Page 86 of Devoured
“You BASTARD!”I yelled and lunged at him with nothing but hatred and fingernails. He caught my throat, lifted me, but his expression had changed. Surprise mixed with approval.
“Even broken, you bare fangs.”He studied me. “Perfect. My bride will have spirit to season the suffering.”
The Judge smiled wider. “Yes. You’ll do perfectly. My Sponsa Doloris. Together, we’ll teach the universe new ways to weep.”
Chapter 26
The Executioner’s ashes covered everything—floor, altar, my skin—like gray snow that tasted of iron and smoke.
The Judge circled me where I lay crumpled on the floor. His fifteen-foot frame moved like smoke given flesh, the burning crown casting shadows across walls made from compressed bones.
“Do you know what makes you special?”He crouched beside me, molten eyes level with mine. “I’ve had so many guilty women brought here. But their guilt was simple. Hot. Fresh. They killed in anger, in moments of madness. Their guilt burned bright, but quick.”
One burning finger touched my chin. My skin blistered.
“You, though? Seven years with Theo. Every bruise, you thought you deserved. When he broke your ribs that Christmas, you apologized for bleeding on his shoes.”
The memory punched through my body—me on my knees, ribs flaring with pain, sobbing apologies while he stared in disgust at the stain on the carpet, like that was the real offense.
“Three miscarriages.”His hand had pressed flat and cold against my belly, not with tenderness, but accusation. “Each one you blamed on yourself. Like you murdered those possibilities through imperfection.”
The truth was a boulder in my chest, unmovable, heavy with shame. My throat burned as if his words had lodged there, scraping raw on the way down.
“You still mourn the idea of him. Maybe he could change. Even now, some part wonders if you drove him to cruelty.”
He was right. That voice—the poisonous, slithering one—still whispered late at night: What if you’d just been better?
“And Varner. That night in his office. When he made you come.”
The memory slammed into me like ice water. The betrayal of my own body, writhing in pleasure while my soul screamed no. The sobs afterward, the hot water that didn’t feel hot enough as I scrubbed myself raw, bleeding, the skin peeling like guilt trying to crawl out.
“You hate yourself for that more than you hate him.”
The Judge stepped back, admiring me like a glutton eyeing a feast. His eyes glowed faintly and his grin stretched too wide, too hungry. “Six hundred years I’ve waited for someone like you. Guilt aged to perfection. Sorrow distilled into poison. Self-hatred so pure it could corrupt saints.”
He spread his arms. The chains adorning them clinked softly, a sound almost delicate—like wind chimes made from vertebrae and regret.
“My Bride of Sorrows!”
Something stirred in my mind, a sliver of memory slicing through the fog: Dr. Alan’s voice, sharp and trembling, back in the caves.
“The bride doesn’t just marry the Judge,”she’d said. “She becomes part of him. Shares his power. Shares his essence. Two become one, united in purpose and flesh. Whatever she is becomes part of him forever.”
Whatever she is becomes part of him.
The words echoed louder now. I’d rather tear my own heart out than become like him. Never. I’d throw myself into the void before turning into that thing, that monster who fed on suffering and gorged himself on other people’s pain.
“Will you marry me?”the Judge asked, with mock ceremony. The chamber, stained with blood and pain, might as well have been a garden arbor in his mind.
I shook my headin defiance.“I’d rather die.” The words came out like venom. My nails dug into my palms hard enough to draw blood. I wanted to tear that smug expression apart with my bare hands. But I could barely stand.“Death would be a mercy compared to that existence. I’d choose hell over one second as your bride.”
His gaze, those pits of smoldering judgment, shifted to the far corner where my friends lay like discarded dolls. Marion’s legs bent at angles nature never intended, shards of bone glinting through torn flesh. The air reeked of copper and open wounds. Her eyes rolled toward me, unfocused, pain-blind.
Isaac lay beside her, his mouth working silently. The stump of his tongue writhed against blood-slick teeth, trying to form words that no longer had shape.
“I can heal her legs.”The Judge’s tone was breezy, casual, like he was discussing the rain. “Then break them again. Then heal them. Then break them. Forever. Each time, a new kind of pain. Bones remember trauma, you know. They scream louder with each breaking.”
A sound rasped from Marion—half a sob, half a growl. Rage or despair, it was impossible to tell with the blood bubbling from her lips.
