AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dodging the roaming guards on their well-trod pathways, we crept along the tree line, past the pool, then tennis and volleyball courts, and we were at the squat building.
Closer to it, fifty feet away, I could smell the blood that wept from the place.
Blood spilled here on a daily basis.
Aiden still leading us, he was about to step out past our hiding spot behind a grove of trees blocking one end of the tennis court, but then his hand flew up just above his shoulder.
We all froze.
My muscles—along with all of Triaten’s and Aiden’s muscles on either side of me—spiked into attention. Not at a threat, but at what was coming down the cobblestone pathway from the main residence.
Victor Genora in a robe and slippers.
By himself.
Headed straight toward his building of horrors.
Not just the weather, but the gods were truly with us this night.
Casual, a cigar clutched in his thick fingers, Victor set it to his lips and chewed on the end for a few steps before sucking down a long drag, the end of the cigar glowing red in the dark of night.
He tossed his cigar to the cobblestone pavers and opened the door to the building, then stepped inside.
One quick look around us and Aiden was instantly on the move.
The door to the building wasn’t locked—a testament to Victor’s arrogance—and we silently slipped into the main corridor.
For all the grandeur of the outside of the building, inside, it was nothing but grey concrete. One hallway down the middle and a row of doors off either side of the corridor.
Without stopping to listen, Aiden moved down the main corridor to the room at the end on the left. He either could hear something I couldn’t or he was better at following the smell of the cigar smoke still clinging to Victor.
Then I heard it. Murmurs. A grunt. A scream that wasn’t a scream.
Damen.
He would never bow, never scream. Not to these assholes.
Aiden glanced over his shoulder. Triaten and I both nodded and Aiden kicked open the door.
Whereas Aiden and Triaten rushed into the room, swords drawn, I was struck motionless by what I saw right before the room disappeared in a smoke bomb Triaten threw.
Damen strung out on the far wall, metal shackles holding his arms high, his body dangling, his feet nowhere near the floor.
Shirtless. A crust of blood on him so thick I could barely see his eyes, and not an ounce of his skin. Cut after cut across his skin, shallow. Hundreds of them, slicing his skin to ribbons.
Just the start of what was going to be a marathon of torture ahead for him.
My gut roiled, spinning and threatening upheaval.
I choked it down, drawing my sword, for I could already hear metal clashing in all corners of the room. Stupid. I hadn’t even noted who else was in the room.
I moved toward where Damen had been strung up.
The clashing of swords on my right stopped just as the smoke cleared enough to see, and I found Damen through the haze.
Fuck.
The good thing—underneath all the blood, he didn’t look like he was going to explode into a thousand tiny pieces of scattered flesh and bone like he had when Aiden carried him out of the tree room.
