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Glad I had the clamp across my forehead, so I could rest against it and not have to work to keep my head lifted, I opened my lashes. A map of the Outer Realms—as large as I was tall—lay open on the floor under me, tacked flat at the corners so it wouldn’t curl closed. I blinked at it, watching splotches of blood hit and splash against the surface. The map immediately absorbed every drop and wiped all traces of red away again…
Only for another drop to land and start the absorption process anew.
Time after time, I watched the blood plop and disappear. Plop and poof. I began to make it a song in my head. Plop and poof, and plop, plop, poof.
But I grew drowsy trying to come up with a rhythm for the disappearing blood, and I blacked out for a while, jarred awake only when my cuts started to dry, and they had to reopen them to keep them fresh.
“How long will we need to do this, sir?” Afton asked once.
“A fortnight to a moon cycle, I’d say,” came the answer.
I nearly laughed hysterically. But a moon cycle? A fucking moon cycle of this? Hadn’t I already been going through it for years? It felt as if we’d been at it for a millennium.
“She can probably only withstand about eight to ten hours of it at a time, though. So we’ll break for a day of recuperation, and alternate back and forth, resting and bleeding her alternately, for if she’s bled out too quickly, she’ll die before the procedure’s complete. And we can’t have that.”
But couldn’t we, I wanted to argue. Death honestly didn’t sound all that awful at the moment, not compared to what he was describing. I couldn’t imagine anything being worse than this.
Broken and bruised, stripped naked, shaved bald, cut open, fondled, and worrying about breathing every conscious moment because it felt as if the leather horse-bit thing that he called a retractor and forced into my mouth was constantly choking me, I seriously began to think death sounded pretty damn peaceful.
Until Indigo’s voice echoed through my head.
Live!
He’d sacrificed himself and died so that I might go on. I couldn’t dishonor him by perishing here on this torture device.
I just had to keep breathing.
Just keep breathing, I thought to myself.
Just keep breathing.
Chapter 35
Quilla
At the end of the first day on the extractor, it felt as if they’d bled me for a lot longer than eight to ten hours. Felt more like eighty to a hundred lifetimes. I was half-conscious as both men worked together to pull the lever and flip me back around until I was on my spine and facing the ceiling instead of the floor.
Barely a groan escaped my lips as I landed, jostling cracked and broken bones. The biggest relief was having the retractor taken from my mouth. But when I tried to work my newly freed jaw closed and wet my mouth with my saliva, the pain was too much to bear. I ended up keeping it half open and just swallowing blood to soothe my dehydrated throat.
The men carried me to a cot by the wall. If I could have laughed, I would have when they shackled one of my ankles. Escape at any time in the near future was out of the question. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Everett soaked a rag with water and brought it to my mouth. I sucked gratefully after gradually working my mouth all the way shut. And for some reason, that dirty rag full of water tasted like the most amazing thing I’d ever drunk.
He cleaned my cuts next, tending to them, so I didn’t get infected and sick. I needed to be healthy enough to bleed for him again in another two days.
Then he hand-fed me, bringing bite-sized pieces of food to my mouth, except even those were too big for my jaws to handle, so he had to mash stuff up and spoon-feed me. If I’d had the energy to defy him, I would’ve refused. But that survivor instinct in me just kept struggling. Every time I wanted to quit, it forced me to keep breathing, keep swallowing. And so I accepted everything he put into my mouth.
I’m pretty sure I wet myself at one point. I didn’t feel myself go, but I felt the cold moisture afterward and I could smell the urine. Everett had to clean that up too. And I didn’t even care.
Every other dignity had been stripped from me. What was one more?
I slept through the night without waking. I probably would’ve stayed out the entire next day, too, but I kept getting awoken and fed and nursed as Everett saw to my wounds.
A fever wracked my body that night, but Everett nursed it back down with a magic brew he’d gotten from somewhere. Afterward, I fell into another mindless sleep, only to be jerked back to consciousness by a hand fondling my breasts. They were sore and bruised already, scratched to hell from being jammed against the metal strap of the extractor. Didn’t matter how gently someone touched them now, they hurt.
And he wasn’t gentle.
Eyes flying open with a hiss of pain, I woke just in time to find Everett ejaculating on my stomach.
