by R Phoenix
Once again, Gideon had let it happen. He’d stood by and done nothing.
Gideon could finally draw in a full breath, and he gulped in air, feeling sick and nauseated at what he’d just witnessed. Leandro’s madness, his irrational view of the world, his selfishness…!
Gideon wanted to question why he cared about a slave so much himself, especially one who had been stupid enough to come back after having a chance at real freedom. He wanted to convince himself that this was just another day and just another punishment — that Kolt should have known better than to come back at all, much less take a toll on Leandro’s life-force. He wanted to tell himself that his own inaction was somehow acceptable… much like Leandro had excused and vindicated himself.
But he knew it was unacceptable. Inexcusable, even. It wasn’t anything close to a normal day or an ordinary punishment, wasn’t anything close to a normal anything. It could potentially even kill Kolt, seeing how an incubus thrived on social interaction. Even if it didn’t…
This might’ve been legal, but Gideon knew it violated every personal code he tried to live by. There weren’t many, and few had to do with morality, but they were important to him.
The question was what he was going to do about it.
“Really, Gideon. What could you possibly have to say that’s more important than Kolt?” Leandro asked, straightening and wiping away his tears. He looked down at his fingers, enraptured by the moisture on his skin, as if he was seeing it for the first time. And perhaps he was.
He was insane. He was fucking insane.
“Well?” Leandro asked, gesturing at him. “Go on.”
“This is so fucking wrong,” Gideon said, already dreading the response he knew was coming.
“Pardon?” Leandro’s voice was sharp and cutting as he immediately took to the defensive.
“That’s exactly the problem,” Gideon said. He didn’t even bother to try to hide his anger. “He’s an incubus. He’ll starve in there. He cares about you. You obviously care about him.” In your own sadistic, fucked-up way. “You can’t punish him like this. It’s fucking wrong.”
To his shock, Leandro didn’t instantly lash out. He remained silent, but he was clearly listening.
Hope started to rise within him as a few futures existed in which Leandro would do the incredible and release Kolt. Damage had already been done, of course, but at least Kolt wouldn’t be trapped in that room.
“Humans lock each other in jail cells all the time,” Leandro countered shattering that brief flutter of hope. “They lock each other in wards at hospitals. They isolate those who might infect the rest.” He shook his head. “It may be cruel, but it isn’t wrong. He’s sick, Gideon. He’s never acted like this toward me before. This will be good for him.”
Gideon stared at him. “He’s been expressing his free will this whole time, and that same free will brought him back to you. Leandro, you can’t—”
“Precisely,” Leandro cut in. “His body, his mind, his will — all of it belongs to me, not him. He needs to learn that.”
It tore at him. It was so wrong that he couldn’t find the words to express it. “Please,” Gideon said, hating the word but saying it anyway, “find another way to punish him.”
“If you tell me what to do again, I’ll lock you in there with him,” Leandro said, his expression turning cold.
Either Gideon or Kolt would die. He might be able to survive an incubus for a while, as his angelic blood would protect him to a point, but he wasn’t invincible. If he was the only food source and Leandro left that door locked long enough…
One of them would die.
“He’d try to kill me.”
“And what are the odds of him succeeding, after he’s been in there to learn his lesson?”
How could the fae have such strong feelings about Kolt and not understand what he was doing?
Leandro saw Kolt as a beloved pet, a possession. He wasn’t in any way equal in the fae’s eyes. If something happened to Kolt, Leandro might care, but it would only be like that of a child with a broken toy. His tears would soon be forgotten, and another one would take its place.
Worst of all, no one would care about an incubus slave that had been thrown in the trash, flushed down a goddamn toilet. Not even the Organization, not now that Kolt had returned to his master of his own volition.
Kolt had tried to tell him, but he hadn't understood.
It wasn't until now that Gideon’s breath caught when the magnitude of that realization struck him. It had nothing to do with Leandro’s magic and everything to do with the fact that he might well be the only person left capable of helping Kolt.
Just as he might be the only one who still cared about Kolt as more than the possession of a rich, spoiled fae.
“Are we going to have a problem?” Leandro challenged him.
Gideon hated how honeyed the fae’s voice was. “No,” he replied.
Leandro reached out, and Gideon braced himself. “You’re lying,” Leandro remarked as he patted Gideon’s cheek. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m the only one who can open this door, and I’ll decide when he’s ready to come out. Or when and what I want to feed him. Understood?”
There was a threat inherent in those words, and Gideon knew it. Leandro would truss him up like a fucking Thanksgiving turkey and toss him in for Kolt to devour if he tried to intervene.
Gideon closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Good. Both of you will see, when his punishment is over. You’ll see that this was a good, necessary thing, to purge the taint from him,” Leandro said.
His thumb slowly ran down Gideon’s cheek.
