Page 182 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“Stop.” The word came out as a whimper.

“We’ll see whether you can make me.” She smiled. “Just like you made Esmaris Mikov stop. Do you know what his problem was? He loved you too much. The rest of us used to whisper about it when we went to those parties of his. The way hedotedupon you.” She clicked her tongue and nodded to my scars. “Those? Those are passion. But I promise you, darling, there is no passion in this. I take no joy in it.”

The knife moved slowly over my back, slicing a slow, straight line over my skin.

Oh gods. Oh gods. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

The knife dug deeper. I could feel the resistance of my skin, the sinew beneath it, parting. The knife moved down. Again.

An explosion of pain. Resistance.

They were peeling off parts of my skin.

My self-control gave out. I screamed.

“Stop, stop, stop—” The word rolled from my lips without my permission. My muscles shook violently; my stomach lurched, and I would have been vomiting if there was anything left in me.

I felt him tear off another chunk of skin. It dropped in front of me, nearly grazing my nose. A bloody chunk of white-and-tan flesh against the marble.

Oh gods. I would die. This would kill me. I wouldn’t survive.

“Can you make me stop, Tisaanah?” Lady Zorokov asked, calmly.

I railed against the restraints. Her bodyguard stepped a little closer to her, as if preparing to protect her. But I flopped uselessly against the chains, and that knife kept on cutting.

An age later, Lady Zorokov said, “I think we’ve seen enough. She’s sufficiently clipped.”

Six neat squares of skin now seeped on the tile before me.

The guard released me, and I collapsed half-naked onto the floor, tears streaming my cheeks.

“Poor thing. Look at that little broken bird,” Lady Zorokov cooed. I forced myself to look up at her. Pain and the drugs made my vision blurry, but she leaned in close enough to be the only sharp thing in this world.

“Your rebellion has no teeth, Tisaanah,” she said, and only now was there emotion on her face, a little sneer at her lip. “Look at all of you, stumbling around trying to be fierce, like kittens learning to hunt.” She scoffed. “No. A lion knows a lamb when they see one. Too bad I can’t hang your skin up to let the rest of them know they’re wandering into the slaughterhouse.”

* * *

After she was gone,I forced myself to my hands and knees. A gasp escaped my throat when I moved—everything hurt so badly I wanted to curl up and die.

But I knew that I would not die. The Zorokovs needed me for something. The torture was painful, but it wasn’t fatal. They wouldn’t allow me the mercy of death.

Their goal wasn’t to kill me. Their goal wasn’t even to punish me. No, that had been a test, and a shockingly obvious one. They’d heard all about what happened at the Mikov estate. They wanted to make sure they clipped my wings.

It had taken all my self-control not to break, not to lash out with the dregs of magic I still did have at my disposal. But a few chunks of my flesh were a small sacrifice to hide my flight.

My head swam as I crawled across the floor. I had been drugged more, though, apparently, I had been unconscious when they’d been administered. Perhaps it was in the water I’d chugged down earlier. Every part of my body ached to go to sleep, but I forced my mind to sharpen.

The drugs made it difficult to tell how much time had passed since I had arrived here, but surely by now Max knew what had happened. The fact that he hadn’t yet come for me meant that he understood what I wanted him to do, which meant—I hoped—that he was on his way to Orasiev.

If I was going to be ready for what happened next, I still had work to do.

Unpleasant, unpleasant work.

I dragged myself to the wall and looped my chains around my good hand. With the other—using my two functional remaining fingers—I picked up the tatters of my old shirt and stuffed the fabric between my teeth.

I set the chain over my shoulder. It was rusty. Just the touch of the cold, rough metal to my still-bleeding skin made my vision blur.

Gods, the things that I do.

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