“Doubtful,” I muttered.
He leaned into my face and I stared back into his gaze, my attention unwavering. “Where is Maeve Willawood? Where have you all been hiding? Because I know for a fact that my army left your castle in ruins, along with all of the villages and cities they could find. So tell me, where have you all been holding up for the past few weeks?”
Refusing to blink, my lips sealed shut, not uttering so much as a sound.
Beaumont nodded. “Okay. We can do this the hard way again if you wish.” He reached behind him and the soldier handed him the chain. “Fix your posture. I want to see your spine flex as I strike you.”
Between each debilitating crack of the chain, he asked me the same question. With each hit, I kept quiet—protecting her. Thinking of her.
I allowed my mind to float so far away that the pain felt foreign, along with the rest of my body.
The bruises formed on demand, my skin splitting and stinging more with each strike. I heard my blood splatter on the cement, but I shut out the sound, imagining her voice instead, back on the beach before everything went to shit.
“Seb,I’m in love with you,” she had said.
The way the beachside breeze pushed her hair into my face as she kissed me.
The most mind blowing and intimate sex of my life after I told her how much I loved her back.
Ten. Fifteen. Twenty-five. Thirty. Forty.
Ten more strikes than yesterday, plus a punch square in the jaw that split the corner of my lip wide open.
Beaumont’s revolting voice managed to crack through the darkness that shrouded my thoughts. “He’ll break eventually. The human body can only withstand so much agony before the mind turns delirious.”
He bent down into my ear. “I have no doubt that your friends and the girl will come for you, it’s only a matter of time. And while we wait, I’ll enjoy our daily appointments.”
My head fell limp into my chest, blood dripping in a steady trickle from my lip and multiple wounds across my spine.
I counted the drips as they splashed on the cement, utilizing the simple math as an aid to retaining my sanity.
Beaumont slithered to the front of me, waving his fingers tauntingly as he removed himself from my cell and locked the door. “Until tomorrow, Mr. Hawthorne.”
Chapter
Thirteen
MAEVE
“Sawyer? Are you awake? Open up.” I slammed my knuckles against the solid-pine door, not lowering my fist until it was yanked inward.
Sawyer appeared in his lounge pants, shirtless with disheveled, shaggy hair. He yawned as he side-stepped to let me in.
“Sorry. Were you sleeping?”
He blinked slowly then wiped his eyes with his closed fists. “What the hell does it look like I was doing?”
My nose scrunched. “Would it kill you to answer a questionwithoutusing sarcasm?”
“Probably, yeah.” He launched himself back onto the bed, fluffing a pillow before collapsing his head onto it. “What's so urgent that you needed to wake me so late?”
I peered at the clock on his dresser. “It's nine in the evening.”
“And I haven’t slept in two days. I’m beat.”
I used my fisted hands to imitate crying and whining.
His forehead elevated along with the widening of his eyes.
