“And I suppose you know the answers to all those questions.” Romana smirked. “I won’t fall for it I’m sorry, but if she won’t tell me for fear of her life, you won’t.”
“Actually I will. Because the Ancients won’t touch me, isn’t that right mother?” He called up to the ceiling and a groan answered him. “You see, you, the other three on the council and I can’t be touched, because if that happens, so does a war between the Ancients.”
Romana was still looking at the bloodied corpse that Kobos had just called his mother. The poor woman was stripped naked and cuts riddled her body like some obscure art, but unlike when Silver tortured the cuts were jagged like the knives had been blunted or serrated. This was pure evil.
“I’m glad you think so, but that’s not what we were talking about.”
“I didn’t think we were having a conversation, sounded more like you were preparing a monologue to me.” She replied, finally looking into his face.
She was disgusted by the perfection she found there. He looked like some kind of god, smooth blonde hair, tanned skin and blue eyes that pinned her to the spot. He had no scars, no injuries of any kind, like he was invulnerable.
He slapped her hard, the move sending her face whipping around to one side. She felt her cheek begin to bruise and her teeth slide into her tongue, making it bleed. She spat the blood in his direction.
Another slap, her head whipped in the other direction, more blood poured from her mouth. His strength was greater than elvenstrength, she realised.
“You would do well to respect me pure-blood.” He growled at her, eyes glowing. “That way, maybe I’ll let you grovel your way into my council when we’re through with you.”
“What did you call me?” She asked, the growl in her own voice matching his.
“You’re a pure-blooded descendant of the Ancients. Not an Ancient yourself, but the first of your kind none the less. Alone you’re only fractionally less powerful than your parents, whereas the council and I have only half that amount of magical abilities, even when we take from others. But the amount of power in you, even if shared between all of us, would still leave more for the taking. So you have two choices. Work for us, or we draw power from you every month, letting you rebuild it only to have it sucked out of you again. Which one will you chose?”
“Go to hell.” She spat, in no way in the mood to deal with this moron.
“We’ll see how you feel after your first time having the magic ripped from you. I’m told it’s exceedingly painful, enough to make you beg for death. Plus, I suppose it is only fair that you make up for all the magical donors that I lost in the sewers.”
He left the room, and before long two guards came in, unhooking her chains from her shackles and taking her along steel panelled corridors to a room with a single vertical slab of concrete on.
With seemingly no effort at all they hoisted her up so that her shackled wrists were above her head and hooked onto something she couldn’t see.
They left her alone after that closing the door so that no light was in the room.
She blinked, and they were there. All four of them wearing black clothes that blended in with the darkness, their faces were the only thing she could see.
In that instant she became afraid.
That was before Kobos swooped in and placed his meaty right hand over her forehead.
She screamed.
It was agony more than she’d ever experienced. The pain was like thousands of knives digging into her scalp and then being heated to an unbearable degree. She writhed in place as her shrieks echoed across the room. Even Silver trembled from behind her mental barriers.
In the back of her mind, the place where she was so intimately connected to Ash and Icarus, she felt them writhe in the same pain. They only felt the echoes.
She shot her consciousness along to them, intending to create a shield to protect them from it. Instead, she was drawn into their minds, observing their situation. She decided not to marvel at what she’d just done, her psyche may be safe in the back of Ash’s mind, but her body was going through hell in that dungeon.
They were in the palace courtyard, and she got the vague impression of an argument with Marten about him allowing Romana to be taken from him, now Marten’s face filled Ash’s vision as he spoke.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re draining her of her magic.” Ash groaned. “It’s the worst type of torture that a wytch can have. What Silver did to her? That felt like a pin-prick compared to this.”
“Why are they doing this to her?” Marten asked.
“Because she refused to work for them to kill you.” Icarus replied. “They’ll keep doing it until she finally caves.”
Marten’s eyes turned fully animal. “I’ll kill them.” His claws extended.
“You’ll have to get in line.” Ash replied.
But she was dragged back to the torture before she could see anything else.
Hours later, when the four half Ancients had taken their fill and left her there, Romana still hadn’t begged.
And that was her one consolation two hours later when she found herself in a cage and hanging from Kobos’ ceiling. She still had enough magic to keep her conscious and at last she’d found out why.
Kate had blocked the majority of her powers. Kobos had ripped the blocks free in the middle of the torture, and she’d felt flooded with it, before they’d taken lots of it away.
But now Kobos had himself a nice little problem, she had too much magic for the restraints to be effective, and he now had to find a way to re-enforce re-enforced chains before she got all of her powers back and toasted him.
Her wytches clothes had been ripped to shreds and after a while the magic had given up trying to fix them, so now she was clad in tatters, and her skin was shredded from the torture that had come after her magic had been ripped from her.
“Romana my sweet.” Kobos’ hissing voice came from below her. “I have a present for you.” Her chains shortened, pulling her upright as her arms were dragged towards the top of the cage and the clanking sound of her being lowered began.
