Page 167 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Everything occurred exactly as I’d predicted.

My shadows strained against the poison. My mind fought to stay lucid and sharp.

I couldn’t look away from her. Scarlett’s half nude form, every inch of her covered in bruises and injuries of varying severity.

I glared at Durian’s marks of brutality until I could no longer breathe, and I was forced to stare back down at the marble floor.

As my cunning little demon’s plans unfolded exactly as she’d devised, I burned with pride, with endless devotion. I wished I could focus on that feeling, but it was her abused body that plagued my mind instead, overtaking all else.

This court would burn for what it had allowed to happen to her. Brennan was already at the top of my fucking list. But when he kissed the other half of my soul, the rage that consumed me guaranteed his end was as violent and gruesome as what he’d allowed Durian to do to Scarlett.

How dare he act like her white knight, offering her body as collateral damage to secure his position of power. He was no valiant, honorable soldier. He wasn’t even a man.

He was simply dead.

I couldn’t fight the soldiers as they lifted me. I looked only to Scarlett, to the places on her body Brennan currently touched. She couldn’t meet my eyes. It was too dangerous.

Good girl. My perfect, ruthless, spiteful Little Flame. I would reward her for years, for centuries for her beautiful artistry.

For her strength that she’d claimed from gods knew where. Her ability not only to endure, but also to transform her suffering into pure power, was unlike anything I’d seen in my lifetimes of existence.

She was the eternal fire that refused to die. She was violent storms and summer rain, sex and yearning, the sweetest dessert and the most wicked dagger to the heart.

And she was mine.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Durian and I were facing each other in a dank, gray room of stone and chains. We each watched the blood trickle from the other’s flesh with satisfaction.

Before Scarlett left, never in a million years could I have predicted I’d be incapacitated by blood onyx in a born dungeon, my cellmate none other than Durian.

Durian had finally stopped futilely writhing about like a captured animal. We were both perfectly still, preserving the little strength we had left.

He stared at me, his blond hair slick and tangled, his nearly black eyes crazed while his lip curled.

“My devotees will kill the betrayer and free Lillian’s chosen,” he said, half drooling as his eyes focused and unfocused. “And when they do, pet is going to be broken beyond recognition for disrespecting her Master.”

Either he was merely speaking his mind, or Durian was attempting to provoke me. I stayed rigid, my face blank. My wrath bubbled beneath the surface, lying in wait.

“I made her a promise, you see,” he continued, his lips forming a smirk as his eyes grew crazed. “To reclaim her with my cock. Painfully, savagely. I will destroy her cunt until it weeps blood for me. I won’t let a single drop go to waste.”

If my body wasn’t currently held in stasis by blood onyx, Durian’s tongue would have already been removed from his vile mouth.

Soon.

He would reap no satisfaction from my reaction. I kept my voice bored, my eyes utterly dull, as I regarded Durian.

“I wonder, how will you accomplish such an act without a head?”

66

SCARLETT

Iwas sitting on a cushion of pillows and blankets on the dais, left of the throne. I was a pet who’d traded one master for another.

The healer watched me take a blood replenishing potion as she prepared a salve. She barked at me to lie down.

I realized my mistake halfway through the potion.

I’d forgotten about my daggers.

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