Dragons Realm (11 page)

As Damian drew closer, the king cleared his throat. “Damian,” he said brusquely. “The lash­ing was your brother’s idea, and this slave seems to ex­pect mercy from
him
. Give him the whip.”

Mina shuddered, and her mouth gaped open in shock.

Dante showed no re­ac­tion what­so­ever.

He had ex­pec­ted as much to hap­pen.

Damian de­clined his head in de­fer­ence and ex­ten­ded the lash and leather ties to Dante, smil­ing as his older brother gripped the handle and slid the wrist-loop around his arm. “As you will, Father,” Damian said. He winked at Dante and took a cas­ual step back, cop­ping a lean against a nearby post.

Dante held the ties in his left hand and tested the weight of the lash in his right.

His father was watch­ing everything.

As al­ways…

Such end­less tests of obed­i­ence.

He cracked the whip soundly, send­ing it sail­ing over­head through the air. He meas­ured its move­ment, felt for the subtle mo­tion of the fall, and mem­or­ized the
pop
of the crack. Sat­is­fied, he then looped it over his shoulder and bent to­ward Mina, flex­ing to lift her from the ground.

Chapter Nine

M
ina tried des­per­ately
to scurry away from Dante.

She kicked her feet in a use­less, back­ward mo­tion, slid­ing help­lessly against the floor. She twis­ted this way and that, hop­ing to break free of his iron grasp, to no avail. And she tugged frantic­ally against his power­ful arms be­fore she fi­nally ceased her strug­gling and went limp at his side.

She simply could not be­lieve this was hap­pen­ing.

It was too hor­rific for
words.

Yes, she un­der­stood that she had taken a risk when she chose to seek him out, es­pe­cially near the throne room; and yes, she knew that the king might kill her if she got caught. But this ar­chaic tor­ture? It was im­possible to com­pre­hend. Be­ing ripped apart—flesh, muscle, and bone—by a bar­baric lash, like some sort of an­imal, some sort of sedi­tious traitor; it was more than her mind could pro­cess.

And Dante?

The prince who would one day claim her—wed her, lie with her, father her chil­dren—he was go­ing to do the evil deed with his own hand.

Oh, Great Spirit Keep­ers
, Mina wanted to die then and there.

She had al­ways been strong. She had al­ways had a high threshold for pain. She had al­ways been able to en­dure the un­en­dur­able, or at least she thought she had, but no wo­man could with­stand a pun­ish­ment such as this: the feel of the lash bit­ing into her skin, the in­sult of the barbs grasp­ing her muscles, flay­ing them free from her bones.

And over and over…and over?

Fif­teen
times?

He would kill her.

There was no ques­tion in her mind.

She felt like she was drift­ing far away in a tun­nel, like black­ness was over­whelm­ing both her and the room, as Dante’s strong, firm hands, the ones she had al­most trus­ted just days ago,
the ones who had given her Raylea’s doll
, grasped her by the shoulders, tugged her onto her feet, and began to drag her to­ward one of the tall im­per­ial columns in the middle of the hall.

No.

No!

Oh dear Spirit Keep­ers in the af­ter­world, no.

She didn’t know if she was scream­ing. She didn’t know if she was cry­ing or fight­ing or claw­ing for her free­dom. It all felt so sur­real. She only knew that she could not bear this—she could not sur­vive this—and she had to make it stop.

She had to make it stop.

“Dante…Dante…
Dante
…” She heard his name com­ing from her lips like a man­tra or a prayer, as if from some great dis­tance, float­ing through an ever-dark­en­ing chan­nel of dis­be­lief. “No, Dante;
please
.” She was sob­bing like a baby. She had never felt so help­less, or des­per­ate, or ter­ri­fied in her life.

“Mina.” His re­si­li­ent voice cut through the fog, even as he se­cured her arms around the post and began to bind her wrists with the thongs, ty­ing them high above her head. His weight felt op­press­ive against her back, yet she prayed it would never leave, that he would never leave, for once he stepped away, the whip­ping would be­gin.

No!

“Mina!” His voice was harsh now, al­most angry, un­yield­ing.

Her head fell back and she man­aged to peek at him from be­neath tear-drenched lashes, her lips quiv­er­ing, her eyes leak­ing like a sieve, mu­cous drip­ping out of her nos­trils.

He tightened the bind­ings on her wrists and se­cured them swiftly to a notch in the post so she couldn’t pull away. She tugged against them and tried to kick back­ward in his dir­ec­tion, which was the worst thing she could do: He un­hooked the ties, raised them an­other sev­eral inches un­til she was stand­ing on her tippy-toes, al­most hanging off the post, and then re­fastened her wrists against the higher notch to keep her from gain­ing lever­age. “Oh gods, Dante…” She was pan­ick­ing now, be­gin­ning to hy­per­ventil­ate, ready to come apart.

