But even then, as she gasped and sobbed, trying to soothe her own skin with chilled hands, something in the lord’s gaze caught at her. A wildness that wasn’t cruelty, but fear. A reckless desperation. As if he, too, were being pushed to his limit.
They were feral creatures in the dark, threatening and cajoling until one of them lost their nerve or drew first blood. But Ru refused to be the one to do it.
Lord D’Luc could be the villain if he wanted it so much.
Ru stoodat the table in the center of the dungeon, her palms pressed to cold wood on either side of the artifact. In the lamplight, its smooth black surface shone like a warning beacon. At least two dozen Children watched from the shadows. This silent audience had increased in number by the day. Their emotionless gazes seemed to bore into her skull, and even when she turned away, she could feel them watching.
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to show fear. Her throat still ached where Lord D’Luc’s fingers had closed over it, her head still throbbing from its collision with the wall the day before.
Lord D’Luc, meanwhile, appeared angelic that morning. His white garments and golden hair almost seemed to glow, even in that dank room.
“Well,” he said, venomous. “What are you waiting for?”
So Ru pretended, as she always did. She made faces, clenched her teeth, and curled her fingers into fists. But as ever, she did not speak to the artifact. She wouldn’t risk reopening that connection. Even so, it was still quiet, distant to her, as if Fen had taken some part of it with him when he’d left. Sometimes, she missed it, that rush of strange energy that might soothe or encourage her, depending on the moment.
Ru caught the lord’s gaze across the dungeon, and in it, she saw a reflection of her own growing rage. He circled her, a catstalking prey, until he stood just behind her. His breath warmed her ear. “You are still not trying.”
“I am.”
“I see clearly that you’re holding back.” He spoke quietly, but Ru caught the warning in his words. “How will you cleanse the world if you can’t even darken a room? Again.”
So, again, she did her best to pretend. The artifact remained sullenly dormant.
He moved quickly then, so quickly that Ru had no time to react, to fight back. Hooking his hand under her chin, he pulled her back to his chest, pressing his palm against her throat and tilting her chin so far back that breathing took effort. His chest heaved behind her; she felt every rise and fall of his lungs, every twitch of muscle.
“You disappoint me, Delara,” he crooned. “I thought perhaps, after yesterday’s fiasco, and the disaster before that, you might give up on this farce you’ve been trying to sell me.”
“Farce?” she gasped. She was becoming lightheaded, her breaths increasingly labored.
Not bothering to reply, he spun her so that she faced him, meeting his chill gaze with defiance. Her instincts told her to lash out, to strike with fists and feet. But he was far too strong and far too fast. Again, he shoved her to the wall. His fingers tightened below her jaw — a dance she was beginning to memorize.
“Let me show you,” he said, his face twisted into a mask of white-lipped rage, “what will happen each time you fail me.”
With that, he released her, and she slid to the floor in a sad heap. She held her burning throat delicately, her fingers cold and her eyes hot with tears.
She watched as he strode across the dungeon, footsteps ringing in the silence. She watched as he drew a knife from within his frock coat, glinting in the lamplight; as he took oneof the Children by the collar, drawing her away from the rest. Things happened too quickly after that, a blur of events.
There was a flash of steel, a spray of blood on white robes. Thick arterial blood came down in hot gouts from the woman’s throat until she was splayed on the floor in a pool of red. And Ru, cowering on the other side of the room, watched Lord D’Luc clean the knife. Watched him put it away and wipe his hands on a dainty handkerchief.
He came to crouch before her then, his eyes level with hers. His gaze was not steady; he was untethered, feral, ready to break. “Every time you refuse from now on,” he said, taking her chin in his elegant fingers, “someone will die.”
“Kill them then,” she croaked.
Lord D’Luc was a monster, but even the most depraved had their limit. She believed he had just reached his.
Wordless, he yanked her roughly to her feet, his hands under her armpits. Then he held her tightly against him as her body shook, her knees too weak to hold her up, and waited. As soon as she could stand on her own, instinctively pulling away from his disdainful embrace, he took her by the shoulders, spun her around, and steered her to the table at the center of the room. To the artifact. She was too weak to fight him, too shaken to break loose from his grip.
“I gave you a choice in the matter,” he said, thumb and forefinger tight on her chin, his other hand forcing hers toward the artifact. “I don’t relish needless death. But youwillcomply, Delara, and I—”
But his words cut off, replaced with a sharp intake of breath.
It wasn’t Ru’s fault. He had pushed her, forced her. She had no choice but to stretch out her hand and pick it up, to feel the cold stone against her skin. Her body shook violently, and tears streaked her face. The artifact lay heavy in her palm.
“Good,” he said, relinquishing his grip on her.
“Make me do it again,” she said, enraged, her voice a warning. As she spoke, dark rivulets of inky blackness seeped from the artifact. “You so desperately wanted a Destroyer of your very own,Hugon. And now you’ll get one.”
He said something, a bark in her ear. Ranto, hovering nearby, surged forward. But Ru heard nothing. All she knew was blood. Blood on the floor, pooling near her feet. Blood on white robes. The sharp tang of iron. And the blank expressions of the Children, whose colleague had been cut down before them.
