Tempting Fate

Three: Echoes of Pain

Flames licked the edges of her skin. Agonizing heat seared her nerve endings. Arietta bit her tongue until she tasted blood.

"I'm admittedly sad," Reison, the man from her nightmares, her mother's murderer, said. In his hands, he held a blade covered in low-level flames. As a fire wielder, Reison could control flame, something he was entirely enraptured with as he wrapped his magic around the dagger. Just as he controlled the fire, he also controlled the pain that came with it. He could make that flame disappear in a heartbeat.

Or build it higher until he heard her screams.

Arietta tried to detach herself from the moment. To retreat so far into herself that—

The blade pressed deeper into her skin. The heat flooded the air around her.

A leather-gloved hand wrapped around the back of her neck and pulled her forward. "It's not fun when you're not with me, Arietta, dear."

Arietta whimpered.

"As I was saying, I'm admittedly a little sad you wouldn't trust me with your past," Reison said. The tip of his dagger traced a line of fire across her skin, up her arm, and to her shoulder.

They had her in nothing but shorts, a bra, and a tank top. And now she knew why.

The moment the pain started, the whispers backed off. For that, she was grateful—there were no bugs, no shadows, no whispers. But now there was pain. She wasn't sure which she preferred.

"You can make it stop," Reison muttered. "I've seen you do it."

A tension, heavy like a boulder, hung beneath his words. Anger. There was anger hiding amongst his words.

Arietta whimpered now for a different reason. She'd once seen him furious, back when she used to work for him in another facility. Back when he tortured shifters in the name of science. In the name of power.

"So you can do what?" Arietta said thinly. Sweat dripped from her temple, under her arms, down between her shoulder blades.

Reison tangled his fingers in her hair just at the bottom of her scalp. He pulled. Arietta's chin went up. Anything to close the distance. Anything to reduce the pain—at least, the piece she could control.

Reison's dark beard was only a few inches from her face. Ugly, unfettered disgust made her empty stomach roll. "So I can prove your mother wrong. She told me you were nothing. A child with no abilities. She told me you were useless."

Nothing.

The whispers crescendoed in one sudden rush through her ears. As if they'd been blocked by the pain, but were now a sudden flood of sound.

Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING.

Some part of her mind yelled at her. Roared. Hissed. Growled. That she wasn't nothing. That she was something big.

She held onto that thought. Clutched it like a lifeline. Even if it was a lie.

"I have nothing for you," Arietta hissed through tight teeth.

That part of her mind preened. As if...proud?

Maybe the drugs they were injecting into her had more side effects than she originally thought.

Reison only grinned. "I was hoping you'd say that."

The blade sunk into her skin.

***

Gavriel's arm ached. At first, he thought it was normal—the same ache of his leopard trying to burst free. Then he realized it was along the very edge of his skin. Only a thin line tracing along his forearm and up his shoulder.