His breathing quickened.Good. Let him wonder how I know.
“How many did you buy this year, Edward? Three? Four?” I stopped behind him, leaning down close enough that my breath stirred the top of his pepper-gray hair. “I know about the auction houses. The private sales. The discrete shipping containers with air holes.” After all, I had been with him many times to watch as they unloaded from his private dock. While I had been a simple exchange due to my young age, I knew others were not as fortunate. “You’ve been a very bad man, Edward.” I stroked his hair gently.
He jerked against the ropes, accomplishing nothing except tightening the knots that were designed to constrict with struggle. “Edward.” I tsked. “The more you fight, the deeper the hemp will bite. You should know this, though it was never your preferred method of inflicting pain.” I moved my hand down to pat his shoulder comfortingly, resisting the urge to sink my nails into his flesh.
“Violet.” Rowan’s warning came soft, but I heard the edge beneath it. He knew how close I walked to the edge of my control. His earlier words of wisdom echoed in my mind, “Revenge without patience is just bloodlust. And bloodlust never satisfies.”
“Yeah, I know.” I sighed and moved back into Edward’s line of sight and lifted a knife from the table stationed in front of him. His eyes tracked the blade when it came into view: six inches of Damascus steel that could fillet a fish or a pharynx with equal efficiency.
“In another life,” I said, testing the edge against my thumb, “You bought me when I was nine and kept me in captivity for twenty-four years. Do you know what that does to a person?” With the lightest press, the knife drew a thin line of my own blood.
Edward squirmed, making inarticulate choking sounds.
“It teaches you patience. Observation. How to read every micro-expression on your owner’s face.” I smiled as his eyes widened at what he saw, caught off guard by my lack of response to the cut. “It also taught me quite a lot aboutyou. I know you’re allergic to shellfish. I know you sleep on your left side. I know you cry out your ex-wife’s name when you come.” That last part made him go rigid.
“Catherine is a lovely name,” I said wistfully.
Tears began to streak his face. His cries pulled out ugly memories of how he used to sob her name while raping me more times than I could count. Apparently, even monsters had people they missed.
“But most importantly,” I continued, moving closer, “I know you’ve already bought other girls in this life. Just because I wasn’t one of them doesn’t mean they don’t deserve justice.”
Rowan stepped into my peripheral, a statuesque form clad in black and my body responded without thought. My hip canted towards him, shoulders dropping from their defensive position. Even while facing my owner and serial rapist, even while discussing the worst trauma of my existence, Rowan made me feel safe enough towant. He had given me back my wings.
“Show him,” Rowan suggested, his voice carrying his calm and confident tone that made my thighs clench. “Show him what awaits him.”
I set the knife on the stone altar that served as a table. Next to it lay other tools: specialized instruments for organ removal and containment, should I decide to sell them for a little profit.
Edward’s gaze ping-ponged between us and the table. I knew what he saw; two people more than half his age claiming to be prepared to inflict a nightmare of unspeakable pain upon his person. In the normal world, we’d be psychiatric patients. But this wasn’t the normal world. This was the Second Circle, where the supernatural world gathered to make deals in blood and pleasure.
“The proprietor of this place knows you’re here,” I said, letting that sink in. “Do not expect him to save you. It would seem that even demons believe in justice, Edward. Or at least in entertainment.”
That’s when the real panic started, as his muffled screams echoed in the stone chamber. That’s when he understood this wasn’t a kidnapping for ransom, a sick joke, or a fucked up kink. The sweet taste of his fearcame from the indisputable knowledge that this was not something his money could fix.
Rowan’s fingers traced patterns on my spine, and I had to fight not to arch into his touch. My traitorous body was getting even wetter while discussing murder. I was a symphony of desire and rage that Rowan had learned to orchestrate like a maestro.
“Would you like for me to tighten the rope across his chest?” Rowan asked. “It will make breathing far more laborious for him.” His tone was as professional and calm as his adopted father’s. The absence of arrogance in his voice set an ache deep in my core as I exhaled a shaky laugh.
“You’re infuriatingly hot when you talk like that, you know?”
Rowan leaned in, his mouth brushing my ear. “And you love me for it.”
“I do, but no—not yet.” I picked up my knife again, moving towards Edward with deliberate slowness. “I want him coherent for this part.”
The blade whispered against his shirt, parting fabric without touching skin. I’d gotten good with blades in this life, having taken up the hobby recently thanks to a friend.
“Twenty-four years,” I said, cutting away cloth to reveal pale flesh. “That’s 8,760 days. 210,240 hours. Do you know what I’m going to do, Edward?”
He shook his head frantically, sweat running down his temples.
“I’m going to tell you about yourself.”
I pressed the flat of the blade against his sternum, letting him feel the chill against his heated skin. “Starting with the day you bought me. You wore a blue suit. Stuart Hughes. Your favorite, I know. The silk tie we stuffed in your mouth is one of your own. Hermès. If memory serves, you’d worn a tie just like that one on the day you bought me. You’d recently come from lunch, and you smelled like oysters and champagne. I never understood why you ordered them when you were allergic.”
His eyes widened. Those were details too specific to be fantasy.
“The auctioneer called me Lot Seventeen. Virgin, unbroken, young enough to train properly.” The words tasted bitter, but I forced them out. “You paid with cash. I was worth a small fortune. But enough aboutme,” I continued, pulling the blade away, feeling his heartbeat a staccato of fear. “In this life, you bought another girl. Several other girls.”
I set the knife down and picked up something worse: a photograph. One of the items the proprietor had provided along with information on Edward himself. A girl, maybe twelve, standing in what looked like a warehouse. The fear in her eyes was as familiar as a mirror.