“I’ve told you before,” She growled, but her voice was so hoarse from screaming that the growl was pathetic. “Go. To. Hell.”
“You might change your mind when your see who I’ve brought you.” His voice was closer now, and from the satisfaction burning there she knew there was only one person he could have chained down there now.
“I abhor you.” She groaned as he came into view, Marten’s struggling form now the one bound beside his desk.
“I think you might be changing that opinion of me in a few minutes.” He told her. “I know that fifty lashes didn’t do the trick, but now I think maybe I was giving them to the wrong person.”
“Damn you.” She growled. Not wanting to meet Marten’s eyes, she didn’t want him to see the pain in her own, or the tear stains around her face.
There was the sound of the door being unlocked.
“Why don’t we show our good prince how much we’ve enjoyed each other’s company?” He suggested, walking into the cage and forcing her head up to meet Marten’s tortured eyes, before her turned her around to display the ragged flesh that had been her back. Not that that really hurt. Pain had taken on a whole new perspective after her magic had been partially drained. Her back had been a paper cut. “Now if I did that to you, Prince Marten, I think she’d eagerly give me what I want.”
She didn’t need to hear the clanking to the chains to know that Marten was rubbing his wrists bloody trying to get to her.
“What do you want from me?” She whispered, defeated, because it was true, she would never let him harm Marten.
“I want you to give me the world, my sweet. And while you do it, I want you to smile.” He leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “I can think of a lot of bargains that could be made in return for me allowing his highness’ life to continue.”
“Don’t do it.” Marten yelled at her, and
Kobos swung her back around to face him, pulling back on her hair and forcing her to look Marten in the eye as she said it.
“Let him go and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“Your vow, pure-blood.” Kobos insisted.
“I vow,” she began but Marten’s anguished yell cut through her words.
“Don’t do it. They’re coming for us.” He yelled. “I can endure anything he dishes out, and I’ll do it without flinching, just don’t do it.”
“I vow to do whatever you want me to, on the condition that Marten lives unharmed by anyone and outside of this place.” She said, looking into Marten’s eyes, seeing the wildness there. “Just go.”
“I’ll find you.” He promised her, his eyes gone animal, and indeed she knew he would.
“Yes, yes. How very touching.” Kobos interrupted smirking; “now say goodbye, princeling, we have business to attend to.”
Her shackles fell away with a wave of Kobos’ hand and she instantly rushed to Marten. “I’ll survive this,” She promised in a whisper as she cupped his face with her hands. “It’s okay. Just stay safe.”
“And by ‘stay safe’,” Kobos commented. “She means don’t fight against me because now you will most definitely die.”
Romana watched as her prince disappeared from her arms. Now she was on her own. She turned to face the man pulling what seemed to be all the strings.
He was smiling, “You stay in this office, and we’ll see if we can get you a nicer cage. You are not to leave, and you are not to do any magic while I’m gone.”
He left the room, and the lock clicked into place on the door. The lock was magically strengthened, she realised.
So how was she going to get out of here? She could break her vow and teleport away, if Kobos was right then the Ancients wouldn’t touch her, but she didn’t want to risk it. Somehow it felt like a betrayal of Kate.
Two weeks later and she was desperate enough to try, regardless of the torture she would be put through, she was willing to bet that it couldn’t be any worse than the three weeks she’d spent in these revolting tunnels. She had been given posh clothes that were nearly always in tatters from her beatings by the end of the day and her hair hung in dirty strands from her face.
Kobos would know though, he had a lot of her surface thoughts under his control. But right now she had stored most of her consciousness in the place where he couldn’t reach, the place where she was bonded to her familiars.
And the reason he couldn’t get to it, because she’d put shields around the bond to Ash and Icarus that even she couldn’t get past without weeks of hacking, an advantage to her newfound powers.
The disadvantage? Her skin had started glowing permanently with the power of flame, and a breeze floated around her constantly. It made her kind of hard not to spot. Unless she was completely drained then she would heal instantly, and her need for food had vanished until she didn’t need to eat at all, or sleep for more than an hour each week.
But she’d endured more humiliation and pain in these last few weeks, and she’d reached her limit. Because not only was Kobos using her as his magical slave, he also allowed anyone with a protest against her to whip her to shreds. Some of them, mainly the dragon queen, who had allied with him, had been determined to shred her back so thoroughly that not even her magic could heal the scars. But of course the final straw had been when he’d taken more of her magic, which was the reason why she wasn’t healing and was suffering from blood loss.
So now, as she lay chained again in the new, gold cage that Kobos had had made up for her in the corner of his study, plotting her escape. Even with her every inch of skin shredded beyond belief she would do it, because she probably wouldn’t survive the punishment if she failed.
She misted though the cuffs easily, and then moved so she was out of the jewelled prison. So far, so good, she thought, she’d used magic without Kobos’ permission and she was still breathing. She teleported.
And she landed in a large room, chained again, but this time a council of twenty-one looked down at her from thrones set into the stone walls while warm light bathed them. She was sitting on a dais, she realised, and here was her newest punishment.