“Now back to work with you. Make sure everyone knows this room is off limits, hmm?” Leandro shooed him off after with condescending touch to his cheek.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The door had simply closed. Like it was something out of a horror film, Kolt couldn’t get his hand in between the slit. Instead, his fingers slammed against the door hard, his knuckles bending back painfully as the light was extinguished from the room. He heard the turning of a lock, then—
It was like the door just vanished into the wall, every seam melting away. Terror gripped at his heart as he tried to grapple for those precious cracks that let in some of the dim light from the hallway.
To no avail, of course. They just vanished, and Kolt’s heart pounded in his chest hard enough that it hurt.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he mumbled frantically into the darkness as he scratched and clawed at where he knew the door had been, where it had to still be. “Lee! Please!” He slammed the door with the flat of his hand as the stifling sensation of the room settled over him like a hot, humid blanket on a warm summer night.
It was like the fucking observation rooms at the Organization, but worse. The magic there hadn’t felt nearly as oppressive, just cold and void. This was different — sticky and filthy. It reminded him of the bracelet, but now he was stuck in a room where he was surrounded by that foul magic.
He pounded the wall again with a fist before pressing his ear against it, listening carefully for anyone on the other side. Gideon had been there. Surely, he wouldn’t just let this fucking happen. He— he’d cared before.
“Leandro!” Kolt called again when he heard nothing but silence. His voice reached a higher pitch, even a hysterical note. “Gideon! Leandro! Please!” he begged, beating his hands flat on the wall until they hurt, and he sobbed. “Please let me out!” he tried again, but his voice trailed off and wavered until it faded. “Fuck,” he breathed out as tears blinded him and his anxiety jumped up.
He whirled around in the room, looking around, but there was nothing to see — nothing but darkness. Not even a pinprick of light penetrated the room from anywhere, and he didn’t know if there was anything in the room at all. There had to be a way out though. Leandro couldn’t really leave him there…
His heart was still pounding, and tears kept rolling down his cheeks. The silence of the room was only
broken by the occasional sob or gasped breath. In the dark, everything sounded so much louder, and so alien all at the same time.
This couldn’t be happening. He’d told Bryce that Leandro would take care of him, that he’d be okay, that he couldn’t be by himself.
He hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with the Organization because they would lock him up.
He’d come back. He shouldn’t have been locked up!
“Lee… Please…!” he keened pathetically, hearing the sound of his own voice and choking back another sob.
Kolt didn’t know how much time had passed before he could breathe again and his heart rate had come down a little. Not by much; he hadn’t stopped freaking out, but it was happening at a much lower frequency now. His hand was still pressed against what had once been a door, his nails dragging across its smooth finish.
Breathing normally seemed wrong somehow, but Kolt didn’t want to accept that. If he stopped freaking out, this would become his new normal. This would be okay, and God only knew how long the fae would keep him in there.
Time would pass quickly, Leandro had said, and Kolt felt a new well of tears in his eyes. The fae had been so mad. Maybe he’d never let him out. It was Leandro, after all. He didn’t acknowledge problems. He got rid of them.
Kolt bit his own lip, hard enough that he felt it split, and blood welled from it. It stung as he ran his tongue over it, but at least it reminded him that this blackness was just blackness. Horrible, stifling, magic-suppressing blackness couldn’t hurt him.
But it could, couldn’t it? He was trapped, cut off from his magic, feeling nothing but his own fucking misery.
As if he hadn’t been trying to get away from that by coming back to the Lucky Blight.
“Fuck, fuck, please,” he murmured to no one in particular as he pressed the side of his face against the wall and a second panic attack crawled up his spine and settled in his chest.
Eventually sitting on the floor, clawing at a door, began to hurt. His fingers hurt, his back hurt, his hip was at an old angle and beginning to ache, and his whole body was protesting his position. He realized he hadn’t really moved since collapsing on the floor to try and stop the fucking door from vanishing. He knew his eyes were open, but there was nothing to see. He cast another look around, hoping for something.
Anything.
The light of a camera, or just a pinprick of light, or — maybe air flow?
Kolt sniffled, running his arm past his nose as he slowly unfurled from the fetal position in the crook between door and floor, between wall and floor. Part of him was reluctant to leave the only exit he knew about behind in the pitch dark, but he had to fucking try something. He couldn’t just curl up and die… even if that was likely to happen if Leandro fucking forgot about him there.
To think he’d assumed the fae would be happy to have him back—
Kolt’s hand slide along the edge of the floor, crawling after it, until he hit a corner. Slowly, he used the second wall to stand up, feeling oddly wobbly and lost as he shuffled carefully along the other wall until he hit another corner.
He hadn’t run into anything else, and the corner that followed also had nothing in it, no flow of air, nothing — fuck, how was he even breathing? Panic gripped him all over again when he crept to the last corner of the room, finding it completely empty, devoid of exits or light, or — or anything. It was just him and the room, him and a desolate, empty room that provided nothing.
Kolt’s knees began to shake, and soon the rest of his body followed as he pressed his back into the fourth corner and let himself slide down onto the floor once more. He sobbed into his hands — not that it fucking mattered. It wasn’t like he could fucking see anything or anyone might see him, but curling up into a ball seemed the appropriate response to the third fucking panic attack in relatively short order.
