Page 139 of Veinblood
“No!” Her footsteps move closer rather than retreat. “I said I’m not going anywhere.”
His eyes dart between us, and his expression shifts. Desperation mixes with malicious opportunity, turning into the look of a cornered animal preparing to bite.
“Do you want to know what I think? I think she’s here because she likes it. She likes watching you hurt people. She likes seeing what you become when you stop pretending to be civilized.”
I raise the whip again, but he’s not finished.
“Tell me, sweetling.” His head turns in Ellie’s direction, his voice taking on the same oily tone he used when describing his techniques to Sereven. “Does it excite you, watching him kill people with his shadows? Or watching what he’s doing now? Maybe seeing him covered in blood?”
“Careful,” I warn, shadows coiling tighter around him.
“She’s probably wet from watching you torture me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts touching herself while you?—”
“Stop talking."
“—gets off on violence, just like you do. That’s why she’s really here. Not for justice, but because your little whore thinks she can watch?—”
“I said stop talking.”
“Why? I’d love to have her in my chains. Do you know what I’d do to her?” He licks his lips. “I’d strip her bare. I’d brand her from the inside. I’d make her beg for it. I bet she’d beg so prettily. I’d carve my ownership into her skin. I’d pull out her teeth, and fix her mouth open so I could fill it whenever I wanted. I’d chain her in the corner of my workshop, legs wide, mouth open, ready to receive whatever I?—”
Shadows explode from everywhere. They slam into him with the force of a battering ram, driving him so hard against the wall that the stone cracks. His screams cut off as shadow shaped claws tear into his throat, shredding vocal cords and windpipe.
The red haze that descends is absolute. I’m not torturing him anymore, I’m destroying him. Tearing him apart with a fury that burns through me like molten metal.
My hand closes around what’s left of his throat, shadows flowing from my fingers into his flesh.
“Say it again.” My voice is barely human. “Say one more word about her.”
But he can’t. The shadows are eating him from the inside, devouring everything that made him capable of speech, of thought, of existing in the same world as her.
His eyes bulge as he chokes on his own blood. I drive my fist into his face, breaking his nose, his jaw, everything that let him speak those words about her. The shadows follow my rage, slashing deeper with every heartbeat, turning bone to powder and flesh to ribbons.
“Sacha!” A voice cuts through the roar of blood in my ears. “Sacha, stop!”
I grab his head and slam it back against the wall. Once. Twice. The crack of his skull echoes through the chamber. Again and again, until the wall is painted red and there’s nothing left to suggest it was once someone’s head.
“Sacha!” Hands grab my shoulders, pulling me back with surprising strength. “He’s dead. He’s already dead.”
But I still don’t stop. Not until the thing hanging from my shadows bears no resemblance to the man who once tortured me. Until every bone that could support the flesh hanging off it is crushed, every organ that could sustain life is destroyed.
When I finally allow myself to be pulled back, my chest is heaving. What hangs from the wall isn’t recognizable as human anymore.
“Are you back? Are you with me?” A warm hand touches my arm, and my head snaps around.
Ellie is standing there, blood spattered across her clothes and face, but her eyes are steady as she watches me. She saw all of it. Every moment of savagery, every second I lost control. Every brutal instant where I became the monster the bastard said I was.
“Sacha?” Her voice is careful, gentle.
“I’m here.” The words come out rough. I look down at my hands. They’re shaking and covered in blood up to the elbows. My clothes are soaked with it. “You should have left. You shouldn’t have seenme?—”
“I saw you get justice.”
“You saw me lose control because he insulted you.” I can’t meet her eyes. The thing that was once a man drips blood onto the floor. I watch each drop splash and spread out. “You saw what I become when someone threatens you.”
“I saw you defend what matters to you.”
I force myself to face her, this woman who stood in a torture chamber and watched me tear apart another human being without flinching.
