Page 51 of To Curse A Knight

The hoard of emergency supplies sitting on the basement shelves now made practical sense. How long had Hillary owned such a building? One did not purchase a torture condo—she would have had to design it. Who had she entrusted with such a secret?

A deep discomfort settled deep into my bones as I answered my own question.Kellan. He would be the only person she’d trust with this.

The figure shifted in my grip, pulling me from that line of thought. A sharp knee jabbed into my ribs. The wind knocked out of my lungs, I stumbled, the weight of his body propelling me forward and off my frame onto the concrete floor in front of me.

The waif of a man scrambled away on his hands and knees. I stalked towards him, swallowing the bitterness clawing at my throat.

I would fight for her trust in all things. She would no longer have only Kellan to protect her darkness. I would hand over my penchant for administering pain, and we could bask in the black sea of tormented souls together.

The desperation in the man’s gaze was no match for the insatiable hunger for violence in mine. By the time my hands clasped onto his scrawny shoulders, he had already slumped in defeat, hanging his head with a sob. I lifted his bony body off the ground and carried him into the furthest cell down the hallway.

I threw him on the cot, the sheets and pillow yellowing with grease stains. Perhaps this had been his room.

I pulled the string of my hood out of its casing, quickly employing a quick cuff around his hands to keep him in place. The short length of the rope didn’t lend itself to a more complex, more secure shibari tie, but it was all I could do under these circumstances. I removed the string from the hood of my sweater beneath my jacket, and tied the same design around his ankles. His eyes remained dormant while I worked.

Was he still coherent? Had he succumbed to the madness of confinement? Was he still responsive to a little… coercion?

Unzipping my jacket, I fingered the hidden pocket within the interior shell and unlocked the tiny metal clasp to grab the small stiletto blade of my favorite dagger.

I pulled out the military grade black matte metal; the custom design was one of my most prized possessions. The dagger had seen me through many of Vicente’s training ‘lessons’; had pierced the flesh of men who housed evil in their veins as if it were blood. I unleashed their evil into the drain on the floor, releasing them from their torment—onlyaftera little torment of my own.

I was well accustomed to guns and how to use them; they were convenient weapons, but boring. They left jagged holes of instant brutality. Knives left beautiful trails of artwork on the skin—a lesson in delayed gratification.

I much preferred this method.

Mycaptive’s face turned ashen as he eyed the weapon in my palm. I delicately fingered the blade as if it were my tender lover, excited at the prospect of using my old friend once again. It had been too long.

“What is your name?”

My words were calm and measured, soothingly hypnotic as I moved closer. A thrill of electricity tingled up my spine at the raw fear emanating from every pore of his skin. The stench of animalistic terror filled my nostrils when I loomed over his cowering body; the familiar scent separated my rational brain from the thirsty hind brain of a trained killer.

The man’s lips folded in on themselves, as if staying silent would spare him from my intentions.

“Your master is on her way,ñero.” I spun the blade in my hand and caught it nimbly between two fingers; the razored edge sliced off a thin layer of skin along the pad of my knuckle. I’d sharpened it in recent days as an activity to bide my time; now, it was perfectly primed to exact vengeance forMi Reina. “And you and I are going to get to know each other in the meantime.”

I advanced on him, deciding to start with the flesh of his shoulders, to peel back the layers of skin one by one until his sobs shattered the windows and his sweat slicked the floor. I knew how to keep a man alive under torture—Mi Reinawould decide his end when she arrived.

I was the Dark Knight of a Queen, a bold title among men; I’d wield her wrath as if it were my own and punish her enemies until they were ribbons of flesh on the floor.

Starting with him.

Hillary Lane was truly going to be the death of me.

How many times had I covered for her ass with the Bureau when her vendetta went a little too far? How many times did I tell her this revenge mission was a bad idea? Why the fuck did I continue to protect her when she was impossible to protect from herself?

I knew the answers to these questions, but I wasn’t going to waste time thinking about my feelings when I was knee deep in snow, trying to track some woman she’d deemed worthy of her mountainside prison.

A woman. It was the first time I’d ever seen a woman within these walls, and it’d surprised me when I’d watched the footage of Sammy taking her in. I trusted Sammy’s judgment and knew he wouldn’t harm a woman if she was innocent, so I had to trust Hillary knew what she was doing with this one.

As soon as this woman was back in her cell, Hillary was going to give me some answers.Allthe answers. We didn’t have time for any more secrets between us—especially when this little midnight tryst had already put our entire mission at risk.

Luckily, the deep snow was on my side, the woman’s trail easy to follow up the mountain pass; but she was surprisingly quick, given she’d only had about a twenty-minute head start.

Twenty minutes in great conditions might as well be two hours—but in the middle of the night in the middle of January? I should have found her by now. Her limbs would be frozen stiff, seeing as she wouldn’t have any winter clothes on, but adrenaline was powerful. Evidently, powerful enough to get a massive jump on me.

The trail of footprints led through an icy gully and into another part of the forest before ending where the treed landscape met the main road.

Fuck. Left or right?

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