“Reserves are terribly low,” Demetri is quick to spill. “The faction has instated a treble until each year’s needs have been met, and here we are, two years later, thirsty as ever. I’m afraid we’ll need to devise a clever scheme to replenish the supplies.”
He expels a wicked grin when he says the words “clever scheme” and it incites me to believe he’s already mastermind one.
A blond man with a pale face, dressed in black from head to toe, comes upon us in the hall, and Demetri takes a clipboard from him. “Wonderful. It will be youth council then.”
I recognize the man with silver colored spectacles hovering over his notes as Ellis’s father, Morley Harrison.
“Hello—Skyla, Logan.” He gives a polite nod to the two of us before dipping back to his work, banal as if he had passed us on the streets of Paragon.
“Shit.” Logan seethes as he sweeps on by.
Demetri continues to lead us through the tunnel of my discontent. Gilded carvings of long vines slither over the walls, assaulting our vision from above as they take over the crown molding. It reminds me of the body art Emily inflicted on me during ski week. Gage was supposed to be the vine, the one constant that traced all over my frame, bleeding into my future with the promise of forever. And now here I am, a prisoner locked in this hellish vineyard—my blood the wine.
We walk for miles down the elaborate hall before hitting a set of black double doors with large gnarled fingers that protrude as handles. God—I bet they’re the petrified hands of some poor Celestra. I can just imagine Demetri dipping them into molten iron with glee while they were still very much attached to their unwilling donor.
“Logan,” Demetri says, giving a slight bow, “you’re to do what is asked of you. I’ve assigned a principality who will lead you through the procedures.” He lowers his gaze to me. “Mr. Harrison informed me there were enough captures to bring the supplies to somewhat sufficient levels. I’m going easy on you, Skyla.” He bears his teeth. “I’m gifting you to a youth pledge. I’ll let the Elysian decide which one.” He glances back at Logan and something wicked flickers in his eyes as if there were sexual implications involved for me.
My heart picks up pace as Demetri reaches for the handle. A panic quickens in me like a bull at the gate. My entire body is numb from shock and my limbs lock up at the joints.
“Please don’t do this.” I plead for one final act of mercy from the purveyor of this affliction, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t acknowledge my cry for help.
The door opens. A cool breeze licks against my face, my lips. It tastes my fear, taunts me with its icy tongue, lets me know I’m no longer my own.
An expansive darkness greets us on the other side. An owl cries out—a bloom of fog filters through the arid space before revealing a forest dipped in midnight. Another cry erupts, then another.
Dear God—those aren’t animals howling into the night, they’re people—Celestra—my people.
“No,” I cry out in a panic.
“I tried to send you home.” Demetri sharpens his features. He gave me the option at the stone and I refused to leave Logan. “You chose to be here.” He widens the entry apathetically. “Bring her in,” he instructs.
Logan picks me up and cradles me in his arms. I’ll die before I let them hurt you.
He bounces a soft kiss onto my head before walking us through the door.
***
An overwhelming darkness, a blackness you can feel and taste, embraces us. A cool mist baptizes our flesh. It holds the hint of a peculiar scent, something metallic and bitter that I’ve never been exposed to before.
“I’ve left instructions with your principality, Ingram. Pay careful attention to whatever he tells you. Follow his commands, or it will cost you everything,” Demetri says, laying his icy hand over my forehead as if he were offering some sort of satanic blessing. His cold palm has me recoiling from his touch and burrowing deeper into Logan’s chest. “I’ll see you both on Paragon.” And with that he evaporates.
I jump out of Logan’s arms and land with a thud on the soil of this wicked forest. A primal howl comes from the abyss of darkness. Screams, moans, and wails go off at regular intervals like a heartbeat. This is no room, no architecture of man holding us within its haunted walls. This is an evil thicket, a dimension of terror all its own.
“Let’s get out of here.” I try to pull Logan out the way we came, but the doorway—the walls—they’re gone.
