Page 33 of Tortured

A weak moan comes from inside the barn. The woman shuts the barn door and comes up to me. Her eyes are heavily lined with kohl. She has a post piercing the upper cartilage in her ear, with a chain that hangs all the way to her earlobe. Seems like a hazard in battle, something for an opponent to rip out.

“Fresh meat.” She grasps my chin. “And who might you be?” She wriggles her nose at me. “There’s something different about this one. I don’t think I can drink him.”

Meuric yanks her grip off me. “He’s not for drinking.”

“Drinking?” I ask.

Riahn presses her palms to my chest and leans her nose toward my neck. “But he’s delicious. He smells scrumptious.”

I throw her hands off and step away. “What the hellfire are you talking about?”

“Riahn, control yourself.” Meuric grabs her wrist. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

Riahn shrugs him off and turns her head coyly so that her high ponytail swishes seductively against her cheek.

“For how much I have to put up with from her, she’s my best assassin. The best at training them. She’s also possessed by a succubus demon, so don’t let her seduce you.”

I nearly gag. “Succubus demon?”

“I drink light,” she says with a rasp to her voice. “Tasty tasty light. The emrys are loaded with it.”

I back away. “I don’t think I can get involved.”

Meuric claps a hand on my shoulder. “Son, I’m not giving you a choice.”

Chapter 16

For months, I am at Riahn’s mercy as she trains me. I sweat in the sun while she attacks me relentlessly. I stalk in the shadows at night as I refine my stealth. Occasionally she leaves on a mission without me, with the excuse that I’m not ready. But she always comes back to inflict more torture.

And to leer at me with her hungry eyes.

We work our way north and cross the boundary into the midlands. Eventually, we meet up with the rest of her assassin team. Kian, Westin, and Gilmar. The men are as peculiar as Riahn, but at least they don’t have a thirst for light as the demon does.

They are half-emrys.

And they have dragons. Which speed our travel along.

By late summer, Riahn lets me come on missions. Whenever she receives a message from Meuric, we fly off into the night to kill some unsuspecting soul. Kian grumbles about toting me along on his dragon, but it can’t be helped.

I don’t ask if our targets deserve to die. It isn’t our place to ask. Just to do.

When did I become this person?

I’ve already taken so many lives that one life blurs into the next. It almost doesn’t matter anymore. My days are spent on the road. We’re lucky to sleep in a few inns some nights, other nights it’s around campfires. I can’t say I don’t hate the warm summer nights under the stars.

Our missions take us all over the country. To the cool north and the shores in the east. My favorite parts of the country are the ones that remind me of home.

Highlands with wind.

Summer morphs into fall. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell, depending on where we are in the country, but this night is mild. We’re in Angharad, a temperate climate.

Gilmar stirs dinner over the fire. Kian is ribbing him about how his last meal tasted like mud.

“He’s not wrong, you know.” I sit against a log near the fire, relaxed and reclining.

“Look who’s not getting anything to eat, then.” Gilmar flings a scalding spoonful in my direction. It spatters across my forearm as I block my face. I growl as my skin burns. “Watch it!”

Gilmar and Kian laugh as Riahn materializes from the trail to the river, dabbing at her face with a towel. She was washing off blood from her latest kill. “I’m starving. You better not be wasting food.”

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