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A smile came to his face, warding off my dripping repulsion for him. “Our skin is the same. Indestructible.”
What. The. Fucking. Hell.
My eyes squinted closed, shrapnel-filled spikes of pain exploding inside my skull. Even strapped to the cross as tightly as I was, my body reeled, jerking. His words burrowed into my pores, under my skin—a thousand piranhas eating away at everything I was.
Eating away at my soul.
One other person with my ability in the whole fucking world, and it was the craziest bastard out of all the malefics.
I fought to open my eyes. Fought to not let an ounce of the pain ravaging me show to him. “That’s how you survived what I did.”
His mouth twisted into a frown. “When you exploded the last time and left me?”
I nodded.
I’d always wondered it, how he could have possibly survived what I did. But this I never would have imagined in a million years.
“Yes. And I was very cross with you for doing that.” His look dropped down to the white sheet and he tugged at it. The slightest pull and it slipped off my body, leaving me naked, spread eagle in front of him.
I didn’t fidget. I couldn’t afford to. I knew every little last reaction I gave him was being examined, cataloged in his warped mind.
He dropped the sheet to the floor, his beady eyes lifting slowly up my body to my face, and he licked his lips, staring at my mouth. “I had everything set up for us in that mansion. A beautiful bedroom for you. The best wines. Food brought in from all over—and that was hard to do in the middle of a war, mind you.” His look drifted off of me, looking at the brick wall to my left almost wistfully. “We were going to take over the whole world. I had it all lined up. Me and my queen.”
His look snapped back to me, fury pulsing in his dark eyes, his top lip curling into a snarl. “But then you ruined it all.”
Fuck not giving him any reaction.
I let every bit of the disgust I felt for him etch onto my face, my voice patronizing. “How would you ever believe I would willingly be your queen?”
Met with my derision, anger flashed across his face, but then he smiled, his ire flicked away like the tiniest gnat. “Because I was making you love me.”
“Mak—making me love you?” I choked the words out. “How in the hell did you think you were doing that? By torturing me? By shoving drills into my brain?”
“You can be silly, my queen.” He leaned forward, his face too fucking close to mine as he smoothed hair that had matted onto my forehead off my brow. “You mistake what I was doing to you. It was supposed to be a simple exercise, truly. But it was more complicated than it should have been. I was transferring your love for that silly boy of yours—Lyle, you called him. ‘Lyle, Lyle, Lyle. Where is Lyle? Lyle. Lyle. Lyle.’” His top lip quivered with a sneer as he pantomimed me. “I stripped out a vein of his for every damn time you said his name, until there were no more veins left to strip. Lyle. A silly boy that had your love. Love that I needed transferred to me. That was what I was doing in your brain. Or trying to. I just didn’t have enough time. I couldn’t find the right spot. The spot where love lives.”
I retched.
Vomited right into his chest, his white shirt and dark jacket, the contents of my stomach smearing down both him and me.
His hand slipped in behind the back of my head, gentle, lovingly, like he really wanted to coddle me. A fucked-up monster wanting to hold my hair back as I puked.
My body didn’t stop the convulsions, and I dry heaved again and again, draining me of everything I was.
I finally stopped, and he took a step back, not the slightest bit perturbed.
He stripped off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. Then he picked up the white sheet on the floor, grabbing the side of it that was puke-free, and he moved toward me.
His fingers curled into my scalp, rubbing my head as he started to clean my face of the vomit. He moved downward, cleaning my body, his voice gentle, like he was telling me all his most buried secrets. “I found so many other spots. Spots that made your foot flex, made your middle toe lift up when all your other toes would stay in line. Spots that made your hands clench. Spots that made you cry. Spots that made you laugh, even when you were crying. So odd. Spots that made you mumble in languages I’d never heard. Spots that made you beg. Spots that made you smile, frown.”
He bent over, his cleaning moving toward my crotch, and I tensed, but he just wiped away the vomit and continued on down my left leg where the last of bits of bile stuck to my skin. “But I never, ever, ever found the damn spot I needed to make you love me.”
He stood straight, balling up the sheet and tossing it to the side. He stepped in toward me, his thumb going up to my forehead, circling the skin as his eyes searched mine. “So I will have to do more exploring—I will find that spot. It should be easier this time. The tiny cameras for exploring and mapping your brain that I have now will help. I will find it, that spot of love. I have no doubt of it.”
My lip lifted in a sneer. “I’m just going to do what I did last time. Kill everyone around me and escape.”
His thumb on my forehead stilled, his eyes somehow turning darker than they already were. “You won’t.”
“Try me.”
