I shuddered as he trailed his hands down my sides. God’s! He couldn’t mean that, could he? We were his half-brothers! Surely, he wouldn’t… I felt the lace on his coat brush my skin as he moved around me. I tried to pull away from him, but I was bound too tightly to the contraption.
“Oh, yes,” his oily voice rolled over me as he leaned across my body to grab my hair again, jerking it back so I could watch him unzip his pants as he moved behind me. “I will enjoy your tears instead.”
In the following hours I screamed, and bled, but I did not cry. When the pain finally became too great, everything went blessedly dark.
???
The first time I woke it was to the sound of arguing. Maalik was yelling at someone, hurling insults, while Master Hestus’ ice-cold tone cut through.
“What the fuck were you doing watching me?” Maalik demanded. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“I knowpreciselywho you are, Prince Maalik,” Hestus responded coldly. “Which is exactly why I required an observer. I have explicit instructions from your father to return this man to the Legion in reasonable condition. After what happened with the last pair my house cannot afford…”
The voices faded and darkness claimed me again.
#
Sometime later I opened my eyes, or rather, I tried to. They seemed to be swollen and matted with blood. My eyes struggled to focus on what was in front of them. Carpet. I was on blue carpeting. The floor of the Indigo Room. The House of Eros. I started to move but agony wracked my body. Maalik. Maalik had… My mind shied away from the last things I remembered. The pain had been intense, but only at the beginning. Eventually it had all run together in one large haze of agony. Maalik had wielded a variety of implements on me. I remembered… Blood. Pain.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the memories. I finally resorted to just refusing to think about it. I couldn’t afford to remember right now.
“Drink,” a familiar voice said. I forced my eyes open enough to see Kyris was sitting next to me on the floor, their white robe pooled around them, a cup in their hand. As they stretched it toward me I noticed a series of scars on their muscled arms that I hadn’t seen before. They traced their body like light tattoos over their skin.
I refused to open my mouth as they offered me the cup. Being drugged once was enough.
Their eyes softened.
“It’s safe. See?” They took a sip from the cup.
Spying Jozel standing by the door I realized I didn’t have a choice. Refusing was just likely to bring additional punishment, and I wasn’t sure I could survive much more right now. So reluctantly, I opened my mouth and sipped from the cup. It was just water. Until the first drops hit my tongue, I hadn’t realized how terribly thirsty I was. I reached for the cup and began gulping, the pain shooting through my hands secondary in that moment.
“Easy,” he whispered, voice low and soothing as they pulled the cup away for a moment. “I don’t want you getting sick.”
I gasped as I again tried to move, pain arcing through me as I tried to catalog my injuries.
Besides the pain in my ass and my mouth, I could feel the burn of the whip marks on my back and thighs. Maalik had beaten my feet with a metal rod. Maybe… I took a deep breath, the pain in my side catching my breath. Maybe broken ribs? My hands… There had been… goddess! I looked at my hands, which were bloody and swollen. I remembered the feel of the needles under my nails before Maalik had used the pincers and tornthem off. My sides ached where he had repeatedly punched me, but I felt a grim sense of satisfaction. He may have forced my screams, but he had never earned my tears. I had refused him that victory, at least.
He’d been furious at his inability to make me cry, and the look on his face when his rage was finally spent was the petulant anger of a child denied his treat. The spite of it warmed my heart.
The fire had burned to ash in the fireplace, and I forced a hoarse question from my abused throat.
“H-how long?” I asked.
“You have another day and a half of your Calling,” Kyris said sadly, their eyes dropping from my own.
Fuck. Despite my earlier boast that I could survive anything for three days, I didn’t know if I would survive another thirty-six hours with Maalik. I tried to sit up but could barely move.
“Jozel,” Kyris called. “Help me get him to the bed.”
Jozel let out an exasperated sigh but came over and put an arm under one side. With Kyris on the other, they were at least able to get me to a sitting position on the floor.
“You should bathe him first,” Jozel muttered, wrinkling their nose in disgust. “Hestus will whip us if he bleeds all over the linens.”
I couldn’t really blame them. Even through my broken nose I knew I smelled of cum, blood, piss, and other things I didn’t want to identify. Maalik had… he had…
I struggled to my feet rather than follow that train of thought. Not now. Maalik would wait. Vengeance would wait. I needed to get through the next two days. I couldn’t afford to let myself think about what had been done to me. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to wash the bastard’s scent off my body.
“Shower,” I managed to croak.
