Page 107 of Empire of Dark
An ugly orange. The type of orange that makes one recoil, curls one’s tongue just by looking at it.
Orange that was coming at me at blinding speed until it crashed into me and there was no pulling back.
I was in it.
I was living in the memory as Ada…
My eyelids tried to move. Move over my eyeballs that had been scraped until they were bloody and I was blind. Days ago.
It’d taken days for them to heal enough for me to even try to open my eyes.
The crust of blood along my lashes tore and cracked as I forced my eyelids open.
I blinked. Blinked again, then closed my eyes for I knew if I kept my eyes open, the next wave of torture would be upon me. Someone was always watching. Waiting. Ready.
But I had to see Lyle.
I’d heard his whimpers during these past days, the sound mangled through my broken left eardrum. Excruciating, tortured sounds, even if he was trying to ignore the pain. The soft whimpers were the only things that I could hear, and they echoed relentlessly in my ears. My tongue had grown back, but I’d been afraid to talk to him. Afraid of who would answer.
So I’d waited, still as the dead with the pain unbearable, for what had to be days.
Another blink and air hit my eyeballs. Air that stung, for there was little moisture to lubricate my eyes, each blink like sandpaper across my irises.
There. Color, shapes.
A fire in the enormous fireplace with a cauldron poised above the roaring flames. Fat stones of an ancient foundation embedded deep in the ground were around us. No light other than the fireplace and the candles. The stench of rancid rot thick in my nose.
The fog in my brain lifted just as a voice cut harshly into the air.
“Good of you to join us once more.” Cletus. Everyone called this one Cletus. The one in charge. Not the other one, Eustice, who I thought was in charge until this one showed up. Cletus. Handsome but with evil seeping out every pore until he becamethe ugliest man on earth. The one that had been trying to steal all my secrets—break me.
When there was nothing to break.
I didn’t have the answers he wanted from me.
“Pl-pl-please.”
“Pleases are for the weak, and you are not weak, littleTatou. You are very, very tough, yet you still refuse to share your secrets with me.” He moved in front of me, his eyes level with mine and I realized I was upright, my body strapped onto an iron X behind me that wouldn’t let me move. Shackles around my wrists, my ankles, and my waist pinned me upright. A metal band across my forehead kept my head from dipping.
“Secrets I need to know. I will tell you, you have surprised me. Though I do not know why, for I should have known you would be hard to break with your skin.” He leaned in close, strands of his greasy hair brushing against my eyebrows. “But we are all reaching the end of our patience. You tell me how your skin does what it does and I will set your man free.”
Lyle.
Where was he? My heart started pounding out of control. Not again. Not this. Again and again and again.Please. Not this.
“Stanley—light him up again. She’s awake enough to hear. To see.”
The hairs on my scalp spiked as electricity sizzled into the air, crackling.
Then the scream. Lyle’s mangled scream and I was able to follow the sound and find him. There. They had him strapped to a table, his legs and chest bound with chains.
His stomach split open. Entrails spilling about him.
And above him was the silver spear that bled electricity out of the end of it, bright sparks burning black dots into my retinas. A spear that descended, operated by two men, going deep into Lyle’s open stomach and jabbing about.
His screams filling my head. His body jerking out of control with the pain.
Ripping my chest in two.