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Focus on him. Stay with him.
Until, at last, the blade lifted away.
The blistering pain had my lungs locked up, my muscles tense and reeling from the agony still pulsing through me in hot waves.
“Look, dear. Look what I carved into your flesh.”
Eyes screwed shut, I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to look at what he’d done to me. Pain snapped across my scalp, as he grabbed a handful of my hair and lifted me to see. A whimper escaped me, the flex of my stomach muscles pulling at the fresh wounds. I couldn’t make out the word, only the lines of blood that stretched across my abdomen.
His fingers tightened in my hair, and he pressed his cold, slimy lips to mine. Exhaling hard through my nose, I screamed against his mouth, and when his tongue dipped past my lips, reaching the back of my throat, I gagged.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against mine, forcing me to look down at the carving on my belly.
“Me’retrixis,” he said with ragged amusement in his voice. “In your world,whorewould be an insult. In our world, there is no greater insult for a female than this.”
A wail of pain broke through my chest as he lowered my head, and I turned away from it, while the burn sank its teeth into my flesh.
Swiping up my arm still bound by his tentacles, he held my palm to his chest. “Say the words. Bestow the power of vitaeilem. Say them!”
“Fuck you!” I screamed, and teeth grinding with furious rebellion, I dug my nails into his flesh.
At the sound of his mocking chuckle, I sobbed. “Let us see what a filthyme’retrixisyou are,” he said, tossing away the blade and rising up to his knees.
Another loud bellow struck the air like the crack of a whip, as Jericho fell into hysterics again, thrashing against his chains.
Tentacles pried my legs apart, and Claudius’s intent became clear when a long, black appendage stuck up from between his thighs.
“No! No!” I bent my wrists, clawing at the rubbery tentacles wrapped tightly around them, my nails digging and scraping. I flipped over onto my stomach, tangling in the tentacles still bound to me, and I stilled, forehead pressed to the floor, muscles trembling, while my wounds screamed in protest.
White-hot pain lashed my belly as I was dragged backward, and I let out a scream, feeling the skin split with the friction across the wounds. The hem of my gown rose up past my hips, and I fell into a panicked tantrum, screaming and kicking, while the angry burn across my skin festered and flared.
Chains rattled over the sounds of Jericho’s furious roars. Something pressed down on my head, holding me in place. As my body jostled with the tearing of my clothes, I caught sight of the vial with black fluid that must’ve fallen out of my pocket, and my thoughts reverted back to what Vaszhago had said.
No escape.
I slid a trembling hand closer and curled my fingers around it. A tentacle snapped across the back of my palm while another snaked beneath it, swiping the vial out of my hands.
As I stared back at Jericho, tears slid over my nose, and I closed my eyes. In the darkness, I slipped away.
Running hand in hand through the woods. Laughter. Watching the birds overhead swoop and dance through the sky. Kisses under the stars.
The memories shifted. Darkened to a feeling of dread.
The bite of ice cold water. Pressure inside my chest.
Whispers.
Loud whispers.
A language I somehow understand, spoken in perfect pitch and clarity.
Holding my hands to my belly as the watery grave takes me under.
The Omni.
I remembered it all. Lustina had translated the ancient sigil, mentally spoken the Omni to save her baby’s life just before Bishop Venable had drowned her. In those precious moments before death wiped her memory of the sigil, she’d given the baby enough vitaeilem to survive while her body clung to its final breath.
I remembered everything, including the words she’d spoken.
