Page 109 of Golden Queen
He huffed a vicious laugh. I wanted—-so badly wanted—to rip him apart, starting with what I knew would be a shriveled little sack of marbles betweenhislegs.
But I could not. I was trapped, helpless, lost. The knowledge of that threatened to consume me.
Aegis turned back to me, smiling. "You are lucky that I have come along," he said in his gravelly, wet voice. "None but a High Actem would have the skills to repair that kind of damage. And none but me would have the nerve to do it."
He grew solemn as he reached up and ran a hand down my head, petting me like a dog. "I do not want to see you turned out to the king's revenants, used up like an old dishrag. I like you, you see. I have liked you since you were the barest slip of a girl, when I gave you your pretty golden bracelets."
Shock ran through me at the revelation. Had Markus truly been conspiring with the Shadowlands since I was a child? How long had I been promised to Penjan?
"You probably do not often think of your bracelets, do you, child?" he asked with a secretive smile.
The hand that had been trailing down the side of my head slid down across my collarbone until it lay just over my heart. With fumbling, shaky fingers, he slid it lower, trailing over the outline of my breast.
"You were such a small, delicate thing then. Who knew you would grow to be so...pretty." The tip of his tongue darted out, almost like a snake scenting the air. He inhaled deeply again. "If I had known you would let yourself be ruined, I would have taken the opportunity myself."
Anger exploded in my chest, and something broke free.
My hand came up, the metal cuff of my bracelet striking his head with a dull crack. Pain radiated up my arm as he went careening off to the side, landing in a heap on the stones.
As I moved to reach for him, he screamed like a petulant child. "Stop! Don't move!"
My fucking body betrayed me again. I stopped, my muscles frozen. I could not move again.
I looked down at the disgusting creature, and I wanted to pull my very bones out of my skin and use them to beat him to death. I would gladly have used my last breath of air to end his pathetic existence.
But I could do nothing. I was once again helpless, enthralled, enslaved.
I watched as a group of necromancers, all missing their last two fingers, came into the cell to lift the old man from where he had fallen onto the stone floor.
Blood trickled down the side of his head, and he had a dazed look on his face. My wrist throbbed from what I was sure were broken bones.
"That was very stupid," Aegis said angrily, pressing his hand to his head and staring at his bloody fingers.
He turned to the door and nodded to someone. After a moment, a guard stepped into the chamber—one of my Royal Guardsmen. His long gold and white embroidered cloak was swept back from his broad shoulders.
"Hold her," Aegis said, his voice rising as though some strong emotion was driving him.
The guard came around behind me and encircled me with his arms. It was a pointless gesture since I could not even shift the muscles in my legs to right myself as the guard pulled me off balance.
Aegis reached down and pulled one of my feet out before me, turning it outward so that the side faced him. He held his cane by the tip and brought the rounded head down violently onto the side of my foot.
I did not scream as he broke the bones in my foot. I could not scream. I could not even flinch, even as it felt like my body might catch fire from the need to do something—anything to end it.
The next foot was worse, since I knew what was coming. The pain was enormous. It blocked out all the world around me, reducing it to nothing but the sharp torment of my shattered bones.
My eyes rolled around in my head. The desperate attempt to break free again by moving the only part of me that was unbound, must have looked like madness.
I felt hot tears roll down my cheeks as I listened to the bones crunch and grind, the wet, thwack of my flesh under his frantic, rage-fueled blows.
I was more than just in pain. Pain was all I knew. It shot up my legs, raced through my hips, and landed in my chest where the torture of my immobility was still somehow worse.
"Chain her," Aegis spat as he reached down to clean the head of his cane on a fold of his robe. It was smeared with my clotted blood, but I could not even look down to see what he'd left of my feet.
Numbness came swiftly, so that all I felt was a burning, emptiness where my feet should have been. I knew the reprieve would not last for very long—not unless he had actually beaten them so badly, he'd severed them altogether.
That thought should have scared me, but the fear of the pain returning was so great that in that moment, I would have happily accepted amputation to avoid it.
Aegis came to stand before me, once again leaning on his cane.
