If I’d thought I’d be returned to the dungeon, I was sorely mistaken. Instead, my home for the night was the whipping post—a post that would be my constant company for the weeks to come. Weeks that sailed by without presenting any opportunity for me to make contact with the shifter prisoners who had more freedom in the castle than we did. Weeks that stagnated my escape plans. Without being able to attend parties or move through the castle, I couldn’t gain the information I so sorely needed.
I needed to figure out how to stop broadcasting Nyfain’s scent, if only so I could socialize. My escape depended on it. Well…that or a miracle.
THIRTEEN
HADRIEL
“Hurry up, Hadriel. We don’t have all day, Hadriel,” I muttered as I hunched on my trusty and spirited mare, who felt about as patient as I did. Bella pranced to the side, eager to get out of these goddess-pissed-on woods. The Royal Wood used to be such a lovely place, but now look. Shits-ville, wasted and twisted and creepy as fuck. I hated it.
Which was why I was more than a little perturbed when the master had to stop and jack off.
My heart twisted, but I refused to look away. He sat behind a tree off to the side, not even fully out of view, and yanked on his cock. He moaned and writhed, pumping into his hand and tilting his head back.
I should be used to this kind of thing. I was used to this kind of thing, when normal people were doing it. Not with him, though. Not like this.
Because he was only doing it to help Finley.
Tears glossed my eyes, but I continued to stare. I forced myself to stare. I was bearing witness. She was being hurt, he was doing a deed that must’ve ripped out chunks of his bloody heart to do while she was being hurt, and I sat here like fart stains on underwear doing fuck-all.
I hated this. I hated all of this.
It was killing me.
It was killing all of us.
Most of all, though, it was killing him.
What the master was doing was an act of selflessness and devotion to compensate for acts of violence and cruelty, and I’d had about enough. I didn’t mind admitting that I was on the verge of breaking. He was breaking, I was breaking—we were all fucking breaking.
This had been going on for nearly two months, give or take. It felt like longer, it might’ve been shorter—I didn’t fucking know anymore. However long it had been, it was too long. She needed help. Slap my ass and call me Betty, the woman clearly needed help, and that hot, big-dicked prince was just not enough. Someone had to do something more.
I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out without doing something stupid, like trying to rescue her. I knew where those portals were. Studying the pattern for a few nights had been enough for me to crack the code. The rest was just overkill. Yet I still made a meticulous record of every demon creature killing. I put together maps and a schedule. And after the master realized what I was doing, he insisted on checking out the locations in person. I’d gotten it right, and now he no longer needed to spend all night hunting for the demon creatures. He just stuck close to the portals and ruined them as they came in. We’d also gotten proof that the curse still prevented him from leaving the kingdom. He’d tried to step through one of the portals and was seared by the magic. Thank the goddess he healed fast now, or he’d be one ugly sonuvabitch after that. He’d raged in frustration. He couldn’t be the one to rescue her…at least not by those means.
It would need to fall to someone else. Like a mediocre butler who was also a master puzzle-putter-together.
If I went through one of the portals, assuming it didn’t sear the skin off me, I could bring Leala. She would be happy for a little whip time. The master had killed most of the demons in the castle, so she needed a few more daddies, as it were.
Why the fuck was I talking myself into this?
If anyone was unqualified to play hero, it was me.
The master groaned out his completion, and I hoped to hell it had helped Finley.
He dropped his hands to his sides and leaned his head back, but I knew him well enough to know it had nothing to do with postcoital bliss. He was waiting until Finley passed out to allow himself all the pent-up terror, sorrow, and rage at what was going on.
We were all just so fucking helpless.
“We are getting really close now,” I said to literally no one, looking out through the scraggly trees as if I enjoyed the view. It always helped him to yell at me when he came back from one of these heart-wrenching pleasure sessions. “All of the most powerful shifters have been released from their suppression. They’re helping the less powerful ones. We have people shifting all over the place—new people, too! Kids, even! Well, kids to me, anyway. Fuck, I feel old. Anyway, I call that a big win. We’ve moved at a breakneck pace, and I’ve had literally zero life, but we all have to do our part, hm? Those shifters took the most power. Now we just need to juice up the stragglers, and we’ll be all set.”