Page 11 of Daughter of No Worlds

“On your knees.”

I dropped so hard that the polished wood floor bruised my knees.

I don’t need your money.

His voice and the shattering of my goals echoed so loudly in my ears that I could hear nothing else.

I didn’t hear Esmaris’s boots walk across the room, or return, standing behind me.

I don’t need your money.

I didn’t hear the lethal snap crack through the air.

But, even through my haze, I certainlydidfeel the pain tear across my back, splitting me in two. My throat released a gasp, a whimper.

Crack.

Two

Crack.

Three.

And it kept going, and going, and going.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Five. Ten. Twelve. Sixteen.

I don’t need your money.

What was I going to do?

I refused to allow myself to scream, to cry, even though I bit so hard on my lip that it drew blood. Just like I had that night, years ago — the night when I had abandoned my family, my mother, because she believed I could do something more.Besomething more.

Crack.

Twenty.

But she had been wrong, because Esmaris was going to kill me.

This thought solidified slowly into certainty through the fog of my fading consciousness.

He was going to kill me because I had made a critical miscalculation. I had naively thought that his twisted, confusing affection would help me escape. Instead, it would crush me, because Esmaris only possessed or destroyed, and if he couldn’t do one, he would do the other.

I wondered if Serel could hear this, through that thick door. I wondered if he would try to help me. I hoped he wouldn’t. He’d be punished for it.

Crack.

Twenty-five.

Esmaris was going to kill me.

Thatbastard.

A fire lit within me. As I heard the whoosh of Esmaris raising his arm over his head, I flipped myself over, ignoring the agony that ignited as my back touched the ground.

“If you want to murder me,” I spat, “you’re going to look me in the eye as you do it.”

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