Now, I feel sprightly. Invigorated and furious.
I storm down the hall to the torture room and can already hear the whimpers coming from inside. I push my way in, and the scent of blood and burning flesh reaches my nose instantly. It’s a horrid mix.
I’m greeted with a ghastly sight: Alacine has her back to me, staring over the rotund woman chained to a table, staring tearfully at the dank ceiling. My mother tosses something with athudinto a bloody bucket next to her, and I inhale sharply when I stand over it.
Jinneth’s left hand, severed at the wrist.
The whimpering coming from the large woman is muted from shock. The burning smell is the cauterizing of her wrist, tocreate a stump so she won’t bleed out. Her body twitches on the table, hardly able to process what Alacine has done to her.
“Mother, what in all that’s Damned is going on here?”
She glances over her shoulder, snorting at the bucket I’m staring down into. “She won’t be needing both of those to finish the tasks I’ve given her. One hand will suffice, sapling.”
I blink wordlessly, trying to formulate coherent thoughts.This is Sephania’smother!My body screams at me to react.Andmymother is torturing her, as she tortures everyone.
Perhaps it’s the weak human heart in me. The half-blood aspect of my dhampirism. But I feel a surge of sympathy and guilt at what I’m seeing.
“I plan to take a leg tomorrow,” Alacine says cheerily. “She won’t need both of those, either. Won’t be doing a lot of standing or running, you see? Only sitting is necessary for the alchemical work.”
“You’ll drive her mad, Mother. She’ll be useless to you dead.”
“Nonsense. I’ll notkillher, dear boy. Where’s the fun in that?”
Baffled, I run a hand through my hair. “So you’re doing this torture . . . for sport? What is the purpose? Has she not told you the information you desire?”
“No, no, there isn’t any information I need from her. The whereabouts of her daughter would be useful, but I’m well past that, little sapling. I’m doing it for the enjoyment of doing it, of course.”
I can’t stop blinking in shock, the way she’s talking. It’s like whatever happened in the Firehold truly broke her. How IwishI could go down there and see if my old friends are all right. Antones most of all, if he’s still breathing. Rirth, the short bastard. Culiar, too, the lanky prick. Even the women, Imis, Aelin, Helget—well, Helget was taken as broodstock, but what about the others?
There’s a sudden itch inside me, and I realize something.Mother sentmeto Manor Marquin and took the Firehold herself so I wouldn’t be reunited with my Grimsons.
I wince at the thought, wondering if it could be true.
“Skartovius Ashfen is my brother,” I blurt out.
Alacine’s shoulders stiffen. She tries to play it off, not bothering to turn to face me because she’s so busy plying her gruesome trade to Jinneth. And this coming from a man who once killed a youngling because he simply asked me a question.
There’s a reason I’ve always hated fullblood vampires: It’s because Alacine taught me to. They were the reason I lived my life in hiding, and why I was seen as inferior to their kind.
“Which means he is your son,” I add. My body tenses when she carries on what she’s doing like I said nothing.
“What nonsense are you babbling about, son?”
“Don’t lie to me, Mother. We have totalk!”
She spins, a wicked snarl on her face, fangs bared. Stabbing a bloody knife toward me, which still hangs with flayed flesh, she says, “Don’t speak about things you know nothing about,boy!”
Then she turns back around in a huff.
I’ve been told my entire life not to question things. Even Skartovius told me to shut my mouth when I was speaking about what I didn’t know. Alacine is no different, and they’re truly related in that sense.
Now, the burden becomes too much to hold.
“Skartovius told me he killed my father because Heskel was planning a coup against us. Is that true, Mother?”
“No.”
Lies. I can see through them with her nonchalance. She can’t even face me because . . .
