Serpent's Touch (Serpent's Touch 1)

Radax yelled, too, “Stop it! Let her go!”

Another lash of the whip burned my back like a lick of fire.

“Make sure you don’t break her skin,” Madame murmured. Watching us being hurt had calmed her temper. She sounded cheerful now. Pleased. “Humans are so weak. I need her to work in the morning. But do your worst with him. I’ll let him heal soon enough.”

Radax gritted his teeth as the whip lashed across his back, but he made no other sound.

I prayed to the gods of both worlds for this to be over. But the whip came down again and again. The pole shook from our bodies convulsing. The pain burned my skin like fire. But an even bigger agony racked my soul. Sorrow burned through my heart like acid.

Radax slumped in his restraints. I hoped for his sake he’d passed out and felt no more pain.

“Cut him down,” Madame ordered. “Take him to the trailer. Let him heal. And get on packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

They cut the ropes. My knees buckled, and I sank to the ground.

The bracks hauled Radax away, blood from his wounds dripping onto the packed dirt.

I hugged my knees and curled onto myself, lying on my side.

“You.” Madame wasn’t done with me yet. She stepped closer until her shoes decorated with silk flowers came into my view.

I didn’t move, no longer caring what she did to me.

“I’ll wipe this from his memory,” she said tersely. “Don’t even think you can use his rage against me. He’s mine.”

She stepped back and was gone, leaving me in the dust on the dirt floor of the tent.

I wanted to crawl over to the trailer where they had put Radax. I'd sneak under it and spend the night there, listening to every sound inside, guessing how he was doing and whether he was healing well.

But the longer I lay naked on the dirt ground, the further the sorrow receded and anger took over.

“Don’t ever think you can use his rage against me,” Madame had said. Maybe she was right. Radax’s rage belonged to her and her alone, just like everything else he had.

But the rage that bubbled and burned inside me right now was all my own. It belonged to no one but me.

For years, I’d fought my anger. When I was hurt, I blamed myself.

“Why do you put up with this?”Kyllen had asked me once. And suddenly I couldn’t remember the reasons why.

I didn’t have to continue enduring this. Kyllen had given me a way out, and I was going to take it. But I had to do it on my own, without Radax. He couldn’t know anything about my escape. Madame could never blame him for what I was about to do.

Wiping the tears and dust off my face, I found my clothes and got dressed. Holding on to the pole, I got up to my feet. My legs shook, and my back felt as if it’d been doused in burning gasoline. But the skin wasn’t broken. I had no open wounds, no blood. The bracks hadn’t gone against Madame’s orders.

Instead of going to the trailer, I went into the room with Madame’s exhibits. I took the key I used when dusting inside the displays and unlocked a glass cabinet with the collection of jewelry. Each piece was fiercely beautiful, made from black and white spikes set in metal. Madame claimed the spikes were werewolves’ teeth and claws.

I took out a tall diadem and turned it in my hands. The black spikes on it looked exactly like the claws of the beast Madame kept chained. And the white ones had the same appearance as his teeth.

“Nothing is what it seems,”Radax had said. He’d also added that I, of all people, should know that.

I would, had I looked closely at what had been happening around me. But I’d chosen not to see, not to listen, and not to analyze. Because not knowing felt safer.

I’d chosen to go through life like a shadow, unseen and uncaring. Because caring hurt. There was so much pain in the world I grew up in, it would’ve crashed me had I absorbed it all. So, I blocked it off.

Now, I had to be strong enough to face it all. It was time to see things for what they truly were.