Tonight they didn’t just anticipate the chance to pursue and capture a few women. This hunt offered lust for fleshandblood.
These Neph, the most powerful among an already powerful nation, stood here, watching the streets below, awaiting the sights of theirinferiorschasing terrified servant girls in the half-dark of the lighted streets. They felt no hurry to do their own hunting because, as we’d just found out, they knew the best of the flesh they desired was being held aside for them.
Captured and set aside before the announcement was even made—any woman one of these men requested, any slave or non-Neph servant these men desired, had been collected like cattle.
Let the rank and file have their fun. Our prizes await our pleasure.
Jann had laughed with the bastard who hissed that to him on the stairs as we climbed to this place.
I felt sick to my stomach.
Now we stood on the ramparts, waiting for the bells that would herald the beginning of this carnage.
I felt it coming. Felt the silence on my skin, as the men’s muttered conversations dropped to nothing. Felt their breathing grow shorter… heavier… Felt the pass of their gleaming eyes onmy skin when they turned to greet Jann, like the dual edges of a blade, raking me from head to toe.
I felt the gratitude of knowing that it was likely only Jann’s position as Lucifer’s current favorite that had stopped me from being corralled and thrown into this pit of hell with other women from the palace.
Because, while Gall had suggested the Neph should throw any woman or slave they suspected of sympathy for their enemies into the street, the truth was… anyone was fair game.
Jann had already locked Caelan in her small chamber—from the inside—and wouldn’t free her until this was done.
We’d seen loyal servants being dragged through the halls, begging and pleading. Even now— before the bells chimed—screams and cries punctured the night.
This city wasdeath.The streets had hummed all day with the anticipation of it.
Then, even the men around me went utterly still. Jann’s hand on my wrist tightened, as the first peal of the palace steeple bells rang out over the night—and that growing hum broke into a thousand shards, morphing into a terrifying piecemeal of snarls, screams, and snapping that chilled my blood, and forced me to swallow a surge of nausea.
The hunt was beginning.
All around us, the men gripped the edges of the ramparts and leaned out, their eager eyes on the chaos spilling into the streets below.
At first I thought the flutter of my hair was just a night breeze, until I realized it was rhythmic andhot.
I turned to find the appalling sight of one of the Advisors, his slave bent forward, just behind me.
Her eyes bulged because his hand gripped her throat as he pumped into her from behind. That breeze I’d felt had been his breath. His sick, rhythmic—
I inhaled with a cry, scrambling away from them, pressing into Jann. He turned when he felt me startle, and now stood frozen, staring, as hispeer,unable to contain his rapture at the coming slaughter of both bodies and minds,raped his slave right there in front of us all.
My stomach flipped and twisted as I continued to back away, until I came up hard against Jann’s chest.
Let her go,I prayed.Let her neck go. She can’t breathe—
Jann’s hand slid under my hair and around my throat, to give the impression to ourcolleaguesthat he restrained me, but his touch was gentle. His thumb massaging at the back of my neck.
‘You’re safe. I won’t let them touch you. You’re safe.’
As much as his reassurance soothed my fluttering heart, it didn’t change how it tore as I watched this woman violated and degraded… and her eyes began to glaze.
‘He’s going to kill her! Right here!’
‘He may have brought her for that purpose.’
‘Jann!’
‘I can’t, Dee,’he sent, the words rock hard in my head.‘They’reallon the verge of frenzy, they’re so thrilled about this. If they get even a hint that I’m disgusted by it, they’ll turn onme,and the first thing they’ll do, is take you from me.’
‘I can’t watch this! I can’t stand here and do nothing while he kills her!’
