A hand pressed into her face, and Thalia groaned, peeling her lids open to find Cassius hovering above her. “You need to fight it,” he whispered, his eyes scanning hers. “You need to.”
Thalia tried to nod, but the pain was so great she arched, screaming. The headboard behind her cracked, her arms straining against her bounds—
The chains ripped from the wood.
“Fuck.” Cassius lunged, grasping her arms just as Thalia tried to surge upward.
“Cassius, you need to decide,” Keegan ground out behind him.
Thalia could barely think. Not with her brain melting into a soup. Not with the scent of Cassius’s own blood flowing beneath his veins.
“Thalia.” Cassius gritted his teeth.
Thalia thrashed, sobbing through the pain. “I don’t want to die—”
Cassius’s eyes guttered, his fingers still tight on her biceps. But he was lost, his eyes flashing in deep fear, as if he could feel her dying slowly, painfully, beneath him.
“Cassius,” Keegan cautioned.
“I know.” His voice shook. He swallowed, eyes scanning her face. “Thalia. Thalia, can you hear me?”
Thalia trembled, her muscles seizing like tightened ropes. His words broke through the haze of her pain.
“There is something we can try,” he said lowly. “To maybe get you past the pain.” Thalia moaned, her body weakening with each heartbeat. “But I need you to agree. I need you to understand what is going on.”
Thalia shook her head, her tears like acid. “I don’t want to die.”
“I know, I know, my love,” Cassius murmured. “The pain is what will kill you. That is why so many of us turn. But we can try to find a different stimulus, one that will override the pain. Do you know what I’m saying?”
The waves of agony threatened to drown her. Thalia panted, the veins in her neck bulging. Yet somehow she understood. A stronger stimulus could get rid of this pain. “Yes.”
Regret speared itself through Cassius’s face, his hesitation palpable.
Thalia whimpered, latching on to his face. “I don’t want to die.”
Cassius’s face hardened. “Switch places with me.”
She didn’t know who he was talking to, only that one moment her arms were free, then warm hands clamped on them.
Through the haze of her pain, she saw Keegan above her. He stared at her, holding her down as her body thrashed uncontrollably. She screamed until her vocal chords shredded.
Then hands clamped onto her legs once more.
Thalia managed to open her eyes, her chest cracking in half, to find Cassius at the foot of the bed, his hands wrapped around her ankles.
She sobbed as her body trembled, bile rising in her throat at the pain. The insatiable hunger deepened. Keegan’s blood pulsed just out of reach above her. Yet through the hunger, darkness hummed along the edges of her vision. Pain blinded her, making her arch until her spine groaned.
Cassius stared at her, his face a mixture of guilt and trepidation.
“Cassius,” Keegan warned as Thalia slumped, her poor body lying useless like a broken doll.
“Give me a minute.”
Thalia wasn’t sure if she had a minute. But then Cassius knelt, his hands drifting up her legs.
“Do you remember our first coupling?” Cassius said quietly. Another wave of pain hovered on the edge of her vision, but she latched on to Cassius’s words. Latched on to his fingers, which were slowly inching up her thighs—tried to zero in on the sensation instead of the building agony. “It was right after you’d told off Lord Vincent’s son before the whole court.”
Thalia’s muscles bunched, shrinking and warping, begging her to succumb to the pain.
