The pain doubled me over, but I swallowed down my groan.
Fleshtalker couldn’t hurt me. Not as long as Lyra was safe.
My father’s sycophants could do whatever they wanted to me. I would not break.
Still wheezing, I winced as Fleshtalker fitted heavy iron manacles around my wrists, the rowan-wood spikes lining the cuffs carving into my flesh. He pulled the chains alongthe wall taut, stretching my arms wide. The new position reopened the gashes along my back, and I felt the hot trickle of blood seeping through my shirt.
Still, I’d take the pain over the effects of the rowan-wood spikes any day. Rowan was poisonous to demons. While it wouldn’t kill me, it kept me weak and prevented my wounds from healing.
“Shall we begin, Highness?” Fleshtalker crooned. “Or have you thought better of protecting your whore?”
I blinked at him lazily, arching a brow. Gods, eventhathurt.
Unfortunately, I knew enough about Fleshtalker’s methods to know the beating and whipping and rowan-wood spikes were only foreplay to him. He liked to watch his victims suffer, and I refused to scream or beg.
It wasn’t that Fleshtalker was any more despicable than the rest of my father’s servants. All the demons in Semphrys’s court basked in others’ pain.
But Fleshtalker had a talent the others lacked. He could pull memories from a person’s very bones — make them relive their very worst moments or distort reality for his own sick ends.
More troubling was that I’d seen him force his victims to reveal information against their will, no matter how carefully they guarded their thoughts. Unlike the mind, the body did not lie, and it was much harder to conceal memories stored in the flesh.
“Very well,” Fleshtalker murmured. “I had hoped to spare you the indignity of my methods, but His Majesty insists.”
I rolled my eyes. There wasn’t a demon among my father’s band of sycophants who wouldn’t have gladlytraded places with him. They all resented having a half-breed mongrel on the throne and would have relished the opportunity to put me in my place.
My stomach clenched as Fleshtalker reached for me, his pale, spidery hands stretching toward my chest.
Gritting my teeth, I drew my focus inward, cloaking my mind in thick plumes of shadow to conceal all thoughts of Lyra. It was harder with the rowan-wood spikes depleting my strength, but I summoned all my resolve to lock the demon out.
Fleshtalker’s touch was surprisingly gentle, but I sensed when he started to pull my memories forth.
It felt as though my skin was being flayed from the bone, every tug of his will like a dull blade prying beneath my flesh.
I squeezed my eyes shut, losing myself to the shadows. I cast them out in every direction, filling my blood with smoke and mist and begging my body not to betray me.
Ibecamethe shadows. Shapeless. Ephemeral. Shifting with every change of the light.
Fleshtalker couldn’t find the memories if they had nowhere to live — if I was not Kaden, the demon prince, but darkness itself.
“Very good,” he simpered, not sounding at all frustrated by his lack of progress. “I must say, I am impressed. But it becomes much harder to escape the body when it is in pain.”
Then he stabbed me.
I was unprepared for the vicious steel as it sliced into my gut, ripping through flesh, puncturing organs, and scraping against bone.
An agonized gurgle heaved up my throat, and I gritted my teeth so hard I thought my molars might shatter.
With his other hand, he gripped my nape, and the fragment of a memory flashed in my mind.
Lyra, dressed in the silver-lilac gown that I had made for her. Her dark hair hanging in glossy waves, small arms encircling my neck as I flew us over the Quarter.
For a split second, I forgot where I was as the memory of her consumed me.
The warmth of her skin. The smell of her hair like summer rain. Floral and earthy, but with an underlying freshness of heat and grit being washed away.
Pulling out of the memory, I forced myself to focus on the pain — on the edge of the blade moving within me, setting my flesh aflame.
Such a wound wasn’t fatal to a demon, but it would hurt like a bitch while it healed. I knew what he was doing. He wanted the pain to shatter my defenses — to force me back into my body.