A glowing creature appears from nowhere, a man with grey skin that illuminates a dull phosphorescent. “Ingram.” His lips spread into the idea of a smile. “Death will come to the Elysian if you escape,” he says without moving his lips. His sodden eyes reflect an eerie yellow like that of an animal. He has a quiet way about him that neither alarms nor charms me. The translucent clipboard in his hand lights up like a laptop with a strange font visible from both front and back. “Both humiliation and torture are dispensed. I know this as a fact,” he assures. “I’m in charge of doling out the two.” He pulls his lips into a bleak line and points down a dim lit path. “Seventh chamber to your left.”
“Chamber?” I gasp at the thought. There are only two kinds of chambers I’m even vaguely familiar with: one has to do with shacking up with Marshall under the sheets, and the other has the word “torture” associated with it. Right about now I’d opt for Marshall a thousand times over. It would be heaven to gift myself to Marshall in lieu of this insanity. I close my eyes and will him to be here, to touch me. I’d wrap my naked limbs around him and let him have me in a dozen animalistic ways if he wanted so long as I was free from this nightmare. Marshall corrupts my thoughts as I imagine his tongue burning a line of fire straight down my chest, his fingers kneading into my bare thighs as he dives down below my belly with a rash of heated kisses.
Logan rattles my hand. Skyla?
Sorry. I give a desolate smile. I can’t help it. I’m stressed.
Logan moves us at a decent clip through thick-robed darkness. Walls open up to our left, rooms without doors, just large expansive clearings lined with cages. I slow down and observe the incomprehensible sight.
“Oh my God.” I breathe the words. A wave of nausea fills me, and passing out would be a welcome reprieve.
People in every shape and size imaginable fill those oversized gorilla cages. Men sitting on the floor, women bustling against the bars with their hands held out in despair.
Farther down, a little girl sits alone. She springs to her feet when she sees me and presses her tiny body against the bars. Her pale stone eyes gaze out at me, her lips an ashen blue, skin the color of plaster. With everything in me, I want to take her back where she belongs—volunteer to die in her place. I slip away from Logan and bolt toward the chamber they hold her hostage in and her face enlivens with hope.
“Help me,” she calls, reaching out for me in haste.
I snatch up her hand and press her tiny fingers to my lips in a kiss.
“What’s your name?” I ask, uncertain of how I could ever help her.
“Lacey.” Her little hand trembles in mine. “My mom is out there, but they always bring her back.”
I glance down at her neck for signs of bruising, or puncture wounds but I see neither.
“Elysian,” Ingram barks. “Retrieve her immediately.”
I give a quick glance behind my shoulder at the irate old fool.
“I’ve gotta go.” This is the part where I should promise to rescue her, to free her and her mother from the horror of this evil den. But I’m not sure I can keep that promise.
“Skyla.” Logan wraps his arm around my waist. I’m sorry, Skyla. We’ll do what we can for her.
“I’ll come back,” I whisper, unsure if I ever will.
Her serious eyes ingrain themselves in my mind. Her desperate face, her frail body tattoos itself over my heart. It’s as if she’s willing it to happen to ensure I never forget about her, imprisoned here in misery.
“Come back for me,” she says.
It comes with a hiss, but it’s not until I see the tears swelling in her eyes do I realize she pushed those words out from a dam of grief.
I press my gaze into her and resolute the only way I know how without making a clear promise to this sweet innocent child. “I will try my best to come back for you, Lacey. You and your mother.”
“Now,” Ingram barks.
Logan pulls me from the cell and back onto the blackened pathway.
I glance back at Lacey as she wipes tears from her eyes.
Shit. If I didn’t hate this hellhole enough before, I despise it now. I’ll get Lacey out if it costs me every drop of blood in my body. I hope it doesn’t, but I’m pretty sure it will.
“Logan,” I hiss at his eagerness to deposit me into some youth council’s waiting arms.
