“Your back hasn’t healed,” Lucian warned with a flicker of delight. “These are going to hurt.”
“Good,” you murmured. “That’s the point.”
Lucian glanced toward me again, and I nodded for him to continue. I couldn’t prevent this punishment you so desperately desired, but I could bear witness to it.
Lucian bladed his stance and bent his knees slightly, then drew back the belt and let it fly with a vicious snap. I flinched. The leather bit into your back and branded your skin, cutting into your smooth, delicate flesh. Blood beaded up like rubies. The smell was intoxicating.
“Thirty-one,” you said solemnly. That was more than enough already, but I dared not argue your choices. This wasyourpenance, and I’d not take that agency away from you. I glanced over at Lucian’s pet, whose breath had gone shallow, one hand gripping his own neck.
Lucian delivered another blow, crossing the former in a V-shape. The muscles in your back quivered like horse flesh and then stiffened.
“Thirty-two.” You swallowed tightly and I reminded myself to unclench my jaw. “Don’t go soft on me now, Lucian.”
Lucian cleared his throat, still warming up to having me there. He held up the belt, offering it to me again, but I shook my head. You’d asked for this, not from me but from him.
“Very well.” Lucian studied your back, his canvas, with renewed attention and soon enough, forgot about his audience entirely.
You shook and trembled against your restraints, crying out with each strike, not unlike your noises of ecstasy during lovemaking. There was poetry in the abuse, in the arc of Lucian’s muscled arm, his graceful, rhythmic delivery, and your bodily reaction to his lashing—the involuntary tensing of your muscles and spill of blood, your stutter of breath and the grip of your fingers clenching into fists. I’d never understood it before, but I was trying to now. You wanted the violence inflicted upon you. Wanted to absorb it down to your marrow. I’d drowned my sorrows in drink and dealt with my regrets by driving my fists against the rock walls. You wanted to be restrained and whipped until your back resembled shredded meat. Whatever it took to quiet the mind.
By the end of it, Lucian was dripping in sweat and utterly depleted. His pet was as inscrutable as ever. Lucian licked the edge of the belt and tossed it across a chair, then instructed Stefan to grab him a change of clothes and meet him in the west wing.
I went over and cradled you in my arms while Lucian untied your wrists. You slumped into my embrace and buried your head against my chest.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I assured you. “Give me this too.” If only you’d unburden yourself to me. You whimpered and I rested one hand on your tailbone, holding you secure.
Lucian patted your shoulder lightly, avoiding the lash marks. “You did well, little brother. Henri will take care of you now.”
You nodded without speaking, only nestled deeper into my arms. Lucian said, “Stay the night. I’ll have food brought up as well as some ointment for his back.”
Lucian left and I held you until you were ready to be transferred to the bed. I was careful to avoid touching your back, still bloody and raw where the belt had broken skin.
“Will you lick my lashes?” you said in a halting voice. “I mean… would you mind?”
“Not at all.”
I straddled your narrow frame and started at the base of your back, careful to trace the cuts along their seams so as not to tear the skin even more. The lashes spanned the width of your shoulders and dipped down to your tailbone. The skin around the shallower welts was beginning to knit together, evidence of your improved nutrition. At the outset, I dedicated myself to this duty with a solemn reverence, but I lost myself a little in the feed. Your moans of gratitude only fueled my desire.
By the time I’d finished, one of Lucian’s housekeepers had brought up the ointment, and I slathered it on your back generously. You hissed from the cool sting against your hot, swollen skin where bruises had bloomed like ink blots. We hadn’t said much, but our silence was comfortable.
“Are you mad at me?” you said.
“No, my darling, just trying to understand.”
You sighed into the inside of your elbow. Your arms were bent and draped across your pillow.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” You rolled gingerly onto your side so that we faced each other. I pushed the hair out of your eyes and braced myself for whatever fresh horror you might confess. “The last time I fed as a prisoner, right before I…” You faded, drifting back to that terrible time. I stroked your hair and waited. “Azrael always made me choose, you know?”
I nodded. It wasn’t the solitary confinement or the starvation that had broken you, it was the killing.
“I’d refused to eat the last time, because they’d brought in Stefan. I tried to hold out. I was dying, Henri, and I was okay with it. But Azrael wouldn’t let me.”
I forced myself to concentrate on your face and your words, even though all I wanted was to smash something with my fists.
“So, they brought in Dad and Papa. And I had to choose.”
I held your gaze and nodded, understanding your need for release and your specificity in the way this punishment was delivered. You’d chosen Santiago.
