It was impossible to tell if he believed her. He kneeled down, straddling her, pressing her deeper into the sand, his weight crushing and inescapable. His face twisted with cruel satisfaction, a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. He leaned down, so close she could smell something sweet on his breath.
“You think you’re clever, don’t you?” he whispered, his voice dangerously soft. “You think you can play these little games with me, that you can lie to me and I won’t know?” His threats weren’t empty. They never were. They were promises etched into every cruel line of his face.
Thorn’s hand glided to her cheek, his fingers caressing her skin with a feigned tenderness that belied the darkness within. But then his nails bit down, eliciting a soft whimper from her lips.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.” He pushed her face against the gritty sand. “You’ll remain my experiment. But this time…” His fingers danced down to her throat, lingering atop her pulse, relishing the power he wielded over her fragile existence. “…this time, you’ll be bound, strung up like the pitiful thing you are. Like you should have been from the beginning.”
Her mind recoiled from the dark possibilities his words painted. She struggled beneath him, lashing out and racking her nails against his cheek.
It did absolutely nothing.
No scratch. No flinch. He continued as if she hadn’t hit him at all.
“Do you think you have suffered? That what I, and Gerard, have done to you is the worst of it?” He shook his head slowly. “No, little wretch,” he continued, his grip tightening until pain flared along her trachea. “You haven’t even begun to understand what true suffering is. My guards and I will tear you apart, piece by piece, strip you of every shred of dignity, of every illusion you have left about who you are. We will carve obedience into your bones. And when you beg—and oh, you will beg—we will ignore you. You are nothing but a lab rat for me and a plaything for my men.”
No. No, no, no.
This wasn’t happening.
She refused to cry, refused to show him her fear, but the betrayal in her own body burned worse than the bruises already forming beneath his grip. She had survived so much: Symond, Gerard, every humiliation, every drop of blood Thorn had stolen from her. But this? Could she survive this? Could she endure what he was promising her?
Her heart seized at his words, sending rapid distress signals to Tehvan. He knew where she was going. He had to be on his way to save her. Thorn’s grip tightened around her throat, not enough to choke her, but enough to remind her of the control he wielded, the power he relished.
“You belong to me,” Thorn growled. His eyes were dark, bottomless pits of hatred and possessiveness. “You will suffer for your defiance. For every step you took away from me, for every thought of rebellion. I’ll make you regret the very idea of freedom.”
Elora’s chest heaved as she stared up at Thorn, the cold realization sinking in. He would keep her alive, dragging her through endless torment. That was a fate far crueler than the silence of death, far more unbearable than slipping quietly into nothing.
But maybe,just maybe, if she provoked him, wrench the beast from his carefully maintained facade, she could make him snap. She just had to play to his biggest weakness.
Elora didn’t fight. Didn’t flinch.
Instead, she tilted her head slightly, staring up at him with her wide, still-mostly-blue, eyes.
“Uncle…”
The word slipped from her tongue, soft, childlike and tinged with quiet betrayal.
Thorn froze.
“Why are hurting me, Uncle?” Her lower lip trembled. “I thought you loved me.”
There it was: the flicker in his grasp, the crease between his brow, the regret blooming behind his eyes. She wasn’t Elora. She washer.
She curled her fingers around his sleeve. Weak. Like a child. “I thought I was supposed to be your legacy. Why are you abandoning me? What did I do wrong, Uncle Thorn?”
His hand loosened. Just slightly.
And then she shattered the illusion.
Her lips curled into a sneer, letting her voice sharpen and turn venomous.
“The fact that you can’t tell the difference. Even now.” She leaned forward, pressing his hands tighter around her throat. “That’s how easy it is to control you.”
“You little—” His grip tightened, but not enough.
Her words rasped through the strain. “You think you can break me?” She shook her head. “You can beat me. Drain me. Use me. Let your men rape me. But you’ll never control me. You’re just a fragile old man with a knife… and no legacy left to carve.”
That broke him.
