Chapter 20

ORINA

B ringing Holly fully into the circle of trust was a provident move. She immediately started talking about potential ways to stave off the progression of the mullo infection, to slow it down to a crawl to give us time to find a cure. Excitement sparkled in her eyes. She truly believed she could help.

There was nothing we could do for Merry, though. Not without a pureblood fae healer on hand to look at her. Kaster hadn’t had any luck in finding one yet. Merry proposed the idea of asking Crush for help, and we all agreed that she should go see him tomorrow.

So it was an exhausted watcher that climbed into bed that night. Both mentally and physically, but once under the duvet sleep eluded me.

I kept wondering if Ezekiel was okay. Had he woken again, trapped in his dream and acting out the past? I should have stayed with him. I should be there.

My throat ached, reminding me why it probably wasn’t the best idea to be around him right now, but another part of me whispered that he needed me. He needed an anchor, a guide to bring him back from the hell he was lost in.

Why would mention of his family or the fact that Ordell and Hemlock were his brothers fracture him this way? The question had been circling in my mind for hours, and there was only one answer.

Loviator had done this.

She’d put the trigger in his mind. It had to be her handiwork. It kept him isolated, lost and alone. With no real connections, no one he could lean on who cared about his fate.

But he wasn’t alone, and we needed to show him that.

Tomorrow night couldn’t come soon enough.

I drifted into dreams with Ezekiel on my mind, and there in the space between waking and sleeping, his voice filled my head…

“Alone. Alone, alone. Where are you?” he called. “Not here. Not here. Good that you’re not here. Never here. Go, go, go.” Someone cried, rough, ragged sobs that made my chest ache with the resonance of pain.

Sleep dragged me under.

Deeper…

I follow the sound, one foot in front of the other, and the darkness lifts, graying out and lightening until there’s a path, a door, and a room beyond made of stone and iron. And sitting in the center of this icy prison is the figure of a man.

He huddles, head bowed, arms wrapped around his knees, wraith body curled in on himself. He’s nothing but skin and bone—wrists like twigs, ankles swimming in the shackles that bind him to the ground.

“Hello?” I take a step closer.

He looks up with feral eyes hidden deep in dark sockets in a face etched from bone. My breath snags in my throat because even emaciated and sallow, I’d recognize this face anywhere.

“Ezekiel?”

His eyes flick from side to side. “Hush now. Don’t cry. It’s over now.” He reaches for me, and I take his hand, mindful of his paper-thin skin. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

He yanks me suddenly, surprisingly strong for someone so wasted. I cry out as I fall, throwing out my free hand to brace myself, but there’s nothing to brace against because the world opens into darkness and swallows me whole.

“Oh, look at you,” a female voice says. “Stoic and strong. Even though you know what’s to come.”

What is this? Where am I? My hands…My hands aren’t mine. They’re wasted and bony.

Ezekiel’s hands.

I’m him. In his body, seeing this woman’s cruel visage through his eyes. She’s all angles and sharp edges, onyx eyes glittering with glee as they drink me in.

“What will it be today, Ezekiel? Pleasure or pain? Or will it be both?” She veers away from me and across the room. I track her, blood moving faster in my veins as if it might be able to escape what’s to come.

“Please…” The cracked word falls from my lips. His lips. “Loviator, please don’t.”

There’s another form in the cell. A woman lying on her side facing away from me. From us.

Loviator crouches by the woman and gently places a hand on her shoulder. “Wake up. You don’t want to miss all the fun.”

“Leave her alone,” Ezekiel says, but there is no hint of command, no trace of a growl in his tone. Just a desperate plea.

“Oh, I won’t be touching her today.”

Jaws of panic chomp at my insides…His insides. “No, please. Take me instead.”

“You won’t do for the show I have planned. For that we require nubile female flesh.”

The woman groans, slowly coming to. “Ezekiel.”

“I’m here. I’m here, Arabella. Don’t be afraid.”

Arabella scrambles up with a cry and kicks out, desperate to get away from Loviator. Her face crumples into sobs. “No. Please no.”

“Oh, you’ll like it,” Loviator says. “My boys will make you feel good. They’ll fill you and pleasure you, the kind of pleasure that verges on pain.”

“I don’t want it. Please. I don’t want it.”

Loviator grabs her by the hair and twists. Arabella screams.

“You chose to follow your lover, and now you’ll pay the price for my hospitality by sampling every aspect of pain that my realm offers. It’s a gift, don’t you see?”

Anger surges through me. “Let her go, you bitch!”

“Ah, a flicker of fire remains I see. I was beginning to worry that I’d broken you.”

“Take me instead. I want the pain. I need it.”

She studies me for several beats, and my heart pounds hard with hope, but then she shakes her head. “Not today, little monster, but you can watch your dear Arabella as my boys balance her on the razor’s edge of pain.”

She steps back as two huge monstrous males enter the room, naked save for bulging groin coverings.

Arabella screams and presses herself to the wall, clawing at the stone as the men approach.

Loviator makes soothing noises, a smile on her lips.

“Arabella! Arabella!” I reach for her, and the stone room melts.

I’m in a chair, wrists bound to iron by barbed wire that slices into my skin. Rivulets of blood spill from my wounds, but I don’t feel it. All I hear is the slap of flesh on flesh, the groans and moans of the spectators, and her soft cries interspersed with sobs.

“Ezekiel…Please…” Arabella moans. “You promised…”

I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see, but I know I have to. I have to ground her. I have to be there.

I lift my chin and look up. Not at the beasts violating her, or at the spectators pleasuring themselves in the shadows, but at Arabella. At her tearstained face and into her dead eyes.

I lock gazes with her, and her expression smooths out, blank and unfeeling.

I hold her there. I hold her to me.

It’ll be over soon, I want to say, but the words don’t come because it will never be over.

I can’t protect her.

I can’t save her.

Only death can do that, and Loviator will never give us that luxury.

The room melts away, and I’m standing with my back pressed to a wall. No…not a wall. A rack. I’m pinned on a rack, and fire eats at my arm.

My throat is raw from screaming.

My ears hurt from the sound.

Blood is on the air and in my mouth with every gasp and every bellow, and someone laughs and laughs and laughs.

It hurts. It hurts so badly.

I woke gasping for air and pushed back my hair from my sweat-soaked brow. My doorhandle rattled.

“Orina! Orina, are you okay?” Edwin called. “Open the door.”

I tried to call out, but my throat was on fire. Instead, I stumbled out of bed and unlocked the door.

Edwin tumbled into the room, his gaze flying about, searching for a threat, and when he found nothing, he pulled me into a hug. “What happened? Did you have a nightmare?”

I nodded, but I knew it was a lie. What I’d just seen wasn’t a nightmare; it was a series of memories belonging to Ezekiel.

I’d been in his head.

I’d seen through his eyes.

“I have to go.” I croaked out the words, wincing and tearing up at the pain.

“Where?”

“I have to go to Branwood. He needs me.”

Edwin looked like he wanted to argue, but I grabbed his shirt and pleaded with my eyes.

“I’ll send a Raven,” he said.

I sagged against him, allowing the sob trapped in my throat to be free.

I’m coming, Ezekiel. I’m not leaving you. Not until you’re back with me.