Glintov’s eyes light up briefly, a look of acceptance and, dare I say, relief on his face, and then his body sags as he dies. His coagulated blood oozes onto the floor for a few seconds, and he stops twitching.
Now covered up to her elbows in blood, Mother turns to me. “It’s your turn.”
I backpedal out of the doorway of the cell. “What?” I breathe. “What is my punishment? What have I done?”
“Before meeting his justified end, Glintov told me of a separate story, sapling. A bathhouse, where he spied you meeting in secret with the thorn in my ass, this girl Sephania.” She advances a step, shaking the red-drenched rusty dagger at me. “Yet you did not bring her to me, as ordered. You left her safe and hale.”
I pump my hands. Fear ripples through every inch of me as the shorter, elder vampiress advances on me into the hallway. “Glintov lies. You can’t trust a word he says.”
“So you didnotmeet with Sephania Lock?”
“No.” I try to force confidence in my lie, though I know it fails. Even with our weak bloodbond, there’s still a familial bond there. She can read my face just as easily as she can read my mind.
Alacine smiles. “You’re a good liar, son. I’ve taught you well.” Nodding to herself, she tosses the rusty dagger onto the floor next to the silver one. “However, you must be disciplined for your misjudged dalliance. I don’t know what you see in the foolish girl. Perhaps this will make you understand: If you take something from me, I take something from you. Follow me.”
Alacine glides through the hallway and I’m forced to obey. My heart is in my neck and my stomach is in my boots. I’m ready for her to spin around with a new dagger to try and slash me across the throat, so I keep a fair distance.
We come to a new prison cell, this one larger and more ostentatious, with various torture instruments and devices set along the sides of the carved stone walls.
A slight figure, hooded, is at the back of the dungeon in a similar state as Glintov: drooping but standing, arms raisedand shackled from the ceiling; legs spread wide, manacled at the base. This figure is much smaller, skinnier, racked to an X-shaped post, ready to be tortured.
My brow furrows, wondering who it could be.
With great flourish, Alacine yanks the hood off the person’s head to reveal them.
I gasp at the short, yellow-haired figure. Memories of the Firehold and Grimsons come roaring back to me—painful, intense memories of losing the only people I’ve ever cared about.
“You recognize her, I see,” Alacine mutters. The interfolk girl is dressed in tatters. My mother glances down at the obvious mound between her legs and rips the rest of her cloth scraps from her waist to reveal an oversized cock flopping heavily between those narrow, parted thighs. “Or should I sayhim, perhaps?”
“Mother!” I cut in at the sight of her cruelty. The interfolk girl I once knew from the Firehold is somehow half my size yet likely bigger than me at the same time. I would be impressed if the situation wasn’t so dismaying.
Palacia lifts her head, lolling and quite lost on a rubbery neck. She looks as though she’s been drugged, perhaps pumped full of redcloud, and doesn’t even realize my mother has so callously and embarrassingly disrobed.
Alacine rubs a hand over Palacia’s endowment and smiles to herself when the large pink cock twitches. “Before I flay her skin from her body, you will watch as I take something from you, as punishment for failing me, sapling.”
“I will do no such thing,” I eke out. “Don’t do this, Mother.” I’m disgusted and wish to turn away, but I simply can’t. My heart hurts for this girl, at the mercy of my wicked kin, without any respite in sight. If I could, I’d help her. I know I can’t—I’m weak when it comes to opposing Alacine Mortis.
My mother slips her black robe and bares pale, bony shoulder blades.
I want to turn away, to retreat. “What will this teach me, Mother? I don’t understand!” I yell into the room.
“That loss is inevitable, and you will do my bidding or you will losemore!” she shouts. Then she smiles to herself. “Such enticing things shouldn’t go to waste, either.” She looks down at the cock thickening and stiffening in her hand from her lazy strokes, rising from Palacia’s bony pelvis without any say-so from the poor lass.
Alacine drops her robe completely in a heap at her feet, revealing her lithe pale frame and all her slight curves and angles from the back.
I shake my head, aghast, and backpedal. “I’ll take no part in this.”
“Then you’d best leave fast,” she answers. Over her shoulder, she smirks. “Don’t go far, little sapling.”
I hurry out of the room and slam the door shut.
Bowing my head in shame, I stand against the far wall and clench my hands into fists at my sides, feeling weak and useless. The awful, humiliating sounds and moans emanate from the room, softly at first. Palacia’s whimpers join my mother’s ecstatic cries, and I realize she must have become cognizant once my mother roused her lust involuntarily. It fills me with shame and hate I don’t know what to do with.
It’s true, I once cared for Palacia like I cared for all of my Grimsons and Grimdaughters. She was one of the few interfolk, the transitioned outcasts, whom I gladly accepted in my ranks.
And now this. I’ve failed her . . . and perhaps that is the lesson. By “failing” my mother and not bringing her Sephania when I had the chance, Alacine is pointing out other failures of mine and drawing distinctions to them in disgusting, ruinous ways.
Twenty minutes pass, the dismal silence in the cold hallway contrasted by the loud rape in Alacine’s dungeon.
