Page 7 of Hell Sent

Azreth looked down at the woman. Her tears were drying on her cheeks, and her gaze was intense and focused and furious. She had stopped trying to wriggle free of his grasp.

“Make my death quick and painless, and I’ll give you whatever you want,” she said quietly. An idea seemed to come to her, and her eyes brightened. “I will tell you about Nirlan. You want to kill him, don’t you? I’ll help you escape. I’ll help you kill him.”

With his mind still hazy with hunger, he couldn’t quite make sense of this. It was the last thing he’d expected her to say.

“Please,” she whispered.Azreth’s insides twisted a little.

Light exploded through the barrier, and pain juddered through him. He released the woman, rolling backwards as several more blasts hit him. The baton again.

By the time he could see straight again, the woman was outside the barrier. He could hear the mortal lord arguing with her.

Azreth warily sat up, and the lord sneered at him. “Soon you’ll be bound to me. Then we can let you out, and you can wreak havoc on the countryside. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He pointed the baton toward him, and lightning burst forth again. Azreth gasped, crumpling.

Nirlan tossed the baton aside. There was something intentional about the casual way he did it, as if to show them all how little he cared about any of them.

As Azreth watched them go, he fantasized about separating Nirlan’s head from his body.

Four

Eunaios stayed carefully outside the barrier as he used levitation magic to install chains linked to the floor and ceiling, then held Azreth still in a kneeling position and placed a collar around his neck and a manacle around his wrist. As soon as Azreth felt the mage’s magic release him, he heaved at the chains, and was surprised to find that they held fast. They were not iron, but they may as well have been.

He glanced down at the runes glowing on the floor beside him. The chains, and the stone they were anchored in, had been enchanted somehow to prevent them from breaking.

He glared at Eunaios, who was smirking a little, pleased with his work. “What is this for?”

“You’re going to be bound,” Eunaios said coolly. “As we’ve told you. You may as well save your strength. You won’t escape.”

Azreth disliked him almost as much as he disliked the lord.

When Eunaios was sure Azreth was held fast, he disabled the barrier, then came close and began painting runes on Azreth’s body. The black ink glided over his skin and hardened, marking him with a spell to be activated later. He finished before long, then left Azreth alone in the room again.

Azreth pulled against the chains with all his strength. The metal dug into his skin. Barbs on the inside of the collar prodded at him until they tore through, making him bleed. The stone flooring shook, but didn’t crack, let alone break.

He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and tried to shove down the animalistic fear that had started to claw into his mind. The chains restricted his movement, holding him almost motionless on his knees, and they seemed to pull at his soul as well as his body.

He could survive many creative tortures, but he despised feeling powerless, and that was exactly what he was about to be. He would be owned and controlled by this mortal he hated.

The mortal would die eventually. Azreth could wait it out. He would have to.

But perhaps he’d underestimated the suffering that was possible in the mortal world. He had thought he had the strength to tolerate being owned for a while in exchange for transport to this plane. Maybe he’d been wrong.

He’d gone still again by the time he heard people approaching. He heard many pairs of feet—many more than the three mortals he’d met so far.

He was surprised to see a dozen or so people, guided by Nirlan and Eunaios, pour through the door. They gawked at him, making exclamations of shock and awe.

This was it. The binding spell. With a crowd to witness his defeat, apparently.

Nirlan was addressing the small audience as Eunaios began painting runes on the lord’s palms: runes that would bind Azreth to him and subject him to his will. Eunaios was right. There was no escaping.

He saw a timid movement out of the corner of his eye. The woman was here. He hadn’t seen her at first, because she was a little away from all the others, as if she didn’t quite belong to the group, which struck him as odd. Maybe he’d been wrong about how mortal mating worked, and a wife was really more of a slave than a partner.

Her eyes slid across the room and stopped when they met his. They looked at each other for a long moment. Her face was hard and stiff with repressed emotion. She must have been furious at Azreth for what he’d done to her last time they’d met.

She came closer, her deep, dark eyes never leaving his. As she came near, he was able to pick out her emotions from the jumble of indistinct mortal feelings filling the room. She was indeed angry, but it was an unexpectedly bitter, cool anger, and when he consumed it, it felt like chewing on uncooked bone.

She stopped just beside him, within arm’s reach, and looked at him. Unlike the last time he’d seen her, pale powder covered her face, and delicate black ink ringed her eyes and darkened her brows. Her lips were as red as her blood. She looked like death. Like a pale corpse with a bloodied mouth.

His collar was pulling his head up, baring his throat, forcing him into a position of submission in front of her.He was faintly embarrassed by how he’d been with her before, so out of control, like a starving animal.He wondered if she would have stabbed him if the lord had permitted it. She was the only one of his captors who hadn’t hit him with that baton yet, but he didn’t know if that was because she was less violent than the others, or if the opportunity just hadn’t arisen.

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