Page 51 of The Salvation

This is torture. Sinful and simple.

Quintessa claws at the altar, breaking fingernails. Her screams are indecipherable from the gag. I feel each burning and searing hit. Blood streams down her back. Fucking bastard doesn’t stop. He layers them until parts of her flesh are stripped and dangling down her back.

Not once does she look away from me. So, I don’t turn from her. I imagine the expressions on my brothers’ faces, how they must mirror mine, but I know they won’t act.

It’s unfathomable that she hasn’t passed out. By now, I’ve strained and battled against the vines so much, they’ve cut into my skin. I bleed with her.

Hot tears spill down her cheeks, falling onto the altar. The bloodstones glimmer beneath those tears.

Reaver moves onto her ass, not stopping until he’s grinning at the sight of the welts opening to trickle more blood.

Half the Court is aghast at the violence upon a human. The other half licks their lips at the scent of her blood filling the air, remembering how she was draped upon this altar as a prize to be claimed. And how the altar chose to spare her, thereby honoring her.

And now, Reaver is degrading her, sending a clear message hurting the one I held higher.

When her vision glazes over, the weakness and darkness setting in, I work against the vines more, forcing them to cut and tear fabric until they carve through flesh, muscle, and down to my very bones. Against my whole will, I drive my power into her veins and stoke the adrenaline in her blood.

With a dark chuckle, Reaver sets upon her legs. Breaking open the skin.

Her lungs wheeze. Her heart skips multiple times. Shudders rip through her legs.

I know she’s having trouble holding her bladder. How many times was I on the receiving end of that whip and lost my piss? How many times did my blood spill for Malachor’s slaves to lap it up? The whip, wielded by that cursed god until I learned to use it on those he commanded.

One single lash to her pussy. I jerk, forcing those vines to cut into my very cock and rip one of my piercings. Quintessa screams through the leather binding.

Reaver drops the whip. Shakes his head. And laughs heartily before the Court.

“This...this is your precious prized queen? Look at her now.” He juts his hand toward my little dove. “Not even fit to fuck.”

Her face tightens with indignation. Goddammit Quintessa. She’s angrier at his comment regarding her fuck-status than she is at the flesh and blood he’s taken.

Reaver turns back to her, grips her hair, and yanks her neck back to look her in the eye. “Mortal skin. Mortal flesh. Mortal weakness. Only fit to be whipped and her blood to spill and used however our superior race chooses.”

She spits out the gag and glares at him. High on endorphins, furthered by adrenaline, she lashes out, “Some superiority.Tying down and whipping a woman because you didn’t have the balls to battle Merikh during the Blood Crest.”

He chuckles, lowers his chin to her cheek, and mutters low in her ear, “Oh, you will regret that,Your Highness. This ismyCourt now.”

Dropping her head, he lifts his eyes, spreading his arms to address the audience, “My people...for ten thousand years, you’ve lived in darkness, cursed for your loyalty to this bitten whelp who stole the blood of the very deity who trusted him and elevated him to a position of honor in his Court. A Court that was once the strongest of the Five Realms with a god even Kronos feared.”

Hundreds of vampires throughout the audience nod in confirmation, remembering the days when blood soaked and stained the ground upon which I now kneel.

“You’ve suffered for ten thousand years. As have I.” Reaver paces, rousing the crowd and their bloodthirst—a simple feat for a vampire. “I have shared your pain of existing in nothing but numb darkness. But I have whispered in that same darkness to our one true master and heard his call.”

Reaver turns to me with a malevolent glint in his eye, hinting at some invisible bond he must share with Malachor. Revulsion burns within me, and I hold onto the pain of the vines that have cut through muscle. Because there’s another reason he is pausing to fixate on me.

If Malachor rises, I will fall. Because he will risethroughme.

18

I will be the mortal who brought back Malachor.

QUINTESSA

I almost pass out.

The pain is explosive. Never ending. Tears have crusted salt onto my cheeks. The altar and the ropes binding me are the only things that hold me up.

“It is time for the Court of Hollows to return to the Court of Blood,” Reaver stirs the crowd more, and I sob and gasp through his words. “Time for our true king to ascend to his rightful throne. My people, the days of our pain and darkness will end soon. Malachor is coming! And your little queen is the one who will bring him home!”

---