His fingers lingered over her cheek; she couldn’t stop herself from turning away from him. “There are things I will do to you that not even an animal should have done to them, but I’d prefer to do them in front of my son. I will save up every little torment, every little pleasure I have planned for you, until that moment. I know that you are lying to me my dear, he will come for you.”
She couldn’t tear her gaze away from his. She was mesmerized by the cruelty she saw in his eyes, trapped by the horror of his promises, and the glimmer of his insanity. His hand wrapped around her brutalized finger again and he began to bend it back bit by bit. “Oh and what superb torture it will be.” His other hand brushed against the tears that were wrenched from her eyes as he bent the broken appendage farther than it was meant to go. “Is he out there now, near the town? I imagine he probably wasn’t far from you, but Caleb says there were only three other humans with you.”
“No,” she breathed. “No he wasn’t with us. I haven’t seen him in awhile.”
A snarl curved his mouth, his fingers pressed on the marks on her neck. “These are from Caleb.” A small cry escaped her as his fingers dug into Caleb’s bites before drifting over to Braith’s marks. “Who left these upon you then?”
“I don’t know where he is!”
“Oh maybe not right now, but you did, and he was close to you. What were you doing in the town?”
“Looking for food.”
“What exactly are you to my son?”
For the first time his casual, sadistic demeanor slipped. In its place was true wrath as his eyes briefly shimmered red. “Nothing,” she managed to stammer out.
Faster than a striking snake, he sank his teeth into her inner wrist. A startled yelp escaped her, she tried to jerk her wrist back but he clung to her as he bit deeper. Much like the blood Caleb had forced into her, her body seemed determined to reject this invasion, this intrusion from someone that wasn’t Braith. Flames and heat licked through her veins from where his teeth were embedded within her arm. This was even worse than when Caleb had bit her, her head bowed, she was being crushed beneath the torment engulfing her.
Just when she thought she couldn’t take anymore, just when she thought her entire being was going to splinter apart, and she was going to die, he pulled away. He rose over her, his eyes even with hers as he leisurely and deliberately wiped away the blood that stained his mouth. “Delicious,” he murmured as he licked his lips.
He snatched hold of a goblet; before she could react he was shoving it into her mouth and pouring it down her throat again. He jerked her back when she tried to scramble away, and grabbed hold of her hair when she shook her head to keep from consuming the blood. Seizing hold of her hands, he clenched her wrists together as he held her head steady. Nausea burst through her as he forced the blood into her mouth and wouldn’t release her until she swallowed it.
Though tears were rolling down her cheeks, though she was struggling not to start sobbing in devastation, she still managed to thrust her shoulders back and at least try to appear defiant. He was watching her with a maliciousness that caused chills to run up and down her back.
“I’ll enjoy every minute of what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to break you, and my pathetic excuse of a son.”
He pulled her roughly up and spun her around. For the first time Aria was able to take in the massive hall they were in, was it the dining hall? But that made no sense, what were all those…
“Oh,” she breathed as realization and abhorrence suffused her. The tears that streamed down her face were not for herself anymore but for the people in this hall. Only they weren’t people, not anymore. They had once been alive and breathing, perhaps at one time they had even been happy and loved before they entered this nightmare.
Aria’s head spun, she couldn’t take everything in at once. It took her a moment to comprehend that they weren’t all humans, that there were also desiccated remains of vampires pinned to the walls, hanging from the ceiling, the rafters, and sitting at the massive table. The vampire’s faces had been pulled into macabre grins that revealed their pointed fangs while the human’s faces were warped into different expressions of torment and woe. A scream rose up into her chest and lodged itself there. She tried to keep it suppressed while her mind seemed to undergo a fracturing that left her barely hanging onto consciousness, barely able to function as her legs trembled.
How they had gotten like this, she didn’t know. She assumed it had something to do with blood or lack thereof. Is this what happened when a vampire was completely drained? Did they become shriveled, somewhat preserved raisins? But why wasn’t their flesh rotting away? She realized she didn’t want to know the answer to that question, she suspected it was just as awful as the sight before her.
The ones at the table seemed fresher. There appeared to be more fluid still left in their flesh. Their skin, though graying and wrinkling inward, still had some color to it. Then the eyes of the desiccated vampires moved as one toward her. Despite her every intention to appear as stoic as possible, to hold onto some semblance of dignity when it was being rapidly stripped away from her, Aria let out a startled shriek as she jumped back.
The king released a low chuckle. “I see you like my handiwork; I have a prime spot at the table picked out for you.”
Cold sweat trickled down her neck and slid down her back. She was starting to realize she was only at the tip of the iceberg when it came to this man’s evil, when it came to the things he was capable of. All pretenses of dignity and stoicism vanished.
She dashed to the side. The king hadn’t been expecting the movement, nor had he expected her to be as quick as she was. She sprinted forward, determined to at least attempt an escape as she dodged two guards. She was briefly reminded of the time she tried to allude Braith and Jack, she’d stayed free from them for longer than she’d expected, but she was drained now, weaker than she’d been then.
She felt something rushing at her, a dark presence. She tried to switch direction, tried to get her body to move as fluidly as it usually did, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. Caleb hit her with the force of a sledgehammer. The breath was knocked from her as she tumbled head over heels across the marble floor before colliding with a chair, and one of the things in the chair. Dry bits of flaky skin broke off beneath her hand. Its eyes followed her as she scrambled backwards. If its gurgling, twitching movements were any indication, this thing was starving.