Page 70 of Darling Wildfire
No. No. Not my little girl.
I nearly choked on my despair as it battled with my inability to take a breath through the agony constricting my heart. I’d wanted to continue to think she’d been able to get away—to survive.
“If you touched her—” I growled.
“I showed her how to properly handle a knife. I don’t think she’ll forget the lesson.”
“Fuck you! I’m going to kill you!” I raged.
Vetticus saw the moment my emotions completely overwhelmed me and he smirked, delivering the final blow. “They were twins right?”
My control snapped, and with a snarl I lunged to my feet and head butted Vetticus hard enough for his head to snap back and blood to gush from his nose. I pushed forward to come at him again, but he recovered and slammed his fist into my face, sending me into the arms of two guards who sent me crashing back to my knees. Vetticus stepped up and grabbed my hair again, forcing my head back painfully in order to look up at him. I jerked in the guards arms but they held me firm as Vetticus ran his finger across my split lip, smearing the blood.
“Your family is gone. You have nothing.I. Own. You,” he snarled, his face so close to mine I could see the fire burning there. “You will bleedwhen I say you can bleed. You will kill when I say you can kill.” He drew a knife from his belt and held it against my neck. “And you will die, when I say you can die.”
“Do it,” I snarled, pressing forward.
For a moment I thought he might, the glitter in his black eyes took on a sinister hunger. But then he smiled and dragged the knife down my neck, cutting into my skin enough to draw blood but not enough to do any damage. I welcomed the burn of it.
“Tempting—but no, not yet,” he said, his composure slowly sliding back into place. “And quite frankly, you don’t deserve it. You deserve to live with your failure—unable to save your family—pitiful.”
I nearly choked on my fury and pushed forward so we were nearly eye to eye as he hovered over me.
“You’re right,” I growled viciously. “I deserve to suffer—and I will suffer…every day until the day I get to drive that knife into your fucking heart.”
“Through vengeance there will be peace,” Vetticus purred, his eyes flashing with something dark and evil. “I will look forward to that day—if only to prove to you your hell is eternal, with or without me in it.”
He shoved me away from him and walked out of the showers. The guards yelled for everyone to get back to their cells and yanked me to my feet, personally escorting me back. Once in my cell, they uncuffed my wrists and the door locked behind them. I could feel Atlas and Nyx watching me as I pulled on sweatpants and paced the room like a caged animal, unable to sit still. I went over to the sink, throwing water on my face with shaking hands and watched the water run red as I tried to calm myself down.
I punched the wall above the sink.
Once. Twice.
A third time—until my knuckles bled—trying to find a place for all the anger to go.
“North,” Nyx barked, breaking the spell.
My fist landed against the stone one more time before it stayed there as I leaned heavily over the sink, my emotions erratic. My skin was tight across my bones, as though my soul needed to rip myself apart to get relief from the overwhelming assault of memories and feeling of helplessness. I turned the water off and slid down the wall, drawing my knees up and resting my head in my hands.
Some time later, I heard Nyx settle next to the bars.
“Do you want to talk about them?” he asked.
I thought about it. All the good and happy times were on the tip of mytongue—eager to be spilled—but I couldn’t.
“Not here,” I rasped. “Not in this place.”
I stayed like that for the next few hours. Nyx and Atlas talked across me but didn’t intervene. My thoughts were dark, tortured and erratic. They went from wanting to kill myself, to wanting to kill everyone else, to all the minute details of how I would torture Vetticus if—when—I got my hands on him. Once I’d exhausted all of that, my thoughts grew more clear and as the adrenaline bled away, I knew what I needed to be in order to survive here.
Powerful under the guise of being powerless.
I would survive so I could tear Vetticus apart piece by bloody fucking piece.
35
THERON
SIX MONTHS CAPTIVE
