AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then, we will have to jog your memories.”
One hard yank of my ankles sent me flying onto my back, the floor burning over my spine. A monstrous form crawled toward me, its eyes glowing red, tongue like a serpent’s. It wasn’t until it was looming over me that I could make out features on the face–the roman nose and lips, and the shape of the eyes that held the familiarity of Claudius. But there was something else, too. A sickening familiarity that burned low in my belly. I’d seen this form before. Not only in my nightmares.
A flash of memory struck the back of my head--watching the monster crawl up my body, as I lay bound to a slab of cold concrete. Chill air. The scent of death and misery.
I knew this monster intimately. The monster from my nightmares.
Fear curled inside my chest, and I kicked out at him, failing to connect with his body. I pushed up onto my elbows to scoot away. “No! No! Stop!”
Another hard yank brought me closer to him.
In his hand, he held the blade that I’d stabbed him with earlier. Jericho’s blade. Breath stuttered out of me, as he twisted it in front of me.
“I’m curious to knowyourthreshold for pain.”
Two more tentacles came up over his shoulders and snapped around my wrists, pinning them to the floor. I squirmed and kicked, but could not loosen his crushing grip that pressed against my bones.
An intense roar echoed through the room, and I turned to see Jericho, awake and shaking as he pulled at his chains. Fangs protruded past his lips, his horns sticking up out of his forehead as he took a full-on demon appearance. Jericho grunted, his body swinging with the wrenching of his arms, as he fought to get loose.
His antics seemed to stall the attack, and Claudius paused and looked that way.
The sound of chuckling drew my attention to another familiar face. One I hadn’t seen since the night Jericho’s wings were sliced.
Barchiel moved to beside Jericho and ran his finger over one of the wounds on his abdomen. “From the time he was a boy, I used every means of torture to learn his weaknesses and try to break him. And he was quite good at hiding them. Even recently, he took his punishment with very little protest. But it seems you are his greatest weakness of all, my dear. Watching his father torment you so mercilessly will surely break him this time.”
Fear gripped my lungs, as Claudius climbed higher. With a blackened hand, he gripped my face, holding me in place.
A hot-cold sensation jolted my muscles, as he dragged the blade across my cheek. Screams punched through my chest, and I convulsed in his grasp, desperate for escape. “Stop! Please stop!”
“We’ve only just begun,” he whispered in my ear. “By the end of it, you will hate everything about yourself. And you will do everything I tell you.”
A broken sob hammered against my ribs as I held in the urge to cry. I refused to give him that satisfaction.
Distant words echoed in my head. Ones Jericho had said to me a while back. ‘When you force yourself to face what you fear most, you become impervious to its pain. Inviolable.’
“You cannot hurt me,” I whispered in a shaky voice. “I won’t let you hurt me.”
“We shall see.”
Jericho growled and twisted against the chains holding him in the air.
A tickle across my abdomen drew my attention to where one of Claudius’s tentacles lifted my gown up, exposing me from just below my ribcage down. Eyes on me, he held the end of the blade in his palm, and a bright orange glow sent a shudder of terror through me. When he opened his palm, the tip of the blade also glowed, as if it’d been dipped into molten flames.
“Please don’t,” I whispered. “Please don’t do this.”
“The times I’ve watched Jericho burned with hot blades, he scarcely let out so much as a whimper. I’m curious to see what sounds he makes when it’s your flesh that bears the burns.”
Squirming against the appendages failed to break them, and I let out a scream as the heat from the metal neared my skin.
A roar of fury reverberated through the room, and Jericho fell into a frenzy, the chains clanking with the violent jerking of his body.
Claudius chuckled and lowered the blade.
It hit my skin on a sizzling streak of agony as he dragged it across my abdomen. Flashes of light exploded behind my tightly clamped eyelids. I screamed and writhed under the searing hot metal, my muscles frantic to push it away as they trembled and twitched.
A dangerous blackness settled over me.
“Farryn!” The sound of Jericho’s voice pulled at me, grounded me, and I opened my eyes to see him jerk and spasm in my periphery.
