when a hard piece of leather was inserted around my teeth, keeping my jaws gaping open, but I was quickly losing my energy. My consciousness flickered.
“Help me turn her,” I heard a voice saying.
The sound of grinding metal and whirring gears followed. Then I felt myself swaying, tipping to my side, and falling. Every time my muscles tightened bracing for a fall, cold metal hands caught me, cradling me in a painful grip. Then I flew forward, facedown, and shrieked, only to land with an impact that snapped bone.
The misery that screamed through me was short-lived because I blacked out for a stretch. And every time I started to come to, piercing cuts and throbbing bones made me recoil from the light again. So I retreated back into the darkness.
I might’ve stayed down forever in the cool, black nothing, but the sound of Indigo’s voice in my head called to me.
You were absolutely right, his deep, musical voice murmured. His lively blue eyes and that smile—that devil-may-care roguish grin—wavered through my brain. I would do anything for this. I’d do anything for you.
I saved back the very core of myself for you. For the mere hope of meeting you. And all that I am now is yours.
But then
his brow furrowed with urgency, fear, and worry. Go to Earth. Go to your safe place and live a full, happy life. Just get to safety. Live for me. Please, he demanded. I love you.
“Sir,” a voice broke through the memories. “Do you think there’s too much saliva mixing with the tongue blood?”
“There’s nothing to be done for it. Though maybe we should make another incision in there to ensure the map’s getting enough blood.”
Pain filled my mouth, I couldn’t even properly cry out, not with my jaws pried apart like they were, and my tongue and throat bone dry.
