Shit. The mistake crashed through him like a hammer strike. Too much. He had said too much.
Darius crouched, seizing Finn’s hair in a brutal grip, yanking his head back until his vision swam. “So, the monster told you his name,” Darius whispered, his breath warm against Finn’s sweat-slicked skin. “Tell me, Finnian, did he also tell you about the innocents he slaughtered? Wasn’t your father among their number?”
The room tilted around him. Pain and exhaustion blurred the edges of his thoughts, but the words hit their mark. Finn’s father. His jaw clenched, desperate to cling to certainty, to what he knew. “Cedric would never—” But then his voice faltered. Because he had been there. Had seen it.
Darius chuckled, a bitter, knowing sound. “Oh, he would. And he did. It’s clear he used his magic to ensorcel you.”
No.
But the seed had been planted. Cedric was powerful. What if…?
The thought sliced through him, cold as steel, but then… Cedric had tried to turn him away. Had tried to stop him.
And even when Finn had attacked him, Cedric hadn’t fought back.
No. He knew Cedric. And no spell could make love feel like that.
The torturer returned the branding rod to the brazier, leaving it to smolder in the dying embers. Then, without pause, he selected something new.
A wooden mallet.
Darius released Finn’s hair, rising to his full height, his expression dark with amusement.
“You see, Finnian, Cedric is not the benevolent creature you believe him to be,” he said smoothly. “He’s a monster. He has a history, a past filled with death and destruction. And you, my dear knight, have been played for a fool.”
Finn’s heart thudded painfully against his ribs. He wasn’t wrong about Cedric. He couldn’t be. But the pain made things slippery, made certainty feel distant.
“He’s not the monster,” he muttered, partly to himself, partly for Darius’s benefit.
He tasted blood on his tongue. Darius. Darius was the monster.
The Duke of Poor Life Choices tested the weight of the mallet in his palm, rolling his wrist, appraising the weapon with idle familiarity.
Finn’s stomach clenched.
Then the torturer reached for Finn’s right hand. Instinct screamed, but the leather straps held fast. His fingers flexed. My sword hand, gods, no?—
A sharp crack split the air as the mallet slammed down against Finn’s index finger.
Pain detonated.
Finn’s vision flared white, his body arching violently against the chair as agony tore through him, lightning bright, nerve-deep. He felt the sickening give beneath the strike—not just a bruise, not just pain, but something shattering.
His breath left him in a strangled gasp, a sound he didn’t recognize as his own.
The next blow landed on his middle finger. Another snap, another fiery wave of agony, a scream locked behind gritted teeth. He clenched his jaw so tightly his teeth might crack.
The torturer adjusted his grip, shifting Finn’s pinned hand slightly, angling it. He wasn’t rushing. No, he was taking his time, drawing it out.
The ring finger next.
Finn’s whole body convulsed as the mallet came down again, a ragged, broken noise escaping before he could swallow it down. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight back, only endure. The damage was permanent now. A knight’s fingers were everything—grip, control, precision.
He was losing all of it.
Darius watched, face unreadable, though something flickered behind his eyes—a deep, cruel satisfaction.
Darius watched him intently, eyes gleaming with sick fascination. Like a man admiring a caged beast, waiting to see if it would snap or submit. “Cedric is a monster. A threat.” His voice was almost coaxing now, almost patient. “Stop protecting him. Why are you even doing this? Enduring this? Some misguided sense of honor?”
