“Here we go again,” I said. I might be delusional from the torture my body and mind had already endured, but I suddenly didn’t care. I was raging. I’d rejected the bond like a fucking idiot in the hopes of saving my people, and in the process, almost chained myself to this psychopath. Maybe I deserved all this torture from what I’d done to Hawke, what I’d done to us. “What will it be now?”
Samuel glared down at me, the first show that he was tiring of the game we’d been playing. “For someone who is at the mercy of my power, you don’t seem as afraid as you should be.” He knelt before me again, his face inches from mine.
I stared him down, not daring to show him the weakness I felt rippling all over my body, my soul. If I could get out of these chains, I’d tear into his throat. I’d remove his head from his shoulders with just my teeth.
“Hard to be afraid when every bout of pain comes with healing at the end.” The lie felt good snapping off my tongue. The torture was horrendous, making me silently beg for death. Death would be easier, cleaner than what he was doing to me. But I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing that.
Samuel’s lips shifted into a twisted smirk that made my blood run cold. “The healing is a courtesy I was affording my betrothed,” he said. “But it seems you’re never going to agree to it. Perhaps I shouldn’t be going so easy on you.”
The snappy anger fell from my face, replaced with a fear I couldn’t even begin to hide.
He’d been going easy on me? Ice slicked through my veins, devastation corrupting my soul as defeat wound around my body.
Samuel laughed as he read the terror in my eyes. He was getting off on it, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. He was practically drunk off of the power he held over me.
He inched closer to me, fisting the folds of my crimson gown, yanking me toward him.
I fought against him, scrambling back as far as I could in the chains, trying to kick out at him—
Every bone in my body snapped.
A scream wrenched from me so hard it rattled my brain. I gnashed my teeth together to stop the scream, knowing it only made him happier, and I went completely limp from the pain.
Samuel hauled me into his lap, grinning down at me as he shushed me. He speared his fingers in my hair, drawing it away from my face as I glared up at him. My body twitched in his lap, each break searing with a white-hot heat that threatened to stop my heart. I couldn’t move, couldn’t try to get away.
“I suppose you can’t sign our agreement if all your bones are broken,” he murmured, almost in a cooing tone, like he was trying to soothe a distraught youngling. He closed his eyes, that grin trembling as if waves of pleasure rolled through his body.
Acid clawed up my throat.
Pops and snaps ricocheted inside my body as the breaks set themselves right again. I sighed from the relief barreling down my soul, my gaze softening for a second from the absence of pain.
“Yes,” Samuel said, his hold on me tightening. “That’s the face I want to see. Ultimate relief. Bliss after pain. We can be so much together, Avi. We will be. In time, you’ll learn to love this. To love me.”
I parted my lips to tell him to go fuck himself—
His fangs snapped out at the same time he jerked my head to the side.
And he sank his teeth into my flesh.
I cried out, beating my fists against his arms, wiggling in his grasp—
My entire body went numb, my arms falling heavy to my sides, the chains on my wrists clattering with the motion. I stared down at my limp hands, a single tear escaping down my cheek as he fed from me.
Drank from me without my consent.
“You taste unbelievable,” he said as he pulled away. “I’ll always be able to find you now. And when you’ve earned it, I’ll give you my blood too.” He lashed out again, sinking into my neck with a ferocity I couldn’t feel.
He’d paralyzed me, but not my mind.
He gulped my blood, frenzied and delirious.
Something in my soul flickered and burned. A familiar sensation that dared to give me hope. Samuel wasn’t capable of paralyzing my soul, and if I could’ve gasped, if I could’ve smiled, I would have. Because the silver outline of Hawke’s mark on my hand was darkening, coming back to life by some miracle.
Maybe it was because my soul knew I’d made a mistake. Maybe it was granting me this gift in death to show Hawke that I never stopped loving him in the end. He’d see it and know how much I loved him.