Page 34 of Savage Hunt

“Maybe I should make you take all their punishments.” Her shrill laughter filled my veins with ice water. “You can take more, and you don’t pass out in seconds.”

My head spun as the hits continued, and my legs eventually gave out, sending me crashing to my knees.

“If you tell me why Lord Ruin wants the Infernal Sol, I’ll take it easy on you.”

What?

Rena didn’t know anything about Ruin or the Infernal Sol. This was a childhood memory, long before I became a raven or met Ruin Bacchus.

As the confusion mixed with the agony, a familiar and addicting sensation roiled in my chest. Dark vines slinked through me, slashing at the reality that wasn’t real at all. I wasn’t in Rena’s closet. This was a memory twisted with magic from a powerful potion. Mykel was torturing me. He and Venna wanted to know what Ruin was up to.

The closet’s dingy walls faded, and the floor disappeared. As I fell through an impenetrable hole, shadows swallowed my scream…

My eyelids snapped open to the torture room in Heldrok, but instead of Mykel wielding a knife, Sorin stood at my side with a grin that had every drop of my blood freezing.

“She does come out of those fast.” He stroked my cheek with his fingers. “I was hoping you would. I’m anxious to start my turn.”

I struggled in the binds as panic hacked at my heart. “What are you doing here?” Venna and Mykel stood in the corner with eager expressions. “Why is he torturing me?”

The royal smoothed her platinum braid that rested over her shoulder and shrugged. “I thought it might be fun to watch him work. Sorin is quite a master at torture. He seems to know how to find weaknesses so effortlessly.” She took a sip from a glass bottle and then passed it to her oversized minion.

Sorin leaned down, the tattoos over his bald head so stark against his scalp. “No one’s here to save you now, Tate.” He brushed a piece of hair from my face, his touch making my skin crawl. “Neither Fane nor the warden will stop this.”

Chapter

Twelve

As Sorin sliced the knife coated in Devil’s Nightshade across my chest, my neck tattoo tingled moments before a feral growl spilled into the room.

My eyelids closed as Fane’s presence washed over me, undetectable by the other three in the room. “I really don’t want you to see this.”

“Too fucking bad,” the demon shifter snarled. “Why is Venna allowing that asshole to torture you?”

Sorin glanced over his shoulder at Venna. “Anything goes, right?”

She absentmindedly smoothed a wrinkle in her formfitting black satin blouse that showed off her cleavage. “Do whatever you like, short of killing her. If you can get her to tell you what Ruin is planning, that’s a plus. Simply breaking her is fine too.”

My stomach sank as Sorin returned to me with a sadistic glint brightening his blue irises. He ran the tip of the knife over my throat without breaking the skin. “Tell me what you know about Ruin’s little lab experiments and why he wanted the Infernal Sol you so conveniently have inside you.”

Why would Venna trust this demon, a prisoner in Heldrok, with that information?

“I have no idea,” I forced out. My mouth, along with the rest of me, felt frozen.

Sorin’s head lowered, his lips brushing my ear. “Let’s try a different tactic, shall we? I can’t get that naked body of yours out of my head. I’ve been dreaming about breaking you a hundred different ways, even worse than what I did to that raven.”

Bile shot up my throat at his threat.

Fane’s roar erupted through the room, and he tried to grab Sorin’s throat, but his hands simply passed through the demon. “I’ll fucking kill you, Sorin!”

I struggled against the binds as the high demon plucked off the buttons on the top half of my jumpsuit and then used the knife to tear the bottom half off. That look in his eyes, one I’d seen many times, made it perfectly clear what he intended to do.

The room spun as icy fear hemorrhaged through my veins. “Fuck you, Sorin.” I yanked on the binds, cursing the symbol on my arm that kept my strength muted. This monster had a sick habit of destroying everything in his crosshairs, and I’d become one of his conquests.

“Leave, Fane!” I yelled in his head loud enough to make him wince. “I don’t want you to see this.”

His lips curled back, showing his sharpening teeth. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m leaving.”

“There’s nothing you can do. It’ll make this worse.”

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