Page 66 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Icy black fingers roughly clutched the back of his head. The smell hit him before the bottle touched his lips. The smell of crow-picked corpses left decaying in the middle of summer. But even with that, her touch was more repulsing than the smell.

Defiance was all he had left. He would not allow her to take him easily, so his mouth refused to open.

And that angered her even more.

Snakemares slithered from her hands and plunged into his skin to crawl through his veins. Needle-like pricks in his nervesand muscles involuntarily forced him to arch his back. Yet he still fought to keep his lips sealed.

“Open now.”The bottle rammed into his lips enough to bruise.

He would not be able to fight for long. Even through the immense agony coursing through his body, he knew what was to come if he obeyed.The poison made movement impossible but did nothing to dull his senses. And he had been in that bed more times than he was able to remember in the last thirty years to know he would remain under its effects for an unnerving length of time.

But he was too broken and weak to need it now. Which meant she planned on drawing this out, pumping healing serums through his body. Using enough to save his life … until she ultimately took it. Enough to restore him completely, then rip him apart one inch of flesh, muscle, and bone at a time.

“No?”She set the bottle down on the bedside tabletop with infuriated force. “I’m far too bored for this. Open your mouth or I’ll do it for you.”

Garrik’s excruciating breaths faded. The blood loss, toxins, infection, pain … he was almost gone.Going completely limp, his mouth relaxed, and she took the opportunity to wedge his mouth open with her fingernails. Drowning him with the bottle before jamming a needle into his neck.

The effects worked instantly.

First, the wave across his skin sent convulsive shudders from his head to his infected feet. Burning. Bubbling. Sealing all wounds and forming perfect skin. Then, not a finger twitched.

His mind sharpened. Alert. Hyper-focusing on everything around him. The breeze in a tree far up the mountain. Guards speaking ten stories high. A drip of water in his dungeon. His blood rushing through his veins.

It was all too much. A different form of torture.

Everything from his shoulders down froze solid, out of his control. He would rip out her throat if he could fight the poison. With renewed energy that could level a mountain, Garrik’s voice rumbled like thunder, “Do not touch me.”

A cruel, twisted smile. “There’s my pet. I do love when you think you can scare me.” She drew a finger down his chest, the nail carving a bubbling crimson line before she lapped it up. “I’m going to enjoy this.” And slowly unbuttoned his rags for clothing.

The voice …Please, don’t stop.

Thank Maker of the Skies for her voice. He would have given up so many times without her. Always wafting in on a phantom wind, stealing his attention, pulling him from whatever pain was inflicted on him. If he only focused on her—if he listened and breathed through it—for a moment, he was not at the hands of Malik or Brennus. He was not being torn to shreds by dagger nails while being humiliated on his back.

Please, don’t leave. I need you.

Sometimes he wondered if the voice heard him. Unlikely. They drugged him without fail, so his powers were null. They could never reach her—wherever she was. Still, he spoke to her like she was physically there. Often hallucinating a moving shadow in the far distance of his cell, imagining it was her. Wishing—hoping—the figure would come closer so he could glimpse what she looked like.

Garrik’s body trembled beneath the female.

No. Nothisbody. It had not been his for nearly three decades.

That icy touch, bitterly cold. He would never forget how freezing she was against him.

I need you. Please, keep talking.The green of his eyes narrowed on a vase full of dead pearlseas on the fireplace. The decay and rot a perfect match to how his soul felt. Those same flowers he stared at when the voice faded.

Besides the voice … flowers were his peace.

The poison’s effects wore off sometime after dusk, yet the damage to his body left him lifeless. His tormented mind could not decipher if his convulsing was from another unwanted release or from pain radiating through every inch of his freshly tortured flesh.

No other punishment humiliated him more than this. How his traitorous body responded to her—he did not want it. But the treatment was not always this severe. Sometimes she would simply fuck him while chained and not carve into him. Sometimes she would not administer the venoms. Other times, she dosed him into delusion and forced him to serve on his knees. Those moments when it was only pleasure and mind tricks, even against his will, he … regrettably … enjoyed it.

Pleasure was preferable to pain, no matter how vile that fact was. Especially after so many endless years.

What would his mother think? What would Thalon think? The kingdom?

Whore.

He needed—desperately—to vomit. But nothing would come up.Other than what she had forced down his throat, he had not eaten in … fourteen?Fifteen days?

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