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Strangled gasps and the thuds of bodies hitting the floor greet me as I step into the room. I pick my way over the dead and dying bodies of the slavers to trickle the solution to contain the fire around the edges of the room.
There is a large fortune inhul gilon the tables and in the vials along the walls. Good. It can burn along with everyone who was happy to put it on the streets.
I douse the drugs, the bodies, and everything in the building with accelerant before dipping a match in the liquid that ignites it.
As I watch the tiny flame flicker to life, I think of my sister, of how she wound up in this mess to begin with and the role I played in it. Then I drop the match to the floor.
Aika set her fires when she thought I died, and now I’ll set them to keep her alive.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
AIKA
Iam burning from the inside out.
I try to scream, but no sound escapes my lips. I want to claw at my skin, to tear through my flesh to release the heat coursing through me, but I am frozen.
This goes on for hours. Days. Seconds.
An eternity.
The worst part is the time I have to reflect on how many others I’ve inflicted this same kind of torture on. Even in this state of semi-consciousness, I recognize the signs. The inability to move, the unending agony.
It’s one of Madame’s favorite poisons. But more than that, it’s one of mine. The one I used to immobilize the slavers.
Maybe Remy was right, and I am a monster.
Maybe this is how I pay for all the sins and suffering I’ve left in my wake.
Here, in this cell.Alone.
This is why Madame favors this particular punishment. Not just the pain, but the way it traps a person in their own mind. That’s a special kind of hell that even she can’t fabricate.
Then there are Damian’s screams piercing through the stone walls. They might be like music to my ears if they weren’t a harbinger for what my night will bring.
When blackness finally creeps into the edges of my vision, I surrender to it, letting it overtake me completely.
I don’t know how much time passes before I feel a single tear track unbidden down my cheek, the gentle sensation jarring against the stabbing pains in my body.
Consciousness drifts back in, and I register a tingling sensation in my extremities. Sounds also come into focus.
Rats squeak in the walls, and there is a scraping of stone in a circular motion coming from somewhere in front of me. Even without opening my eyes, I know that it’s Mother blending some unholy concoction of ingredients together in her mortar and pestle.
Though everything about her is menacing, her knowledge of alchemy might be the most dangerous part of her, more than her strength or her strategic mind or even her brutality.
“I know you’re awake, Daughter.” Her voice is like honey, and all the more terrifying for it. “I sensed the change in your heart rate minutes ago. You can stop pretending now.”
I obey without hesitation, my eyes sore and dry.
We’re in the lower dungeons, the room with no windows that’s deeper into the cliffside. It’s her preferred place to torture people, plenty far from prying ears.
Then my eyes land on her. Her long, elegant legs are crossed at the ankles, gently rocking back and forth as she sits on the edge of the table. The small movements are so human, it would almost be easy to forget who she is.
Except for everything else strewn across her table.
Bloody bandages, the same ones that were on my feet, rest next to an array of torture devices beside her. Small knives, screws, forks, a cage with half-starved rats gnawing on the small metal bars, and varying ropes and other weapons.
I am intimately familiar with each item on that table, and still, I know that whatever concoction she is grinding together in her mortar and pestle is far worse.
