A sound I’d thought I’d left in a cold damp cell within the mountains. Leather snapping against stone in warning. And I knew what came next. Where it would land next.
Swallowing my fear, I dared a look over my shoulder. My guard had drifted away, back toward the door. And from his belt he’d taken a leather whip, warming it against the stone pillars. Only gentle strikes, more to unnerve the prey than to actually serve any purpose.
The scars on my back ached.
Shut it out.
Shut it all out.
“What will it take to let us go?” I repeated.
He lifted his brows in Vale’s direction. “She stays, and I lower the punishment.”
“Not a chance.”
“Then the whip it is.”
My brows pulled together. It was too easy. “So beat us a little bloodier, and then you’ll let Vale go?”
“No.” He shook his head, smiling. “Then, I’ll allow you to walk out of here without breaking your legs.”
Barrett and Dax roared their arguments.
I looked at Mila, at the Engrossians. All so innocent. All so undeserving of the pain waiting at the end of that device.
Mila…I found those crystal blue eyes that had become a source of strength. Mila had been tortured once in her life. For nearly one hundred days she’d suffered. I’d be damned if I allowed it to happen again.
Icouldn’twatch it happen. Her gaze pleaded with me as if guessing what I was about to say next.
“Malakai, don’t…” she said softly, as if it was only us.
I couldn’t let any of them endure it.
But I was quiet for too long, apparently. Because the guard behind Mila ripped a blade from her side and held it to Mila’s neck. She swallowed thickly, her throat bobbing against the steel. And still, Mila shook her head to tell me no.
Don’t do this.
You don’t have to.
But it was too much, seeing that glint of silver against her skin. Barrett and Dax were yelling, words I couldn’t make out over the roaring in my ears. Celissia was inching closer to Vale. Harlen was staggering as he tried to stand, tried to help.
Titus ignored them all.
The guard behind Mila waited for a signal, but Mila held her wrist, ready for a chance to fight back.
And it was the tremble of her lips that sealed my fate.
“Fine!” I shouted, and everyone else went silent. “The lashings, broken bones, whatever you demand in order to leave here, but only me. I will take the punishments.”
Mila’s shout was guttural. “No!”
I gripped the chain between my wrists. “If you so much as fucking touchanyof them, Titus…You can kill me right here, and my spirit will haunt every day of your pathetic life.”
“Not wise to threaten the man calling the shots on your ministrations, Malakai.”
“A lesson I’ve never learned, it appears.”
Titus smirked. “You have my word.”