“No, no.” The guide temporarily disrupts our journey. “You must never again address the Elysian by his proper name. He is to be referred to as Master at all times.” His gaze shifts to Logan. “You must either punish or humiliate your subject in the event she refuses to address you properly. You must be prompt with your consequence. Should you forgo chastisement of such behavior, you’ll receive a demerit.” He leans in. “Three demerits and you, my friend, are out—in a rather slow yet violent manner. If it’s one thing the Countenance takes seriously, it’s the ritual in which they carry out their ceremonies. The proper exaltation of their being is of utmost importance.”
“Good to know,” I seethe. I’ll be sure to spit in Demetri’s eye the next time I’m within striking distance. Obviously, my bodily fluids were wasted on Marshall. It was Demetri I should have been going after all along. Master my ass.
“Be glad, Skyla darling.” It comes out cold, like a reprimand. “And do not forget—he is your Master, and there is no other.” Ingram’s face illuminates a little brighter. It reminds me of the sickly glow you get from a flashlight just before the batteries expire.
We proceed down the torture trail, and another chamber opens up to our left. The glint of metal catches my attention. A rope hangs from a lone bar in the center of the room as a blue fog penetrates the baron space. The next chamber stretches wide like a mouth, expansive and cavernous, ready to swallow me whole. It hardly qualifies as a room. Evil pulses from its skeletal frame as alive as Demetri himself.
A lone chain hangs from a crossbar with opened metal cuffs.
“Strap her in,” he instructs. “I’ll retrieve the council.”
I look to Logan with a biting pain in my heart. I asked him to stay, to do this to me willingly, and now we were both regretting my decision.
He looks to the bar, then back to me. He presses a lifeless kiss against my lips before scooping me in his arms and running like hell.
Chapter 5
Pain in the Offering
We move swift as shadows through the ever-increasing darkness. Logan jostles us through a murky fog, thick as grief, before a large bearlike creature blocks our path.
Logan lowers me to my feet without taking his eyes off the beast. Its head has been badly burned, and beneath the scars, lie the faint features of a man with fangs that dip down to its chin.
“Run,” he says, getting down on his knees and bowing in defeat to the misshapen Fem.
“No.” I pull at his shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Ingram materializes like an apparition before Logan can get on board with the run-like-hell-from-the-Fem plan.
“There is no escape, Skyla.” Ingram steps into me. “Logan, your council status will be denied, and your prisoner status invoked, should you choose to rebel once more. I’m feeling rather soft this evening. Don’t test me again.” Ingram places his hand on my shoulder, and within a moment I’m in the chamber again with a lone chain hanging from the bar up above and Logan nowhere in sight.
“Where is he?” I ask the bastard who dared to separate Logan and me.
“I’m afraid he’s detained at the moment.” His grey skin wrinkles into the idea of a smile.
A million versions of what that might mean pulsate through my mind.
“You’re a Levatio.” I say it as fact. Levatio are the only ones I know capable of teleportation.
“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” he says nonplused as he glosses over his clipboard. “Wrists in the manacles, please. Drag this out another ten seconds and I’ll replace the junior council with a Count so perverse you’d rather lick vomit off my feet than be subject to his touch.”
“There was a little girl back there,” I say, cinching the makeshift dress tight around my body and securing it at the top. So help me God if this velvet toga falls off—although I suppose my dignity is low on the priority list compared to what Logan is up against. I raise my arms voluntarily to the cool metal and the bracelets automatically latch over my wrists.
“Many children reside in the tunnels.” Ingram doesn’t look up from his clipboard. “There’s nothing you or I can do about it. Tragic, isn’t it?”
“So are you a prisoner here, too?”
He glares over at me, his finger frozen midflight above the razor thin device. “None of your business.”
Curious.
The last thing I want to do is piss him off. He’s already invoked his supposed mercy once, and personally, I’m hoping for a replay.
“Is this going to hurt?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Most certainly. Although on the rare occasion it evokes pleasure. Let’s hope for the latter.” He scans me with his unearthly yellow eyes. “That boy—he loves you.” It comes out as fact. “I believed in love once.” A sour smile plays on his lips. “Tell you what—seeing that your master is presently occupied, I’ll bring in the junior council and let you choose the celebrant who’ll drain you. Fair?”
