Skar’s boots thudded. He stood alongside me, arms crossed. “Well, temptress? What is he talking about?”
Blinking, I turned away from the warts and bloated nose and bruised face of Dimmon Plank, locking eyes with Skartovius Ashfen with hatred burning in my orbs.
My expression startled even the unflappable nobleblood. “This man is a rapist, Lord Ashfen. The worst scum on the Floorboards.”
“Sephania . . .” Skartovius warned, leaning closer to my face. Rage settled behind his eyes. Rage and wrath.
“Myrapist, Skar.”
Before I could blink or react, Skartovius hissed and lunged to end Dimmon—
Iron arms clasped around his middle, Garroway expecting the dash. The bloodthrall pulled his master back. “No, my lord! He is not foryou, he is forher!”
Dimmon whimpered, backing against the wall and making himself as small as possible.
Skartovius straightened. He stared down at the arms holding his middle. When he turned, I was mortified to see the expression of sheer violence was no longer meant for Dimmon. It was meant for his thrall now.
I imagined Garroway hadneverreprimanded or physically opposed his master before. It simply wasn’t possible, in my mind.
This turn—the way he had hugged me before his master when first seeing us—only proved further that something intrinsic had changed within Garroway Kuffich. His psyche had . . . morphed.
Skartovius recognized it clear as day. Betrayal blanketed his features. With a growl from deep in his lungs, he shoved Garroway’s arms off him and shouldered past the thrall. At the cell gate, he snapped, “Find me when you are done. This is not finished.”
With Skar’s shocking exit, Garro and I stared at each other blankly. The iron door clattered and creaked as it swung on its hinges, back and forth against the frame.
In unison, our gazes fell on Dimmon.
He moaned behind his gag, muffling something unintelligible. His face was a sweaty, sticky mess—a sheen of despair coating him.
“Well, little honey badger?” Garro asked. “What’s your poison?” He went to an opposite corner of the cell, reached down into the shadows, and unfurled a coiled cloth full of torture instruments—serrated blades, curved knives, needles, scissors. “Borrowed these from Vallan without him noticing.” When he noticed my surprise, he winked and added, “A man of considerable talents, as we’ve discussed.”
My face was hot from the flickering torchlight and my unbridled rage. I glanced over at the torch.
“I want him to burn.”
Turned out saying the words and doing the deed wasmuchdifferent. In theory, watching Dimmon Plank burn seemed easy and exciting. In practice, it made me sick.
The smell of cooking meat, charred flesh, wafted into the air and choked me. I coughed, stepping back.
The area where I had placed the torch to see what would happen—Dimmon’s left hand, the first hand to ever defile me—was a blackened, ashen, mangled mess.
Garroway had flipped Dimmon onto his stomach to show me his bound hands. The rope burned first but his fat wrists were also tethered together by a chain. The iron melted into his skin, grafting itself into his flesh.
Dimmon writhed in pain and then went limp the longer I held the torch there. The agony became unbearable and his vein-protruding screams knocked him unconscious.
The skin of his palm went red in the flame, then bubbled and oozed andpoppedwith burn blisters and pus and blood. Thatwas when the smoke began, and the scent of sizzling meat, which snapped me out of my dazed stupor and had me stepping back in fright over what I’d just done.
Garroway put out the fire before it could spread. He tore off burned clothes and patted down the flames. It left Dimmon with a single smoldering limb of black flesh, white bone sticking out where the skin and muscle had completely deteriorated and melted at his fingers.
My heart hammered in my chest as I surveyed my handiwork. Doubt chased across my features.
“It’s not just for you, lass,” Garroway whispered in a gentle tone. His hand fell on my shoulder and I jolted with a start, looking over at him. “You were not the only one assaulted by this despicable creature, I’m sure.”
“I . . . I know that.” My throat was dry, eyes dewy.
Torturing a man, even one I hated, was much harder than I had expected. This fucker had been at the top of my list after he attacked and broke me as a whelp. I would never—couldnever—forget that.
And yet . . . “I don’t think I can d-do it, Garro.”
