Page 62 of Dark Master's Redemption

Shocked that I’m not coming with him.

“Quindici DaPonti… what have you been up to…?” Florian comes back to me, watching my gold and crimson fire flare all through the hall now, along with my vicious, stalwart darkness. His gaze roves me as I feel his energy dive into me, deep inside. He finds my bonds to my Dark Fae, Ariana, and Lucca. Florian’s not a Dark Fae and doesn’t have any in his Dark Haven, however. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling as he says, “Fae energy….”

Then lifts an eyebrow at me.

Impressed and pissed—all at the same time.

“Your little Dark Fae minx, isn’t it, giving you the power to resist me right now?” Florian assumes as his lips twist in disgust. “Who knew such a little thing could cause so much trouble?”

“Too bad she didn’t burn you up, along with all those other Masters on the Council the other night. Whoosh.” I blow on my fingertips. “Like a midnight candle blown out to the burning light of day.”

“Insolent cur.” Florian’s tone is terrible now as he stalks towards me, daggers of the pain he’s about to give me burning in his bright green eyes. He whips his hand, and agony like I’ve rarely known skewers me to the ground, so hard I’m unable to breathe as I twist, writhe, and scald deep inside.

His treatment of me only makes my defiance burn brighter, though. Hotter, it sears like a hundred falling suns as I stare up at Florian from the floor with true hate, seething from my eyes. He sees it and startles in surprise.

Before he masters himself and leans in, whispering by my ear.

“You want to play games, Quinn?” True menace drips from his every word now as his power twists me deep inside. “I can play games. Deep, dark games, for days upon weeks, upon years, until you succumb to me. You shall be my especial pet, I think, with your willful resistance. It does nothing more than make me exceedingly hot for the day I will break you. And take you… and make you do everything you ever despised while under my control. Hating yourself deeper all the way, until you finally die. Your true death, I think. Rather than your Vampire’s one.”

In that moment, even though Florian twists me with the worst sensation I could ever imagine deep inside, like running me through again and again with scalding hot pokers, I know for certain he does not know I’m Dark Fae. If anyone on the Council suspects what I am, they’ve not told Florian yet; and just like that, I know I can endure his pain, for however long he gives it.

Though my hours and days are going to be hell, I know I have something Florian doesn’t have; I have Light in my magic. And as that beautiful Light burns inside me now, searing brighter than a thousand blazing suns, I fall into it rather than feel Florian’s grotesque torture anymore.

I pass out.

I wake in a dark room with manacles on my wrists. Not just Florian’s golden jewelry, but true manacles now, cold iron binding my wrists above my head. As I come to, my eyelashes flickering open, I see I’m bound in my original rooms on the ground floor, right beside one fireplace, low-burning in the deep midnight hour.

Someone has stripped me naked; as I hang with my wrists hoisted over my head on sigil-worked chains that were never there before, I wince to feel not one but six golden stiletto knives stabbed into my body. Two are in my abdomen, two in my thighs; the last two are in my biceps so that even the tiniest movement in my manacles is burning agony. I try to stay as still as I can, hanging from my chains. I sink into a dark place within my Night magic to keep the pain at bay.

Even as I register someone stepping to my side—their whispering fingers perusing those vicious little knives.

Working to take them out.

“Don’t,” I croak, as I realize whoever has come to me is trying to free me. “If you release me, Florian will only torture my other Vampires out of wrath, to spite me. I must remain in these bonds. And weather it.”

“So noble…” The presence alone with me in Florian’s rooms—because I don’t sense him or his guards nearby, Florian probably having gotten bored with skewering me while I was unconscious—peers at me curiously now as she steps into my line of sight.

A tiny thing, she’s barely five feet tall if she’s an inch. Dark eyes shine up from a strangely beautiful face, framed by long dark hair twisted into ornate braids. She wears a plain, dark grey linen shift, despite all the opulent garments found at the Red Letter Hotel Florence. She looks like an ancient British Isles Pict.

As I recognize her as one of the returned Revenants from the Bloodstone event.

“How did you get in here?” I croak-whisper now, keeping my voice low just in case Florian has any modern surveillance equipment on me, though that’s not his style.

“The guards on the doors are weak of mind,” she whispers, something cunning coming into her plain face and tiny smile, as her big dark eyes twinkle. “They were easy to incapacitate momentarily for me to slip inside. They don’t know anything is amiss. Until we want to slip back out again, together.”

“I cannot.” I shake my head the slightest bit, even though it jostles my wounds and makes me wince. “Florian needs to think I can’t get away, or he’ll harm others even worse.”

“So what do we do?” she asks. A perplexed look is on her face; she thought she was rescuing me, only to find I want to stay here.

“My power returned you from your Revenant state at the Bloodstone ceremony, didn’t it?” I ask in haste now, not knowing when anyone is coming back, and not wanting her to be discovered here.

“It did,” she says, cocking her head at me.

“And you feel compelled to help me now, though you don’t know why you feel it?” I press, needing to know if she feels the same way Luliana did.

“I do.” She simmers darker then, before her black eyes gaze at me with awe. “I feel no bond inside me from you. And yet, when I felt you pulled in here, felt your twisting darkness and terrible pain… I could not stay away. I want to help. Let me free you?—”

“No,” I insist, even though I can’t pull away from her tiny hands and deft touch. She respects my wishes, however, lowering her quick fingers as she cocks her head and frowns at me.

---