I find it amusing he managed to follow up the words drain me with the word fair with a straight face. But in truth my arms are already killing me in this exaggerated position, so I go along with it.
“Fair.” A thin film of fog expels as I say it.
A hard groan—a scream from a distinctly familiar voice emits from the bowels of this hellhole.
“Logan,” I shout his name in one agonizing cry. I struggle to break free, but the bracelets lock over my wrists tighter than before, cutting off the circulation on my right.
I still my breathing as I try to listen for him. God, what if they’ve killed him? My chest heaves with a dry sob at the thought of losing Logan. The idea of him suffering because of me is too much to bear.
Ingram reappears with four boys about my age; two darker looking souls with nefarious grins that lend me to believe they might actually run around in the world with Kragger as their surname, a frail-looking boy with a shock of red hair, who openly sneers at me, and an open-faced boy with dark hair—eyes like brilliant peridots. He looks eerily similar to Gage, like he could be a brother, a twin, right down to the dimples.
“You,” I say, accusingly.
His eyes widen. For whatever reason, he wasn’t expecting to make the cut, and he nods as if to thank me.
“You’ve chosen Wesley.” Ingram waves the other boys away. A necrotic blue fog wafts over them, and they disappear quick as they came.
The boy comes forward, steady in his gait. His broad shoulders and muscular arms remind me in every way of my former love, the boy who fashioned a knife out of Chloe and pummeled my heart with her.
Ingram secures a pair of shackles over my ankles, foiling any plans I might have had of introducing my knee to my new suitor’s balls. He pulls down on a metal chain from behind, and my arms and legs separate a good two feet. It feels vulnerable like this, altogether wrong and perverse.
I glance behind him in the navy forest for any sign of Logan, the sound of his voice, of his footsteps, but there’s nothing.
“Wesley.” The boy reiterates his name instead of hello. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.” His eyes soften as he dusts me with his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he offers before licking his lips. He blinks a depleted
smile and steps in close, nuzzles his face into my neck without any further sentiment or ceremony. His arms encircle my waist as a soft moan escapes him. If we were anywhere but here, if my limbs weren’t stretched taut until my bones were on fire, you would think he was my boyfriend, that he was about to shower me with his lingual affection—that I wanted it.
His black hair catches the light, and for a brief heartbreaking moment, I fool myself into believing its Gage—the one I thought I knew, but it’s not. It’s some twisted nightmare devised by the Counts. I wish that this were nothing but a dream. That I could open my eyes and my father would still be alive—that Paragon and all of its inhabitants were nothing but a figment of my imagination.
Logan’s voice rips through the night. He’s fighting for his life because of me, and here I am, inadvertently wishing he never existed.
Wesley’s teeth graze along the left side of my neck just under my jaw. I can feel the puncture, feel the first slow pull, and I take a breath and hold it—forget to let go.
This demon—this boy, takes in my blood with a greedy fervor.
Logan lets out a horrific growl every few seconds. I can’t bear his torment. I wish he were home, at the bowling alley—coiled around Lexy Bakova’s body, anywhere but here suffering because of his love for me.
A strangled silence settles over the chamber—nothing but the quickened pace of Wesley’s breathing fills the interim.
“Logan,” I whisper. As unbearable as it was to hear him, not hearing him feels a hell of a lot worse. I’ll make this up to him. I’ll spend my life trying to do just that.
A sob quivers from my chest. I try to focus in on Wesley, so I don’t lose it. A caramel-haired girl fills his thoughts. At first I’m afraid to venture any deeper, in fear this is about to morph into some fornicating bonanza, but he doesn’t go there. Wesley envisions himself dropping to his knees, holding a small velvet box between the two of them like an offering. She nods, ecstatic at the proposal, prompting him to his feet. He takes her face in his hands, cradles her with a kiss that’s almost chaste. Every cell in his body radiates his love for her.