Page 43 of Devoured
“Beautiful,”she murmured. “Look how the blood wells up. Like tears.”
Another cut. Then another. Each one precise. Deliberate. Turning my thigh into her canvas.
“My turn,”Varnar said.
I felt him shift, his hand still pressing me down, moving now to my upper back. The scalpel touched my lower back—just above my right hip.
“I’m going to mark you,”he said. “So everyone knows what you are.”
The blade bit deep. Curved down and to the right. Cut again, back up at an angle. I realized he was carving a letter. V. His initial, in my skin.
The pain was clean compared to everything else. Simple. Honest. I screamed until my voice gave out, then just shook as he finished his work.
“Perfect.”He leaned down and I felt his lips press against the wound—tasting my blood. “Now you’re mine.”
“She’s not yours,”Dr. Alan snapped, and her voice went strange.
I turned my head just enough to see her at the edge of my vision. She was moving closer with something in her hand. A speculum. My whole body went rigid. I knew what that was for. She was going to spread me open, force it inside while I couldn’t move.
“Remember, Varnar, she’s nothing but a sac— I mean case study,”she continued. “A particularly interesting one.”
Then she raised the speculum high and brought it down hard against my temple. The metal connected with a sickening crack, and white stars exploded across my vision.
That’s when I saw him.
Standing in the corner of the office that shouldn’t have been dark but was. The Executioner. Massive and still. That metallic helmet. Burning coals where eyes should be—watching. Waiting.
He’d been there the whole time.
The last thing I heard was Varnar saying my name. Possessively. Like I was something he’d claimed.
But as consciousness slipped away, I could have sworn I saw the Executioner’s head tilt. Just slightly. Like he was disagreeing. Like Varnar was wrong about who I belonged to.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 14
Pain brought me back. The deep kind that sits in your bones and won’t let go—spreading through every fiber of your being until you can’t tell where the hurt begins and your body ends. I tried to breathe normally, but each inhale felt like someone was peeling my skin off, layer by layer.
The medical ward lights were on—those awful white ones that never really turn off. Just dim enough to make you think you’re dying, but bright enough to keep you from finding peace in the darkness.
My mouth tasted like copper and something worse. Bile, maybe. Or the metallic tang of blood dried on my tongue. When I turned my head, my neck hurt so bad.
Marion was in the next bed. Awake. Staring at nothing with the hollow expression of someone who’d been taken apart and didn’t know how the pieces fit back together.
Her face had gone past purple into colors that didn’t have names—deep blues and greens, like a bruise on the world itself. One eye was still swollen shut, the lid stretched tight over what had to be incredible pain. The other moved slowly, like it hurt to look at things. Like seeing was just another form of suffering. New gauze wrapped her arms from wrist to elbow, already spotted through with pink that would be red again soon.
“You awake?”Her voice scraped out like she’d been screaming for hours. Maybe she had. Maybe we both had and just didn’t remember.
“Yeah.”I croaked.
The word felt strange in my mouth, like I’d forgotten how to make normal sounds. How to pretend I was still human after what had been done to us.
We didn’t say anything else for a while. Just lay there, listening to machines beep in the ward, counting out heartbeats that felt borrowed.
Marion’s hand moved on top of her blanket. Just her fingers at first, tapping against the thin fabric like she was testing if they still worked—if the nerves still connected to something that could be called herself. Then her whole hand slid sideways, toward the edge of her bed. Toward me.
I reached out too, even though it hurt, but I kept reaching until our fingers touched in the space between beds.
