Page 143 of Bane of the Wild Hunt

She glanced at the others who still cowered against the wall or on the floor, petrified and unable to fight back, and she raised her head with dignity.

“I want to take his tongue,” she insisted, so I held out my hand to invite her to join me, and my shadows parted to allow her to approach.

Nuala stepped forward, slow and hindered by pain, but Darragh was eager to assist in supporting her as she made her way to me. His expression was thunderous.

Luke groaned as he tried to twist away from her, but I grabbed him by the throat and held him still. Anger and hatred burned in his eyes for her when she reached him.

“Whore!” he choked stubbornly, wincing in pain.

“He still speaks too much,” growled Darragh.

“Agreed. Nuala?” I prompted her, lifting the carving knife I had brought for her. She pulled her gaze from her brother and eyed the fine weapon I presented to her.

“It is too sharp,” she said softly, her voice a whisper in the darkness of her old prison. “I want the one he used. The dull blade,” she insisted resolutely and nodded to the bench with all manner of devices.

I grinned before inclining my head in agreement.

“As you wish,” I assured her, striding toward the array of blades. I held up one with dried blood on it, and Nuala nodded her head. I bore it back and presented it to her.

Nuala took the knife, her warped fingers barely able to tighten around it, but she was determined. She looked down at her brother with a sort of hot fury that made me swell with a strange emotion. But the sight of it made her brother falter, and theanger he bolstered himself with cracked under the force of her impending wrath.

“This is going to hurt,” she told him, and I had the sense the words were significant. A promise often made in the reverse, perhaps, before great pain was inflicted.

Luke tried one final time to twist away, but I held him steady for Nuala, shadows keeping his arms pinned down, his head turned toward her, and his jaw open. She reached into his mouth to grip his tongue without any fear before she began slicing and sawing.

Blood spurted, splattering her face and my cloak that covered her thin body, and his screams renewed with a frantic pitch. His entire body shuddered, and when Nuala removed his tongue, one of the other men vomited.

I opened mycneasútin and extended it for her to drop his tongue inside along with his teeth.

“Some hair,” I declared, gripping a handful from his head to yank it out by the roots. He screeched.

“A finger,” Darragh added in dark satisfaction, and I used my power to raise one of Luke’s arms against his every attempt to keep it behind him.

He screamed in denial as Nuala grabbed one finger and set her blade at the base just above his knuckles.

“How does it feel, brother? To be helpless at the mercy of a monster?” she snarled, leaning closer to him.

“Uaua—” he attempted to choke her name but could not pronounce it fully without his tongue.

“Oh, sonowI have a name?” Nuala screamed at him, the ignition of her rage making her shake so violently that I almost reached out to steady her. Her anger and pain was a living thing, a twisted and anguished beast threatening to consume everything around her. This boy, her coven, the whole damnedworld would burn for what she had suffered at the hands of these men.

And I was happy to watch.

“You were so afraid of my shadow, the shadow of a little girl, that you had to try to make me feel as small and useless as you are. Well here I am, Luke. And just look at what yourlessonshave made me into,” she taunted.

“Uck… ou,” he swore, face contorting in pain as he tried to curse at her.

Nuala grinned at him, a vicious smile with her battered face still speckled in his blood.

“You tried so hard to own me, but in the end, I will be the one who consumes you. But worry not,” she cooed, tapping his nose like he was a petulant child who flinched from her, his eyes flaring in hateful rage. “I’ll think of you from time to time. I will think of you like this, on your knees before me where you always belonged. I will think of how it was your blood and flesh that made me whole. And I’ll think of you while I rip apart everything you love and burn this world into ash.”

Darragh met my eyes, looking as impressed by this vicious creature as I certainly was.

Nuala took his finger. She took his eye. She took everything from him that she needed, and when she was finished, she tapped into her fire magic for the first time since she was imprisoned. Unleashing the delectable scent of such overwhelming power that even the male witches shuddered with understanding.

She might have been their captive, a hapless toy while her power was suppressed, but they had not broken her. She would always be this at heart. Powerful. Vengeful.

A goddess of wrath.

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