“That’s right.” Varek mistakes my silence. “Be the good little whore they taught you to be. Don’t move until I tell you to.” His hand lifts from my hips, and then a breathy, “Yeah. Just like that.”
But nothing happens. I wait, my wrists and neck pinned under the heavy weight of rusted chains. A cool breeze curls mist before the altar. The world holds its breath.
When Varek speaks again, my fragile heart soars. “Wait your turn.”
“Touch her and I slice off your cock.”
A weighted silence stretches between the men.
He’s a fool if he thinks the Huntsman is bluffing.
“No, you won’t,” Varek counters, smugness leaking into his tone. “You work for Kasaros.” An unmistakable blunt sensation fumbles at my entrance. “Wait your?—”
Varek makes a sound no man should make. It’s agonized, horrified, and deserving. His presence behind me disappears. Against my back, I feel the heat and movement of violence. Bones crunch and crunch and thud. Heavy grunts and animalistic snarls. It sounds like a starving wild beast feasting. Blood sprays in my periphery, but the chains stop me from craning my neck far enough to see.
Finally, one man’s ragged, shuddering breath and my pounding pulse are all I hear.
The weight of iron chains lifts from my body. I scramble off the altar and turn around.
The Huntsman stands inches away from me, splattered in blood, staring down at the chains in his hands. His knucklesare white from the force of his grip. His body twitches with contained aggression. His lungs inflate slowly. Measured. It’s almost as if he’s afraid the air will tip him over the edge, into what I’m not sure. But it’s not human.
Cautiously, I step aside to see Varek’s body. But it’s unrecognizable. It’s a pulp of skin, hair, and broken bones. The only recognizable part is the penis flung to the side, resting among weeds.
Oh my Gods. He really cut it off. Not just that, he dished out his retribution far beyond the realm of sanity.
“Huntsman?” My voice trembles.
His head lifts. Eyes collide with mine. The shock pulses through me. The coming dawn reveals the color for the first time. Blue. More alive than ever. And wrong. So very wrong. The Huntsman who killed Drayven had cold, dead eyes. Colorless eyes. I’m sure of it.
My gaze dips to his bloodied and scarred knuckles, then up to his face. Emotion threatens to undo me, but I have to know.
“If you’re not Drayven, who are you?”
Chapter 9
Drayven
To serve the Laughing God is to bleed eternally.”
—THE HUNTSMAN’S CREED
My body trembles with a possessive rage that refuses to subside. Florienne stands before me whole, unsullied—the golden rosebud on her sternum is closed. She is safe. Yet my mind has not registered that danger has passed.
I killed the beast and then hunted her down, but the path here had been fraught with wrong turns and mocking laughter. Each delayed step amplified my beastly instincts, just as Kasaros promised.
It’s nothing compared to how I felt when I found carnage in this courtyard. Red, red, everywhere except her pale rain-slicked skin and blue hair. The scene I came upon didn’t answer to logic. She was here, my heart, my soul. But she was bound while another man—despicable scum—stood behind her with an expression I never want to witness on anyone but myself.
He looked how I feel when I indulge in my darkest fantasies about her—devouring her, claiming her as my own. Damned be the consequences.
I froze with rage.
But then, her tear-stained lashes lifted, and those innocent eyes locked onto mine. I saw my purpose, my reason for breathing.
Everything changed.
Instinct took over, and I became the monster the Laughing God made me. I unleashed a maelstrom of violence like never before, and I kept going. My fists rained down on his flesh until grass kissed my battered knuckles. Then I pulled apart his skin, his bowels, his bones.
The sound of clanking metal snapped me back to reality—she is still bound.
