Page 176 of Infernium

While the girl had only tried to comfort him, the words of his mother echoed inside his head with a bitter ache. Over the weeks, he’d grown feelings for the girl. Terrifying feelings that compelled him to sink his claws into her, to possess her before she, too, could be stolen away, like everything else he’d come to love.

The route the bishop took to the undercroft was all too familiar to the boy, and if it was pain his tormentor longed to exact, the baron had already suffered too much to care.

They reached the room where hisexorcisms, as the bishop often referred to them, had taken place. The pentrosh who followed behind him stepped ahead, as they approached, and opened the door without a hint of guilt in his expression.

The baron entered the room, too preoccupied to put up a fight, but came to a halt as he stepped inside. Tethered to the very chains from which he normally hung, his father’s righthand, Alaric, stood naked, his body marred by burns, cuts, and marks of other, unspeakable torments. One of his eyes had been cut from its socket, leaving a blooded, gaping hole in its place.

Lord Praecepsia stood behind the man, wearing his usual cold and detached expression.

As the door slammed behind the baron, he flinched, his nerves on edge, never having seen the man before him looking so vulnerable. So weak.

He’d come to despise Alaric, up until he’d learned the man’s true identity. A spy and ally to his mother. For years, the man had tormented him, which, he had come to realize, was nothing more than a ruse for his father.

“It has come to my attention that my most trusted righthand deceives me,” Lord Praecepsia said, arms crossed as he circled the man. “He has been gathering information on me to feed back to my enemies, to use against me.”

“He is as Judas was to the Messiah!” Bishop Venable said beside the baron, smacking his crosier against the dirt floor.

“The penalty for treason is death.” The baron’s father turned to face him, his eyes dark and brimming with enmity. He strode toward the boy and pulled a dagger from the sheath at his hip.

On instinct, the baron jumped back, expecting him to lash out and cut him. Instead, the elder Van Croix lifted his hand and set the blade in his palm. “It is time you learn a lesson, boy. To protect your land, your name, your family.”

The baron stared down at the blade in his hand, taking in the weight of the cold steel.

“Run the blade through him, and you shall be exempt from any punishment this evening. Prove yourself loyal to me.”

The boy wished more than anything that he had the courage to run the blade through the man standing alongside of him. He shook his head. “I cannot.”

“Do it. Or I shall string you up by your ankles and bleed you to near death.”

The baron knew all too well it was not an idle threat, and hands trembling, he stared down at the blade, studying it’s perfectly sharpened tip that would slice through the man’s flesh with ease.

“Think of how many times he’s subjected you to torment. How unrepentantly he has carried out offenses against you.”

It was true, but the baron had come to realize that any other behavior would have planted a seed of suspicion in his father’s mind. Still, he shook his head and handed the blade back to him.

Lord Praecepsia glanced down to the weapon and back to his son, his brow quirked. “Imagine, for a moment, that is the young, raven-haired girl strung up by her wrists.”

The baron’s muscles tensed, his jaw tight with the rage that moved through him. Rage he would not dare show, for fear his father might follow through with such a visual. The older man’s lips stretched to a smile. “Run this blade through him, or I can promise that she will be the next to find herself strung up in this very room.”

He steeled his muscles and curled his fingers around the hilt of the blade. Gaze lifted to Alaric’s, he took in the tilt of the man’s chin, as if he welcomed death. As if there was more honor in dying. Without a hint of hesitation, the baron crossed the small space separating him from Alaric and stabbed the blade into the man’s exposed abdomen. He gave one hard twist, and Alaric let out a grunt.

Head lowered, he stepped back and let the blade fall to the floor with a clang that climbed up the back of his spine. The dark chuckle that reached his ears had his lips curling with repulsion.

A deep penetrating burn lit across his forearm, and the baron peeled back his sleeve to find a silvery marking etched into his skin. He ran his finger over it, drawing back when the heat of it met his fingertip.

“Your first kill. And, by the gods, it will not be your last,” his father whispered.

54

FARRYN

“Ifeel like I know these woods,” I said over my shoulder, as Vespyr followed behind. Something about the trees and the narrow footpath curving through them struck me as strangely familiar, though I couldn’t summon a single memory.

Perhaps they were Lustina’s.

“So, then, tell me you know the way out, because I hate the woods about as much as I hate pineapple on pizza.”

Vespyr’s comment brought a smile to my face, as I stepped cautiously over the brush. “You’re a sick woman.”

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