“She’s my cousin,” Tamsin continues, stepping in until her shadow falls over him, close enough that he can smell her perfume through the blood. “She came home broken, covered in bruises, crying so hard she couldn’t even speak—and you thought you got away with it.”
His lips twitch, but she cuts him off, her voice harder now.
“You didn’t. You’ll never get away from me, Felix. Every scream you make tonight is for her. Every drop of blood you spill is for the women you destroyed.”
Beau and Caleb remain silent, standing behind her as sentinels, the darkness at her back.
She reaches for her knife, a small, sweet, deadly smilecurving her lips.
“And when I take your eyes, I’ll make sure you leave this world in the dark… the way you left her.”
She moves with the precision of someone who’s been living for this moment. Every step is measured, inevitable.
The blade kisses his cheek first, shallow enough to sting, deep enough to bleed. His head jerks, breath hissing through clenched teeth.
“Felix,” she says, calm as stone. “Say her name.”
He glares, jaw tight.
Her hand snaps up, gripping his chin so hard his teeth click. “Say it.”
“Daisy,” he spits, trying to turn it into a sneer.
The knife answers before I can, cutting deep across his thigh. His body bucks against the chains, a strangled yell tearing loose.
“What did you do to her?”
“She wanted it—”
He doesn’t even finish before Tamsin opens another red smile above his knee. His scream rips through the cabin, raw and cracking.
“Liar.”
The blade works again, and again. Every denial earns another savage slash; every truth another line that makes him twitch and sob. The air turns heavy with copper and fear.
When she drags the blade down his cheek to his throat, he starts shaking. “Please—” he gasps, but it breaks into a cry when the tip bites into the soft flesh of his stomach, letting the warmth spill over his skin.
His breathing fractures into panicked wheezes. “Stop! Please, I—”
The sharp stink of piss fills the air as the dark patch spreads.
She doesn’t blink. “Pathetic.”
When she finally reaches his eyes, he’s just hiccupping breaths and wet, broken sounds. She doesn’t hurry, makes him wait, lets the anticipation cut deeper than the steel.
And then—The Shame Socket.
I fist a hand in his hair, forcing his head back while my other hand pries his eyelid open. Caleb moves in with a smirk.
“Can I help?” he asks her.
She smirks back and nods.
Caleb braces the other side of his skull, holding him steady while she takes the scalpel. The cut is slow, precise, a perfect circle. His scream rips through the cabin, loud enough to make my ears ring. He gags, thrashes and my grip only tightens.
The eye pops free with a wet snap. Beau steps in, holding a steel plate, and she drops it with a slick sound that makes Felix retch.
The second eye comes out the same way, merciless. By the end, his face is a mask of blood and tears, chest rising in shallow, panicked pulls.
