Balthazar grabbed my shirt and tore it from my body. His breath hitched as his gaze swept over my back.
Then, he laughed.
A deep, cruel sound.
“Look at these brands! Seems like you could use a few more.” He bellowed. He turned to the masked men. “Bring me a white-hot branding iron!”
The room spun. The walls closed in.
The last thing I heard was the hiss of steel in the fire.
Then—darkness.
I jolted awake, a scream stuck in my throat as the searing metal burned into my back. The stench of charred flesh—my flesh—hungthick in the air, rancid and suffocating. Smoke curled around me, acrid and poisonous, stinging my eyes and choking my lungs.
How long had I been here? Hours? Days? Time blurred into an endless cycle of pain.
Balthazar loomed over me, the branding iron glowing white-hot in his grip.
“Go ahead and kill me,” I rasped, my voice barely more than a breath. Weak, delirious—half in this world, half somewhere else.
The brand came down again.
Agony detonated across my spine, fire ripping through my nerves. I howled, my body convulsing as my mind disintegrated.
Then, I was no longer here.
The scent of smoke shifted. The screams changed.
Ancient Rome. The arena.
The roar of the crowd thundered in my ears. The sun blazed above, merciless and unrelenting. Blood painted the sand beneath me. The clang of steel, the desperate grunts of dying men—it was all real, too real.
I fought, my blade slicing through the chaos. But even then, the question gnawed at me?—
Was I fighting for honor? Or had I always been a pawn in someone else’s war?
I saw them—my comrades falling one by one, their bodies broken, their cries swallowed by the spectacle of violence.
Something was wrong. It had always been wrong.
I shook my head, struggling to separate past from present. Emily. Our room. Safety. I had to remember.
Then—another strike.
The iron seared deep, yanking me back into the past, pulling me under.
Rome. The war. The blood.
I was there again.
Fighting for my life.
Get it together. You can withstand this torture.
I breathed through my cracked lips, dragging myself back to the present as the flashback faded. My body screamed in agony, but I locked it away, compartmentalizing the pain the way I had in the arena.
Balthazar’s voice thundered through the room. “Where is my daughter? Where’s Olivia?”