Dante pressed his sturdy up­per body against her back and anchored her head from be­hind with his power­ful hands, as if to de­mand her full at­ten­tion. He bent his head for­ward, and his thick black hair fell about her shoulders and chin, shroud­ing them in a dark silky cur­tain of mad­ness.

She was go­ing to go in­sane. “Please, please…please.”

He slid his hand for­ward and covered her mouth, nearly brush­ing his lips against her left ear. As his warm breath waf­ted across her lobe, she shivered.

This was really
hap­pen­ing.

This was go­ing to hap­pen, and there was noth­ing she could do to stop it.

“Mina,” he whispered in her ear. “Why did you come to the throne room? What were the
ur­gent
con­di­tions in your bed­cham­ber?”

She blinked sev­eral times, try­ing to gather her wits. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t reason. She was about to die, but then there was…there was…

Ta­tiana.

And the Sk­la­vos Ahavi was still up­stairs, ly­ing on Mina’s bed, suf­fer­ing and prob­ably dy­ing as a res­ult of Damian’s cruel mach­in­a­tions.
Oh gods, that’s why she had made this sac­ri­fice to be­gin with.

For Ta­tiana.

Some­how, a strange clar­ity en­vel­oped her; it des­cen­ded upon her from nowhere, and she was able to find her words in the midst of her ter­ror. “Ta­tiana,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Ta­tiana—the other Ahavi, the one with au­burn hair.” She winced from the stretch in her back. “Damian beat her. He raped her.” She drew in a ragged breath. “She’s in my room, and she’s dy­ing.”

Dante froze against her. He al­most seemed to quit breath­ing, and then he slowly stepped back, looked down to­ward her feet—she could only see his pro­file—and waved Drake over to the column. “Hold her feet while I re­move her dress.”

Mina screamed.

That was
it.

This was ut­ter in­san­ity, and she was bey­ond des­pond­ency.

Within mo­ments, Drake ap­peared at the post, and she could have sworn Dante bent over and whispered some­thing in his ear,
some­thing about
Ta­tiana
. But then she heard the back of her dress tear­ing, rip­ping open. Her chemise was swiftly re­moved, and the cold, stale air of the Great Hall kissed her bare skin like a bru­tal lover, her flesh now bared to the room.

She began to scream in earn­est, over and over, like a wounded beast.

Dante stepped for­ward one last time and wrapped his hands around her throat. He didn’t tighten his fin­gers or try to choke her. He just bent once more to her ear. “Listen to me, Mina.” His words were gut­tural and im­pos­ing, and the force of each syl­lable felt like stiff, un­seeded cot­ton be­ing stuffed into her ears. “You need to scream like you are in the worst agony of your life, like you wish you could crawl through this post and dis­ap­pear. I want you to hang from this column like you are dy­ing, and you’d bet­ter make it con­vin­cing—
like your life de­pends upon it
—be­cause it does.”

*

Dante took ten meas­ured steps back from the column, ex­actly the amount needed to wield the whip with lethal ef­fi­ciency, and then he waited for Drake to ad­dress their king.

“Father,” the young­est dragon prince said in a lack­a­dais­ical tone of voice.

The king ac­know­ledged him with a slight tilt of his head.

“If it does not of­fend, I have no in­terest in the out­come of this pro­ceed­ing.” He ges­tured cas­u­ally to­ward the post where Mina stood on the tips of her toes, trem­bling and pant­ing in fear, wait­ing for Dante to be­gin her beat­ing. “I am not par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in this spe­cific Ahavi.” Now this was a risk. He was giv­ing away his pref­er­ence for the Au­tumn Mat­ing—
was it Ta­tiana or Cas­sidy
? Dante wondered—and while the state­ment might very well back­fire in the fu­ture, he had to sound con­vin­cing now. “At any rate,” Drake pressed on, “I would rather con­tinue work­ing on the fig­ures, on the taxes, if you please.” He bowed his head in si­lent obeis­ance. “May I take my leave?”

The king pursed his lips to­gether in thought, and then he grunted, not seem­ing to care one way or the other. “Very well.” He dis­missed his last-born son with a flick of his wrist.

Dante waited un­til the dual heavy doors to the hall opened and closed be­hind Drake, know­ing that he would head dir­ectly to Mina’s cham­bers to see about the other Sk­la­vos Ahavi, Ta­tiana Ward. Once Drake was gone and his foot­falls could no longer be heard re­ced­ing down the cor­ridor, he re­sumed his ag­gress­ive pos­ture. “At your com­mand, Father.”

