And fear is not something I knew he had inside him until this very moment.
“Your Prince commanded it.” Zilo’s jaw clenches hard, his dark five o’clock shadow jumping with the regret that’s lining his face.
Roman drops to his knees, bows his head before his friend, and accepts whatever’s next.
“What—” I nearly get the question out, but it halts on my tongue the second a fiery lined whip lashes out from Zilo’s fist. It snaps across the flesh of Roman’s back with a sizzling cry, and my own soundless cry follows. But I can’t stay silent for long.
I never can.
“Stop it!” I’m leaping from the bath and sliding over the glossy black floorboards before the man even has time to bring the strange flaming whip back for another round. My arms fling out, exposing every inch of myself to him, and I don’t give one fuck what he sees in me. Beauty and lunacy go hand in hand, and I’m a displayed image of that. “Don’t you fucking touch him.”
Wet, pale hair hangs in my eyes, but it doesn’t disrupt my glare or my seriousness.
Zilo searches my face.
Only for a fraction of a second though. “Move,” he growls out in a gravelly tone of violence.
“Move, Cersia,” Avian whispers in agreement.
I don’t peer back at the man on the ground behind me, but I can just sense the irrational mutt nodding along with his besties like a happy little triad of stupidity.
“If three lashes of the Weak Whip aren’t used, the Prince will know. And it will be much worse, I promise. So just walk on over to Avian, put your pretty blonde head in his chest, and don’t look back, beautiful,” Roman instructs, as if he’s giving a meeting agenda.
My hands fall to my side from the mere sound of his defeated voice.
That’s it? He just…he fucking takes it? This is what their life is here? This Prince takes friends and makes them abusers? And everyone’s just supposed to accept it?
That’s why I’m here.
That doesn’t mean I can just leave him though. Who the hell just walks away when someone broken is being shattered?
My attention slips to the red-hot whip blazing in Zilo’s fist. He too looks frantic beyond repair. It’s clear he doesn’t want to watch his friend be tormented either. Much less be the tormentor.
For now, he doesn’t have a choice.
None of us do.
It never crosses my mind to do as Roman told me. I can’t turn away from him.
And so I don’t.
My legs slowly give out, and in all my glorious nudity, I wrap my arms around him chest to chest. His body is hot against mine. His heartbeat is a slamming, furious thing along my cold flesh. He stiffens against my touch. Several moments pass as I nuzzle my face into the warm crook of his neck, and only when I breathe in the scent of his fear do his rough, calloused hands skim down my slick ribs. It’s the slowest caress that shakes through my soul. It skitters across my body in waves of teasing adrenaline. Until his fingers stop just at the small of my back, and he holds me hard against him, bracing himself for what’s about to come.
I hear the arch of the whip before his body jolts against mine. I flinch from the whisking sound of it, and dampness stings my tightly closed eyes when a low growl of agony stifles against Roman’s lips.
He holds me harder. His arms tense around me so tightly he trembles.
Something akin to a desperate, anguished kiss brushes along the side of my throat. The sound of his pain hums over the side of my neck as he buries his head in my hair, and I just hold onto him like I’ll never let him go.
I’ll never let him suffer alone.
I will never let that motherfucker get away with this.
I refuse.
The third and final lash of the whip comes down, licking my fingers with the feel of hot stabbing pain, washing over me in a muted agony of what this strong and beautiful man is feeling.
What he’s been feeling for probably all his life.