Kolt didn’t know how much time he’d spent panicking or how much time was in between his panic attacks. They grew fiercer and less desperate, only to go completely frantic again the next time his heart rate sped up.
After falling asleep a few times and waking up to more darkness, Kolt had no chance at figuring out how much time had passed. The darkness provided him with no way of telling how long he’d panicked, or slept, or wallowed or cried. It could’ve been an hour; it could’ve been ten.
It could’ve been fucking days.
He wasn’t hungry yet, but he had fed deep and well prior to this. It could be a long time before he would really start to suffer any ill effect. If Leandro just wanted him to suffer, he’d be in the fucking darkness for a long time.
He was about to lapse into a new panic attack when he heard something — something other than his own frantic noises and sounds, other than his heartbeat pounding in his fucking ears.
It was a screeching sort of sound, high-pitched, and — Kolt strained to listen, sitting up. Was he fucking hallucinating? Was this how he lost his fucking mind all over again? Had the bracelet and the starvation not been enough fucking torture? The darkness and solitude?
The sound didn’t seem to go away, and he pressed his ear against a wall. He had long since forgotten which one led where in the all-consuming darkness. He brought a shaking hand up to press against the other wall. He didn’t hear or feel anything in particular then. The sound was gone as quickly as it had come.
Kolt slumped back down, pointlessly closing his eyes, but at least when he had his eyes closed, he wasn’t trying to strain to see something. It didn’t seem to be long before he heard the noise again. A whirring, a loud sort of high-pitched buzz…
He kept his eyes closed, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. His left? Maybe? It was hard to orient himself in the darkness. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had his shoulders pressed against two different corners, he might’ve been completely lost.
The sound stopped again, and Kolt wondered if it was just part of Leandro’s game, of his fucking punishment, to drive him slowly insane — as if he hadn’t been a dangerous wreck the last time Leandro had pushed him to desperation.
As if he could be fucking trusted if that door ever opened again. He could fucking kill everyone if he got out.
If he got out.
If.
He swallowed hard, trying to keep his new flash of unease and anxiety at bay. Before he could freak out again, the noise was back. Kolt bolted forward, pushing away from the door and stumbling to the center of the room, turning himself around, trying to face the sound.
He blinked into the darkness and groaned when the sound stopped again. There was a click somewhere to his right, and he looked, seeing the bright outline of light through the seams of the door.
The door.
Kolt blinked, certain that he was fucking losing it, and not wanting to rush for it only to see it fade away again. Something else clicked, then the door opened. Light rushed in through the crack, falling straight on his face and blinding him with its sharpness. He flinched, holding up a shaky hand.
“L-lee…?” he asked, hating the tremor in his voice, hating the fact that his eyes weren’t just watering because of the bright light, but because he was scared, anxious, tired.
No.
Exhausted.
He blinked harder at the bright light, turning away a little until he saw a dark silhouette in the bright glare of a spot light pointed at him. Was this part of his fucking punishment?
The magic snapped and faded as soon as the person crossed the threshold into the room. Fear settled in the pit of Kolt’s stomach as the figure approached him, and he sobbed.
He could feel him. He could feel his anger, his fucking cold rage… He could feel it all.
“Please, no. I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry. Please, I don’t—” He sobbed again, covering his aching eyes with a hand as the dark figure leaned forward for him. Kolt scrambled backwards, sobbing even harder, stammering more words of apology, barely coherent and shaking.
He could barely hear the man’s voice over his
own panicked noises. “Shh… You’re okay. No one is going to hurt you again.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The room was a barren tomb.
At first, Leandro couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. He stared, hard, into the isolation chamber as if the facts would change if he stared at it long enough.
They didn’t.
The room remained empty and silent, and his incubus was still gone.
He slowly walked inside, coming to a halt in the center. He turned in a circle, but it all stayed the same. He only saw the plain white walls, the vast nothingness it contained.
“Kolt!” His voice bounced off of the sound-proofed walls, making him hear his own call, and it was deafeningly alien. “Kol’tso! Come out right this instant!”
As though his incubus was simply hiding, as though he had somehow turned invisible and was playing him for a fool.
Playing a terrible joke.
Seconds passed, the resonance of his voice dying down, and everything was still again.
Nothing.
This had to be a nightmare. There was nothing else that could explain it. Kolt couldn’t have gotten out; this room was impenetrable. The alarms hadn’t sounded, the locks hadn’t been touched, and he hadn’t been aware of anything odd. Everything had been exactly as he had left it.
It couldn’t have happened.
Leandro closed his eyes. When he woke, he would be in his bed, and he swore to himself he’d let Kolt out immediately — that he’d sweep his incubus into his arms and kiss him hard, to run his fingers through the hair that had surely turned blond by then.
He opened his eyes, but nothing had changed. Kolt was still gone, and he was still—
“Sir?” a voice intruded upon him.
Leandro whirled around, staring at Arla. The bartender’s hand rested on the doorframe, and she was watching him. Just… watching, her face pale and her hands trembling. She shouldn’t have even been back there.
