Abolisher [Drothiker #2]

21.

The whips went on for eternity.

He didn't know when the day started and the night draped.

They came in every day, opened his skin, and left when his blood pooled beneath his legs. Felset remained after the guards. She watched him for minutes when pain ruled him, as if the image was so satisfying that she wanted to burn it in her mind and never let go.

Soon enough, his fear dissolved. Soon enough, every feeling in him disappeared. All that was left was an empty pit in his chest.

He hadn't eaten. Or maybe he was forced some food down his throat, he didn't remember.

His mind began playing tricks on him. Sometimes he saw a head in the corner rotting away, felt the cell colder. Rik's voice tugged him out of the memories before he could lose himself, mistaking them for reality. Not that he ever made out the words his friend uttered—they were always muffled, drowned out by the constant silence ringing in his head.

Sometimes he fell unconscious during the unending pain, sometimes he woke to the whippings. All the times, Rik was pleading.

Azryle wished he would stop.

Azryle wished the pain would stop.

Eventually, Rik's pleas ceased. Everything from him had already been drained before Azryle was thrown in here. He was surprised Rik had enough life left to plead at all.

Though the pain remained. Didn't it always?

Would it be so bad? he'd wondered one of these days. To let her have it? Take whatever she wants, if it spares him all she is planning to do to him?

But then he looked at Rik—the burned face, the scalp, the hand. Saw the scars he knew weren't from the battles, they had been carved slowly, creatively. And Azryle seared that image in his mind whenever Felset entered with her rats.

All the guards she brought, Azryle had once fought beside them all, remembered their names, their faces.

Today, when she entered, the bastard Azryle had never been able to stand came trailing behind her. Luca. A spark of rage reignited life in Azryle.

This wretch, who'd brought Maeren to Felset—had ogled her with a revolting lust even when she'd been no more than a terrified child, as Azryle himself had been. He had always wanted to rip the man's head off—even then. Knew it would give an undeniable satisfaction. Maeren had had a different body then—her own body, one she'd adored the most. She'd decided to acquire another only when her own had begun wrinkling.

"This could all be avoided, Prince," Felset sighed. Sounding, for once, truly tired. "Bring down the wards."

Azryle looked to Vendrik across the cell, laying heavily on the dresteen chaining his arms to the roof. Rik's amber eyes, tattling about his utter brokenness and bone-deep fatigue, slowly rose to Azryle's. His chest tightened. But Azryle had only one message for his friend.

You do not surrender.

Vendrik blinked once, slowly, lids heavy. Yes. Two more blinks. You, too.

They'd been on countless undercover missions together, knew each other's struggles as well as they did each other's fight maneuvers—unlike greone codes, they'd never discussed these blinks. They'd just understood, until it became their own language.

Azryle blinked thrice. A little more.

The strike came, so harsh and sudden that Azryle lurched forward, his face almost touching the stone, as the flesh split and the whip grazed bone. Pain shot through him; Azryle felt dizzy for a moment.