The king sat back in his throne and nod­ded, and just like that, Dante drew back the whip, cracked it bluntly in the air, and pitched it for­ward to­ward Mina’s back.

The strike was deaf­en­ing.

The leather sliced at an angle, mak­ing ini­tial con­tact with Mina’s up­per right shoulder and then angling down across her slender spine to pare her nar­row waist. She jol­ted and screamed, her en­tire body shud­der­ing from the vi­ol­ent con­tact, and Dante drew in a deep, steady­ing breath, braced his feet fur­ther apart, and struggled not to stag­ger.

Do not wince. Do not cry out. Do not show a re­ac­tion,
he told him­self, bit­ing down so hard on his tongue that he drew his own blood.

Fif­teen, four­teen, thir­teen
…

He coun­ted the piteous lashes down as he wiel­ded them, one after the other, throw­ing all the strength he had into their sting.

At ten, he al­most faltered.

His vis­ion grew blurry, and he wondered if he could con­tinue. He clenched his eyes shut, but only for a mo­ment, and then he forced them open, de­term­ined to press on.

Nine, eight, seven, six…

Mina dangled, limp against the post. She still con­tin­ued to scream, but her cries had changed to gut­tural moans and whim­pers, her body sway­ing more than trem­bling with each strike of the lash. She was do­ing well; whereas, Dante felt the ma­gic slip­ping—he had to main­tain just a little bit longer.

Fo­cus
, he told him­self.
Hold the
spell.

Five, four, three, two…

He was go­ing to vomit. The pain was un­bear­able.

Every lash, every spike, every bite of the whip had been trans­ferred from Mina’s flesh to his own. Every ounce of pain and agony, every mo­ment of ter­ror and dis­grace, was mys­tic­ally con­tained, not in her del­ic­ate flesh, not bit­ing deep into her trem­bling muscles, not tear­ing away at her shoulders—but at his.

Dante Dragona had trans­ferred the lash­ing from Mina’s back to his own. The whip might have seemed to strike her skin, but it was his that was flayed to the bone. The il­lu­sion of crim­son an­guish, the sight of so many ghastly rivu­lets of blood, might have ap­peared on her back, but it was his flesh that was ooz­ing, seep­ing, and broken. Thank the gods, he was the only Dragona born with the sac­red ma­gic, and the only one with oc­ca­sional second sight.

His knees began to buckle be­neath him, and he stiffened his spine once more, al­most passing out from that single, ver­tical ges­ture.

One more.

He could en­dure one more.

Thwack!

The whip crackled through the air, and his fist began to tremble. Turn­ing to face his father, he in­clined his head in a ges­ture of de­fer­ence—or at least he thought he did;
he hoped he did
—and then he began to make his way to the column.

He un­tied Mina’s wrists as if in a dream, work­ing the knots like someone in a fog. He caught her body as it slumped from the pole and fell into his arms, and then he groaned in­wardly as her weight pressed mer­ci­lessly against his battered flesh. He forced his power­ful ham­strings to con­tract, his calf muscles to flex, as he pushed him­self up­ward with all his strength, in or­der to heft her into his arms. No longer know­ing which way was up, he some­how man­aged to toss her over his shoulder and stroll for­ward out of the throne room.

Bless the Spirit Keep­ers, his father let them
go.

Even Damian simply stood and watched his re­treat.

The mo­ment the doors closed be­hind him, he stumbled, groaned, and dropped Mina from his shoulder onto her own two feet. “Help me up the stairs to your room,” he grit out between trem­bling lips. “And hurry.”

Mina gasped, mo­ment­ar­ily speech­less. She seemed ut­terly stunned that her body wasn’t dam­aged, that her skin wasn’t raw, and she in­stinct­ively placed her hand on his back as he bent over in agony. When she drew back a palm covered in blood, the real­iz­a­tion began to set in. “Oh Dear An­cest­ors,
Dante
…how…
why
?”

He snarled, un­able to speak, not want­ing to get caught be­fore they made it down the main cor­ridor, through the re­ceiv­ing hall, and up the grand stair­case to the second floor. “Now, Mina,” he growled.

She nod­ded brusquely and quickly slid her slender shoulder be­neath his arm, press­ing hard against his side in or­der to sus­tain as much of his weight as she could on her di­min­ut­ive frame.

She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it.

What could she pos­sibly say?

Even Dante un­der­stood that words were wholly in­ad­equate.

Fi­nally, as she struggled to help him up the stair­case and down the up­per hall, she mur­mured, “Lean on me, my prince. I’ve got you.
I prom­ise.
Just hang on.”