His breath fanned over my face, the sickly warmth of it sending a shiver down my spine.
A slow, creeping horror unfurled in my chest.
Elizabeth.
The thought of her witnessing this farce—seeing me brought to ruin by men like them—sent a jagged spike of agony through me.
I should have acted sooner, not confided in her, and not let myself get entangled in the web of the enemy’s daughter.
In trying to protect her from the world she was trapped in, I had failed her most cruelly.
The insidious darkness pressed in, curling around me like a vice, suffocating.
Regret tore through my chest, a cruel reminder of my choices.
The lingering taste of self-loathing was thick on my tongue—a bitter cocktail mixed with the venom that coursed through my veins.
Love—that cursed weakness—had led me to my inevitable destruction.
And now, I was drowning in it.
Not in battle.Not in war.Not by a worthy hand.
But in a cage built from my own mistakes.
And this, I realized with bone-deep certainty, was just the beginning.
ChapterSeventeen
AMIR
Ihung there, the cold iron chains biting deep into my wrists, each link a cruel tether to my suffering.The pain was no longer a fleeting sensation—it had settled into my bones, a endless specter whispering of my fragility.
The stench of my blood thickened the air, mingling with the damp rot of the torture chamber—a sickly reminder of the torment Mathias had unleashed upon me.
His knives, thin as whispers, had carved wounds into my flesh, each stroke a signature of his cruelty.His brands, heated in the inferno of his hatred, had seared my skin, marking me with the fire of vengeance.The whips had sung against my back, embedding their venom deep into my flesh, while hammers crashed against stone—a symphony of agony played for his twisted pleasure.
Yet, through it all, one name throbbed like a heartbeat through my soul.
Elizabeth.
Her voice—as soft as a dying ember.Her eyes—alight with defiance, with warmth.She was the balm to the brutality, the tether that kept me from succumbing to the abyss.
My heart clenched—not from pain, but from a love so deep, so fierce, it became the only force capable of defying the gravity of this hell.
With every strike, every act of cruelty Mathias devised, I withdrew into myself, retreating into the sanctuary of my memories.I clung to them as a soldier clung to his last weapon, even when my body begged for surrender.
I was chained, but I was not broken.
I would not grant Mathias the satisfaction.
Centuries of discipline, of training my mind to bend but never break, stood as my last defense.Pain became a distant echo, a dull roar at the edges of my consciousness, something to be acknowledged and dismissed.
But my body told another story.
Bruised.Beaten.Lacerated.
Every breath was a battle; each inhale laced with the taste of iron and misery.My torso—a grotesque canvas of purples and raw reds—bore the brutal artistry of Mathias’ torture.
