My fault.
“Where have they taken her?!” I step into Jack’s personal space.
Jack puts his hand on my shoulder, and I shove it off.
“Your wife harmed a member of the Blood Family. A Guardian. It depends on how angry they are with her. The punishments vary…”
I push him to the wall. “Give. Me. Your. Best. Guess.”
Jack is just a teenager here. Achild. But it doesn’t make a difference to me right now. He could be a sentinel standing in my way for all I care. I see a tunnel of red. She cried for her brother as they ripped her from me and dragged her body like a corpse…
“Uh, the Black Widow Room?!” Jack blurts out in exasperation. “But it’ll be more extreme than that probably. A Marionette Theaterwithinthe Black Widow Room.”
Fury and hatred warp my memory recollection.
“What the fuck does that mean?!”
“Well, it…it means…”
It all comes back to me.
Marionette Theater is the House of Jester Night when a female inmate has to let a line of men please her in front of an audience. The Black Widow Room is where they drug the female inmate to be so aroused she touches herself in front of a small, intimate audience of soldiers.
“No.”
“Niklaus, I know this is bad, but—”
I could slam his head against the granite wall.
“Bad?!” I growl, balling my hands into fists. “Bad? That’s my wife they just hauled away from me. My. Fucking.Wife. If you think I’m letting another man touch her, you’re either experiencing psychosis, or you are an idiot.”
“They are not going to kill her,” Sophia says, as if for a moment that makes it all right.
“No? But they are going to sexually assault her.”
Jack and Sophia have nothing to say to that.
My world burns around the edges, going up in a hazardous storm of smoke and debris. I can’t let this happen to her. Christ, she was only trying to protect me. Why the fuck didn’t I just go in? Why was I being such a coward?
This is my fault.
My fault.
My fault.
Sapphire, baby, I am so sorry.
I’ll fix this.
I am going to fix this.
“Tell me where they’ve taken her so I can fucking kill them.”
Sapphire
“Wait. Please someone just explainto me what’s going on!”
Sentinels chain my arms to a table. A soldier in black leather and cables prepares a crow’s mask, connecting it to some sort of tank. It holds that fucking arousal drug…doesn’t it?