“We have a problem, it would seem,” A dark haired man in the centre began. “We are bound to torture all those who break their vows in a way so painful that it cannot be equalled. But what is there to do to you that hasn’t already been done, niece.” He paused before recognising her. So she really was a daughter of Ancients. She looked along the row, to find others looking down at her appraisingly. They didn’t seem angry in the least.
“Will you punish me anyway?” She wondered aloud, looking at Kate when she said it.
“Not even we are so cold that we could torture blood kin.” Another of the Ancients spoke up; this time it was a woman who spoke.
“We shall take you to your chosen consort.” The first man told her. “And annul any vows you may have made to Kobos.” The last word was a snarl, and Romana instantly knew who this Ancient was, Kobos’ father.
“Why won’t you stop him?” She asked, not an accusation but a question asked from pure simple curiosity.
“The last time we interfered with the other races a war lasted for over a thousand years.” A gentle looking woman on one side of Kate informed her. “We must learn from our mistakes. Even if it is hard not to use our power to stop what we consider evil.”
“And because I broke my vow, does that make me on your bad list?” She asked, joking.
“No, because you did what you did with great hesitation and only under the direst of circumstances.” Kobos’ father replied. “There are certain loopholes in every law we’ve made.”
“Is there a loophole that means you can make everyone I love impervious to Kobos’ magic?” She asked hopefully.
“No, but as your chosen consort, we shall not allow Kobos to further harm Marten.” Kobos’ father promised her. “For that he will be punished, and we shall make sure that the others know that as well. Your consort and you are not to be touched.” He paused. “Time grows thin, you shall be returned to your isle now.”
Before she could even ask where Marten was, she was standing in front of him, in her reception, on the isle, whilst being surrounded by wytches. All of whom looked ready to attack him before they saw her and surrounded her.
She collapsed before most of them could reach her, the blood loss and the effects of the torture on her body had left her close to this point while in the tunnels, now she was past it, she thought as she was pulled down into immeasurable blackness.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CLIPPED WINGS
Softness enveloping her, a warm weight on either side of her and one by her feet. She bolted upright, knowing that this had to be one of Kobos’ tricks. That had been another of his favourite torments; pretend she was safe only to waken her with him pulling her magic from her body.
She braced herself for the pain, only to find none coming. She cautiously opened her eyes, which she’d squeezed shut in preparation for hurt.
At the end of her bed was a sleeping jaguar.
Or maybe not so sleeping, she thought as she saw Marten open one eye and glance at her before rising and padding over in a sleepy manner to nudge her back down into the pillows. The meaning couldn’t have been clearer.
“I only need one hour of sleep a week now.” Romana told him. Glancing at the window to try and gain some indication of time. It had been close to midday when she’d left, now it was dark outside. “Since it is now well into the night I believe I have had far more than my prescribed rest.”
The jaguar growled and pushed her back when she tried to sit up. She teleported to stand by the bed, only to find herself in the most nun like nightgown she’d ever encountered.
“What the hell did you dress me in?” She asked, agape. “Didn’t Joanna insist that you…” She trailed off, looking around her. “Why is my room trashed?” Marten shifted back to his human form, leaping of
f the bed to hold her to him in a desperate hug. “Marten, why is my room trashed?”
“I may have gotten a little carried away with keeping the wytches out.” He replied quietly, never releasing her.
“Why did you keep the wytches out?” She whispered as he lowered his head to dip in for a small kiss to her cheek.
“Because they wanted to keep me out.” He replied, lingering against her lips. “They were so rude as to call me an ‘outdoor kitty’.”
“Did you not think to ask nicely?” Romana asked, leaning into him
“I tried, but I was having a bit of trouble with being rational when I saw the condition of your skin.”
“It glows now.” She told him, lifting up her tattooed hand and showing him the miniature flames licking across the skin there. “But it doesn’t burn unless I want it to.” She was almost acting normally, she thought, surprising herself.
“Are you okay?” He asked, “Do you need anything? Food? Water? Drink?”
“I don’t need food anymore.” She replied. “Or water. And my need for sleep has been reduced as well.” She was robotic in her recital of the changes, even as she felt him freeze against her. “I know that this is just another trick, let me out.” She snapped, bored at this game already. Kobos’ illusions had been convincing for the first week, after the second she’d learned to play along just to prolong the time until more torturing could begin.
But the scene didn’t mist away like they always had done before. The illusion of Marten stayed, as did the ones of Katelyn and Averna on the bed.
“Romana, this is real.” Marten gently broached. Kobos, she recalled, had never tried to convince her that the illusions were real once she’d guessed at his motives. “You landed in front of me and all of the wytches in the Coven, and then I had to use elvenspeed to keep you from them.”
“I don’t know if you’re real or not.” She confessed. “He did things to my mind to make me think I was free and then he’d dispel the illusions and wake me by taking more of my powers.”
“Does that mean that you’re no longer as powerful as you were?”
Kate's Legacy (Soul Merge Saga Book 2) Page 20
