Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (107)

I could have sworn Avrin winced as the king attacked my back yet again. Could have sworn my response made the king dig the blade far deeper than necessary.

Endless, the questions came, and the knife followed.

My body was reduced to nothing more than a half-numb burn. So much so that when it stopped, I nearly failed to notice.

Avrin had moved what might have been hours ago to stand against the wall and ask me questions he knew would remain unanswered. All the while Molkan’s fury seemed to cloud the room with the copper essence of my blood and the smell of something acidic that had been delivered and set somewhere behind me.

Then the stool he’d been using tumbled from the makeshift carpet absorbing my blood to the stone floor, as Molkan rose with a flare of temper he tried to keep from showing within his rough tone. “Last chance,” he warned. “Once iron is poured over the wounds, you’ll forever walk the realms with the mark of a traitor.”

“Not just any traitor,” Avrin said—seemed to urge. “But that of a betrayer to their own kin.”

It was a snake.

I knew without asking. Without much room for any thought at all. The lines and shapes made by the blade had already told me as much.

So again, I remained quiet, save for that of my labored breathing.

But my silence and the agony I’d grown familiar with were erased when Molkan made good on his warning. Not that I’d thought he wouldn’t.

Painstakingly slow, hot iron was poured all over my back.

The last thing I heard was my unending scream and Avrin’s brittle curse before I tumbled into the safety of bleak nothing again.

This time, blue eyes were waiting and aglow in the dark.

It seemed the goddess I’d unknowingly pissed off was not content for me to escape anything, for those eyes remained a constant light during the abyss of unconsciousness.

I was eventually dragged away from them when the chains keeping me trapped against the metal bench were unwrapped from my body.

Avrin crouched before me again, whispering, “Time to get up, Princess.”

I couldn’t imagine doing any such thing.

The pain was so absolute, so endlessly depthless, I closed my eyes against it and silently pleaded for unconsciousness to take me again.

Avrin released a tormented-sounding groan, and I felt him move to my side.

A scream scraped my raw throat as he carefully hauled me into a sitting position. He may as well have forced me up by my hair. I wouldn’t have felt anything but the torrential ripple of flames engulfing my torso.

I hunched over, bile rising. Nothing left my mouth. There was nothing left within me to evict. Still, I heaved and whimpered and swayed.

Avrin took my wrists. Something heavy and scalding was fastened around them. Then he said, his voice a little hoarse, “We need to go.”

“Fuck you,” I mumbled absently, staring at the dried patches of crimson upon the mesh-like fabric beneath my hanging feet. Blood dribbled down my legs, catching between my toes.

A soft huff, and then he pulled on my bound wrists. “If I help you stand, it will only hurt you more. Better to do it yourself.”

“More,” I said, laughing then groaning when I lifted my head. Tears fell as I pushed off the metal to my feet. They were numb. My legs wobbled, and I gripped the bench. A cry parted my lips but created no sound.

I made it into the hall filled with guards before my knees buckled.

One of them laughed, but he fell quiet when Avrin bent low to maneuver me over his shoulder like a sack of rain-ruined grain.

My eyes closed, each step Avrin took sending flares of fresh pain throughout my entire body. If they were going to kill me, then I silently prayed to Mythayla that they would hurry up and do it. I wouldn’t survive another round of their torture.

I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to.

Minutes that felt like decades later, cool air hit my cheeks and stirred my hair. My head turned at Avrin’s upper back. A procession of guards trailed us—spread themselves along the drive as we left the stone terrace.

“I’ve done all I can,” Avrin said, barely a whisper. “This is it.”

I was set down on my bare feet.

Not wanting to but unable to help it, I clung to Avrin’s tunic as my legs failed me. He let me until the king made his presence known by barking, “Open the gates.”

Then Avrin gripped my upper arm, and I was delivered through the gates to the awaiting road and bridge beyond. Across it, the royal city of Bellebon shone beneath the late afternoon sky. Civilians and buildings dotted the river like stones against sand.

The breeze grazed my butchered skin. It was then I finally had enough awareness, and the ability to feel more than pain, to realize I was still naked.

There was little point in trying to shield myself against the eyes behind me and what awaited in the city outskirts ahead. So much of me had already been seen by too many, and it was the least of my concerns.

Avrin gently pushed me toward the bridge.

Agony raged through my limbs from the battlefield made of my back.

A guard stood waiting before the curving mixture of wood and sandstone granting passage over the river. He came forward to meet me as I concentrated only on placing one foot in front of the other.

If I thought of anything else—if I stopped—then I would crumple like wet parchment.

“Let it be known that not even blood can save a traitor, and Florian’s supposed wife means nothing to us,” Molkan boomed from atop a guard tower, his shadow cast across the sandy ground absorbing my trail of blood. “His capture and corruption and defiling of this creature were in vain.”