Wanted to save her. Help her.
Anything. Anything.Anythingbut this.
He mouthed that he was sorry. She mouthed back she was too.
“Fine,” Thellonius sneered. “Have it your way.”
Vesper’s bottom lip quivered as he watched the blade press into Briar’s throat. “Don’t hurt her! Don’t—don’t, don’t,don't!"And he roared until he thought his vocal cords would shred to bits.
Blood spilled from the wound, like sinking an axe into a paint can. He broke, slowly—pieces snapped off one by one.
She choked, sputtered, and her scarlet eyes matched the red soaking her, saturating her navy hair.
Vesper yelled or screamed, or at least he thought he did, but it was as if he watched from across the room, out of his body, out of his fucking mind.
Thellonius tossed Briar against the wall, and her limp body collided with the brick beside Callias with a sickening crunch. Vesper strained his eyes in the dark for anything: a rise in her chest, a twitch of her finger, but the thick pool of blood beneath her only grew by the second.
His Little Shadow lay there. A deep, inconsolable sob shook his core, his foundation, and his chin fell to his chest as heshattered. His world swam, and he couldn’t decipher reality from the faded blur.
Thellonius tilted his head at Vesper and studied him as ifhewere the freakshow. “You really care for that abomination, don’t you?” His black eyes matched Destonne’s, how evil seeped from their depths. “You think you won’t crack, but I may know your weakness.”
Vesper grasped at reality as the world spun. What did he mean by weakness?
Thellonius’s sharp whistle cut through the air as he nodded toward the doorway. A creature lumbered forward, its arms wrapped around another female who fought with vicious intent.
Vesper’s blood iced over.
Blood stained her burgundy hair, splattered the side of her face. Her eyes were bruised and her lip split. Her tunic hung off her in shreds and jagged scratches marred her chest. Crimson soaked the bandage over her unhealed wounds from the fight with the Gravers.
“Kyrith,” he choked.
His relief to see her alive, quickly morphed into fear for her life.
Her head snapped up as she locked eyes with him across the room. The moment she saw him, fear flashed across her face to match his. Something he never thought he would see.
Thellonius kneeled on the ground before Vesper, a hungry spark of cruelty in his stare. “What you do now is your choice. Only yours. I know you’ve been spotted with that whore and you certainly know her whereabouts. So, I’ll ask one more time, before I dice her up until she doesn’t remember her own name.”
Bile climbed Vesper’s throat as he looked between his friends, Briar and Callias both bleeding and unconscious, and Kyrith in so much fucking danger.
Even as she struggled against the creature’s viney arms wrapped around her neck with her arms pinned behind her back, she shook her head. But this wasn’t up to her.
She wasn’t brought here for information.
She was here for leverage.
Vesper’s vision tunneled on her arm and the paint still there, the only thing that wasn't smeared or blood stained.
Thellonius surveyed her like a predator. “Such a pretty thing. Hair like wildflowers. And such fascinating eyes.” He bent to see her better or perhaps intimidate her to a withered lump. Kyrith didn’t retract. “Ah, but you don’t really need both, do you now? In fact, it seems one of them is useless as a dead limb.” His smile bordered pure evil.
Kyrith reared back and spat. The saliva struck Thellonius between his eyes, right in his fucking smug ass face.
He sneered and scrubbed a hand across his face, then gave the creature the briefest of nods. “Take her eyes. The good one first,” he ordered.
The creature lifted a dagger to her cheek and tipped the blade just so to puncture the skin below her eye. She only squeezed them shut.
Vesper couldn’t get any fucking air into his chest. He failed to even sit up, but he had to get to her. Had to stop this. Had to—
The blade drew a trickle of blood.