My legs gave out and I dangled from the guards’ grip like a rag doll.
The next strike snapped my head back and made my entire body convulse in uncontrollable spasms. My thoughts blacked out, dulling everything to slow liquid motions.
My eyelids blinked and the world looked as if I was being held beneath water. Everything was fuzzy and muted. Guards struggled with Mathias, holding him back, pulling at his neck and arms as he tried to reach me.
I was on fire, gagging and choking on spit and filth and pain. I didn’t know how much more there was or how many there had been. I couldn’t form thoughts. I just wanted it to end.Please, please, please no more. No more.
I looked up, through the guards with their hands and arms pressing me down, and locked eyes with Mathias and held onto his stare.
Another crack of the whip and I fell hard to the floor, the guards releasing their hold on me.
I blinked again and Mathias looked possessed, vengeful. The blue of his eyes, wide and angry, still fixed on mine.
My stomach muscles cramped and ached as I flattened myself to the stone slabs of the floor. Sweat covered my body, stinging the open wounds of my back with its saltiness.
“Take the human away,” King Hemlock called out above me, his voice brittle, like the crumpling whispers of dead leaves. “I’m sure she’ll kneel next time. And now, bring me her mother.”
Chapter 4
Iwoke, dizzy, face down in blood-soaked sheets. Fisting them in my hands, I cringed, waiting for the pain of my punishment, but all I felt was the sharp bite of my nails digging into my palms.
Where was the pain?
I felt echoes of it—still heard the snap and crack of the whip, could even taste the bitter vomit on my lips.
But the pain? The pain was gone.
The soiled sheet stuck to my cheek when I lifted my head and pinched along my skin when it separated from me, like I’d been lying glued to the filth for days. Wincing, I pushed myself up, trying to free myself from the pile of stained blankets that adhered to me. Layers of dust and debris crumbled down as I pulled free of the bed and struggled to my feet. A cloud of cinders puffed up in my wake.
Still, I felt no pain.
I reached for the back of my torn clothes, feeling my skin.
Nothing but smoothness.
“What in the actual fu—”
A noise in the corner silenced me.
As soon as I focused my eyes through the dark haziness of the room, I saw it. Something or someone was there, waiting. Watching me.
A dark shadow dripped like black ink from the ceiling, slithering down in long drawn-out movements. Spikes of electric heat sparked out over my chest.Seriously? Was the creepiness in this place ever going to end?
My palms started to sweat, and I tried fixing my corset while rubbing them against the material.
“Uh—” I tried to form words, but my mouth was dry and my tongue too thick. I stepped back instead, darting my eyes around for a way out.
The shadowy creature took a quick step toward me, spreading out along the walls, completely covering stone and earth. Its edges shifted and blurred, devouring everything it touched with utter blackness.Were the walls still there behind its body, or was it devouring the strange world around me?
Tiny red eyes, nothing more than thin pinholes of light, stared at me. Its mouth, a swirl of billowing soot and ash, moved hauntingly as if trying to speak.
I kept backing away, my arms stretching out feeling for a door, a window, anything—anything to run away from the terror before me. I needed to get away. My hands hit frozen stones, and my fingertips clawed at their surfaces, desperate for an escape.
Closer and closer it came.
I could feel its sharp chill, a bitter cold that made my breath wisp out in misty tendrils as it moved around me. Its impending form stretched up across the ceiling directly above my head and seeped into the cracks of the floor beneath my feet.Did I live through a whipping just to end up dying by being swallowed by a shadow monster?
Or did I die? Was this the shit that happened after you died?
