Forcing those sparks far, far away, he focused on her hand. Hecouldn’t help but notice the dirt coating her fingers, the broken fingernails, and the dried blood caked on her exposed flesh.
Gods, he would kill Victor for this. Not today, and probably not tomorrow, but one day, he would destroy him.
Who had authorized letting this monster loose on Ryker’s wife? Rebel or not, she didn’t deserve this treatment.
No one deserved this.
Brynleigh whimpered, “That hurts.”
Wide-eyed, Ryker looked down, realizing he had an iron grip on her frail fingers. A curse that would’ve made even the most battle-hardened soldier blush slipped from his lips, and he loosened his hold.
As if she were a hundred and not twenty-nine, Brynleigh slowly pushed herself to her feet. Whatever magic Victor’s witch had been using to keep the Fledgling vampire at bay seemed to have drained Brynleigh’s strength. She trembled, her legs barely straightening, before her knees buckled.
“Fuck.” Ryker caught her before she could slam into the ground. “I've got you.”
That was the last straw. She wouldn’t be spending another hour in this prison. They should’ve brought her somewhere else. Somewhere civilized.
Maybe if he’d surfaced from his grief and anger long enough to wonder where she was, he could’ve prevented this.
But it was too late for maybes.
As Ryker wrapped his arms around Brynleigh and cradled her to his chest, he noted her skin’s frigid temperature. The opposite of a fever, it was like she was made of ice. Her skin was so pale beneath the blood and bruises that it was almost translucent.
He carried her towards the door and clung to the only truth he knew for certain: he wouldn’t let her die.
Even though she had planned to kill him, even though she’d ripped out his heart and stomped all over it, she was still his.
She’d always be his.
CHAPTER 2
Death Would Bring her Peace
Afew minutes ago
Brynleigh had been a fool to think she would never break under her tormenters’ hands.
It turned out that all it took was three weeks of continuous torture to reduce her from a functioning vampire to nothing but a physical embodiment of pain.
There wasn’t a single part of her that didn’t hurt. Her soul, her body, and her heart were all so broken and bruised that she couldn’t remember what life had been like before everything ached.
When Ryker asked if she could stand, Brynleigh barely stopped herself from laughing. Standing was the least of her problems. Breathing through the pain was nearly impossible.
After being surrounded by prohiberis for so long, she was nothing but a mortal suffering from endless torture.
Emilia, the witch, had done something to Brynleigh. She must have used her magic to stop the adverse effects of being a Fledgling vampire and going without blood for so long.
Brynleigh had no idea witches could be so powerful, but Emilia had already proven herself not to be a normal witch. Usually, staving offbloodlust and not losing her mind would’ve been a positive thing, but in this case, it just meant the torture could keep going and going.
Even now that Ryker had removed the prohiberis and pulled out the knife, Brynleigh wasn’t healing. That didn’t surprise her. Nothing would surprise her anymore.
She had too many injuries, she was too broken, and she hadn’t had nearly enough blood.
Her shadows were gone, and she couldn’t call upon her wings.
The physical pain wasn’t the worst of it, though. She could handle being in pain. She’d been injured countless times before.
No.