Page 161 of Love & Heart Braking

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I stared at Acribus Cineres from my position stringed up to machines and strapped to the bed. My clothes had been taken last night, and I was only given a thin gown before they locked me in a room with glass walls.

“Summon your anti-magic arrow,” she ordered for the third time.

The healing elemental hovered behind her, a small smile upon his lips. Bet he couldn’t wait to run his tests.

I shrugged a shoulder and shook my head. That I could manage with the sound-block from Bortyss still upon me.

The second-in-command approached the bed.

She removed her red gloves and gripped above my bare ankles.

Fire poured from her hands into my blood. I thrashed in silent agony against the bed. Being strapped down was my prison and my salvation. I couldn’t tear at my skin or dig at my eyes. I couldn’t rip out my hair or rake the walls until my nails ripped away. My neck muscles were taut, jaw opened wide with a scream that would’ve been heard through the entire estate otherwise.

The phoenix called her fire back, and I sagged on the bed, body aching and mind numb.

“Summon your anti-magic.”

My head lolled, but I gathered my strength and shook my head. Devereaux’s words about Lerome floated in my mind. As soon as I lost my use, then they’d get rid of me. Not revealing the arrow was how I’d stay alive.

Acribus blasted me with another dose of her flame, and as I clung to consciousness after, I vaguely registered the frantic beeping of the surrounding machines, and the healer’s blurted whispers about “confounded test results.”

The phoenix slipped on some dainty red gloves. “We shall resume later. Take her away.”

“To her room, Mistress Acribus?” the healer asked.

She tilted her head. “No, I think not. Guests who don’t obey don’t deserve niceties. The dungeons shall suffice. No food.” She leaned over me, and there were two of her in my vision. As if one wasn’t bad enough.

“Think very carefully about how you want your time here to play out,” she said. “This can be pleasant or unpleasant, but the twelve will win either way.”

I winked.

Her gloating expression wiped away. “Let us see if you’re still so spirited after a month.”

A month? I couldn’t imagine a month of this treatment.

She smirked, clearly seeing the horror in my eyes. “Take her away.”

I was rolled through the garden and into the towers. The pain from the burns was nearly overwhelming, and I was only half aware of a conversation between the healer and two guards before I was freed from the straps and dragged down dark, dank stairs.

They tossed me onto a hard mattress, and the grating and ringing of metal sounded as the door was shut and locked.

Pain pulsed at the hand marks around my ankles. The burns were agony, and the pain was all I could think of as dark pressed in around me.

A cup of water was shoved through the bars by a guard sometime later.

I hobbled over to sniff it. I was so thirsty, but there might be Shade in there. I wouldn’t put a forced addiction past the twelve. Licking my dry lips, I set the water against the far wall untouched. I’d drink it if I got desperate.

Perching on the bed, I forced my mind from the pain to the shituation. I hadn’t dared let my guard down in the glass room. I actually preferred this dungeon.

Ceres, claim me. What a mess.

Devereaux would be losing his mind. His predator and him. The thought of that was almost making me lose my mind. My urge to escape was born more out of panic of what the twelve could do to him than what they’d do to me. With his resources at law enforcement, my berserker posed more of a threat to them than anyone in the alliance. They had to be aware that they could use him to make me do anything. I was on borrowed time on that front.

“Psst.”

I leaped, clenching my jaw against the pain as the sudden movement jolted my burns.

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