Page 59 of The Stygian Crown

“I slept in the broken tower.”

Victus sighed like a man who’d discovered his tea was improperly prepared. “Such a martyr. Who are you trying to protect? Your lover’s already doomed, the rest of them forsook you. And here I thought you smart.”

“Do what you will.”

“Very well. Stand up and turn and face the wall. You might want to brace yourself.”

Kara looked from the hooks in his hand to his face. They were wicked sharp on one end, the other side tipped with a metal ring.

“Please.” She tried to slide away, but Victus blocked her with his arm and a slow shake of his head.

She ought to attack him, ought to explode in a flurry of violence, damn the consequences, but all the fight had gone out of her. Even if she bested Victus in her weakened state, who knew how many Sanguines awaited her upstairs? Fighting seemed pointless.

Kara turned around and clenched the wall, digging her fingers into the edge of an exposed stone.

Cold metal slid down her back, and a shiver rippled across her skin.

“Your skin will stretch. Fight me, and I’ll put them through muscle.”

Kara screwed her eyes shut, anticipating the pain. Victus pulled the skin above her shoulder blades up away from the muscle, stretching it taut. Then he shoved the hook through her skin with a quick motion. It burned, but it wasn’t as bad as Kara had expected. He placed the second hook to the right of the first, punching it through the skin in a practiced motion.

Victus tugged on the hooks, and Kara gasped. He led her to the center of the room and removed two metal spheres spiked with curved barbs from his pocket. Kara blanched when he began screwing them onto the sharp end of the hooks. “Can’t have you sliding off, slippery as you are.”

Kara shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get out of this one.

Victus unlocked the crank she’d found the night before and began to turn it. Two thick silver chains rattled as they descended from the ceiling.

Kara’s stomach dropped when she realized what he planned.

“You’re sick.” She scoured the room for anything she could use as a weapon. She tried to reach behind her back for the barbs and twist them off so she could remove a hook, but they were out of reach of her arms.

“The more you fight me now, the longer you’ll hang.”

Kara closed her eyes and took a step forward.

Victus clipped the chains to the hooks in her back, the metallic snap echoing throughout the cell. Then he walked to the crank and began to turn.

Kara kept her toes on the ground as long as possible as the chains lifted, but eventually she was forced into the air. The tug of her full bodyweight against the hooks was uncomfortable, a constant dull pain rather than a sharp one. Victus pushed her hip, and she began to sway. The sawing of the hooks through the raw puncture holes made her want to scream.

“Right now you think you will get through this, that the pain is temporary. But do not mistake yourself. I will break you. The hooks make everyone sing eventually. It’s exciting for me when they resist, endure. I so rarely get to the next phase. Think on your reticence a while.” Then Victus left, the cell descending into darkness once more.

Kara’s body dangled from the prison rafters—a grotesque mirage swaying in concentric circles. She gripped the chains and pulled herself up, willing her body to still. The motion took some of the pressure off her skin, but eventually her arms burned and shook until they gave out, and she collapsed back down onto the hooks. The pain was insidious. Dull at first, it spread into a relentless fire that arched across her back.

She knew the hooks only pierced her skin, but the longer they were in, the deeper they felt. Like they scraped against bone and meat. She imagined them ripping the muscle out from beneath her skin, but she’d still be caught there, hanging like some twisted marionette.

Kara didn’t know how much more of this she could stand. When the pain spiked, she began to bargain with herself about what details she could tell Victus that would do minimal harm. Tried to convince herself it was okay to break. Then she’d become angry at her weakness and redirect her thoughts to embedding a hook in one of Victus’s eyes and pulling it out the other.

One fevered sleep later, someone walked down the prison hallway. They carried no light, and their steps were lighter than Victus’s, but that was all Kara could tell in the darkness. The figure stopped in front of the cell door and stared at her.

“Help,” Kara pleaded.

The stranger turned and left without a word.

* * *

Two sleeps later,the silent watcher came again. Kara was barely conscious, her body shutting down. She hardly recognized pain as a distinct sensation anymore—it was omnipresent. A key twisted in the lock, clicking the latch open, then the figure turned and left.

Kara’s ears strained as footsteps disappeared down the hallway. Had she imagined the lock clicking open? Was it a trap, meant to punish her more if she tried to escape?

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