Blood sprayed, hundreds of droplets joining the large puddle already at her feet.
“I’ll give the last lash.” Carron had slipped into the gymnasium without me noticing. He held out his hand for the whip. When Drake gave it to him, Carron ran his gloved hand over the fall’s length, and his fingers came away crimson with the shield’s blood. Then he repeated the motion, as if he wanted to completely soak the glove’s leather. “It looks to me like you’ve been pulling your punches.”
“Sir?” Drake’s brows rose.
Carron cracked the whip. Hard. The sound echoed against the gymnasium’s weapon-lined walls.
The shield gasped.
A fresh cut opened on her mid-back, and I saw a flash of bone before blood welled from the injury.
The general returned the whip to Drake and tsked. “I assumed I’d get your best effort. This”—he shook his head as if Drake had offered Haven a massage instead of flayingthe flesh from her body—“this is hardly a punishment. I think a week in the pit.”
It was a death warrant.
She might have lasted four days without water. A week was an impossibility.
Every lash that striped her skin had been for nothing.
Triumph flared in Carron’s eyes. This had always been his plan. He never meant for her to live. And we’d played into his hands.
“Sir.” Grayson stood straight and tall, even as anger radiated from his skin. Maybe he wasn’t as unaffected by her as he pretended. “That’s not what we discussed.”
“Not my fault. Drake went easy on her.” Carron dropped the bloody whip to the floor, took out a handkerchief, and carefully wiped a speck of blood from his lapel.
Drake had not gone easy on her.
A wet laugh drew my attention. The shield was laughing.
“Something funny, Shield?” General Carron’s tone was cold enough to ice even my veins.
“You.”
Did she want to die right this minute? Maybe she did. It would be a faster, more merciful death than yielding to dehydration in the pit.
“And why am I funny?”
“You’re afraid. Of me. I can taste your fear in the air. But don’t worry. You have these assholes fooled.”
The general’s eyes narrowed to furious slits, and he raised his right hand and hit her with his magic. Magic that could bring the strongest guard to his knees.
She didn’t react. The cuffs muted her power. Her shield should be down. Somehow, it wasn’t. Just how strong was she?
Carron’s face darkened, and he bent and snatched the whip from thefloor.
With a vicious crack, the whip slit her skin from the shoulder I’d injured this morning to her ass.
I cringed on her behalf.
She didn’t scream. She did something much worse. Her head fell forward, and she slumped. Only the cuffs kept her upright.
Haven was either passed out or dead. When had I started thinking of her by name? When had “the shield” become “Haven” in my mind? The distinction felt dangerous—and irreversible.
Chapter
Ten
HAVEN
