He doesn’t.
Not anymore.
They seize me before I can brace for it. Two sets of hands clamp onto my shoulders, fingers digging deep as though they intend to pry muscle from bone. My shirt is torn open without ceremony, fabric ripped away until cold air scrapes down my spine. My arms are wrenched to either side, heavy chains of magic pinning them where Andrew wants them. I can feel the spell humming, eager to tighten if I so much as breathe too close to rebellion.
“It’s so unfortunate, Ares,” he says, strolling leisurely around me as if giving a speech to guests at a dinner party. “You continue to be so arrogant in light of all that you know.”
The men force my shoulders down another inch. A gesture meant to humble. They should know by now it never works.
“If I do this,” I say, steadying my breath, “you’ll leave them alone? All of your children’s companions?” The wordcompanionstastes absurd given what Harper means to him and what he intends, but I use it anyway. Anything else reveals too much.
Andrew smiles, a sliver of pleasure glinting through cracked porcelain. “Maybe.”
His hand lifts. Skin ripples. Flesh rearranges. Fingers sharpen into hooked talons that gleam with a metallic sheen, each one curved with surgical precision. No matter how many times I watch that transformation, it still drags a chill through me, an echo from years lodged in his shadow.
The first slash comes without warning.
Pain cleaves through my back in a hot, immediate line, the talon carving deep enough to draw air from my lungs. Igrit my teeth, refusing him the satisfaction of a sound. Blood runs quickly, warm against the cold air, slipping down my side before gravity claims it.
He leans close, breath brushing the raw skin he just opened. “I’m starting to think I’ve discovered another way to bring her here,” he murmurs. “Willingly.”
His talon cuts again, deeper. My muscles spasm. The chains rattle as my arms strain involuntarily against them. I stare at the floor, focusing on the grain of the polished marble, anything to steady myself against the familiar tide of pain.
His smile flickers in the corner of my vision. He enjoys this far more than he should.
“Let him go,” Andrew says abruptly.
The magic restraining me dissolves, leaving my knees buckling. I catch myself on the floor, palms braced against the tile, blood dripping between my fingers as the air stings the shredded flesh of my back.
A rag lands beside me. I don’t reach for it.
“Clean yourself up,” he says as if discussing dirt on my boots. “If you continue to fail me, you’ll never get back what you were promised.”
The words hit harder than the talons. They always do. Because he knows precisely what string to pull, what leverage to twist. And he knows I cannot walk away from it, not yet.
He saunters toward his table, plucks up a glass of whiskey, and tosses back a swallow with a sigh of appreciation. Then he walks behind me again, shadow swallowing light as he tilts the glass over my back and pours.
Liquid fire cascades down the open wounds. I hiss, fists clenching against the floor, forehead dropping forward until it nearly touches the tile. The burn is violent, merciless, crawling like a hundred needles beneath my skin.
“You don’t want an infection,” he says, tone almost tender, though the laugh that follows from his men tells the truth.
I remain still. Not because of obedience, never that, but because movement might betray the rising storm under my ribs. The storm that imagines wrapping talons of my own around his throat.
Andrew steps past me, brushing off his gloves as though the matter is finished. “I have a guest, if you’ll excuse me.”
He disappears down one of the many labyrinthine halls, swallowed by the house he built from secrecy and terror.
His men linger long enough to sneer down at me before trailing after him.
Silence settles. A blanket over a smothered flame.
I stay where I am, blood soaking the floor beneath me, shoulders trembling from the violence he pretends is discipline.
All I can see behind my eyes is Harper, her breath warm, her gaze steady, her palms blood-marked in mine.
And I imagine Andrew’s heart crushed between my fingers, dripping down my wrist like the whiskey he wasted on me.
HARPER
