Page 49 of Empire of Dark
But where it was coming from, what was causing it, I couldn’t discern for the savage waves torturing her body.
My thumb slipped off her forehead and I leaned down, my face close to hers, my voice low. “What didn’t heal right?”
Her head shook slightly, the movement sending a fresh tsunami of pain sparking across her face. “When they took me apart.”
My muscles froze, my stare locked on her. “Who took you apart?” Fury started to pound through my veins. If one of my men had done this to her, I would rip them apart limb by limb, torturous second by torturous second.
“Long time ago.” She sucked in a breath, a pathetic moan eking out of her lips. “They ruined me. They went in through my nose. Tried to take out my brain. Twist it. But not to kill me.”
“Torture.” The word hissed between my tightly pulled lips as I tried to hide the smoldering rage in my blood. My mind went wild with what could have possibly been shoved up into her brain. I’d seen the most vicious torture in my day—my own hands bloodied by it as well—yet at the thought of someone doing this to Ada, my stomach turned, twisting into a hard knot.
“No—experiment.” She expelled a little sob, her voice cracking on every other word. “It didn’t heal right. The pain comes sometimes—when I have too much energy in my body and I can’t stop it—a tea kettle with no hole for the steam. But it hurts. So bad I just need to carve it out of my skull.”
“But you can’t.”
Her eyes opened to me and she shook her head, defeat so palpable in her eyes, it hurt to look at her.
“How long does it last?”
Her right hand dropped onto the floor, her fingernails digging into the stone as a fresh wave of pain lit her body, making it tremble. “Days.”
“Dammit to all hell, you’ve been like this for days?”
“Need to hide…too weak.” She curled into herself, trying to be still, trying not to breath as fresh agony ripped through her body.
Days. Fucking days and the whole while I’d been pissed and letting her suffer like this. Fordays.
“Where is it?”
“Nothing can be done.” Her words had dipped back down into the quivering whisper that was hard to hear. “Nothing. I’ve tried everything. Every healer has tried. There is nothing.”
“You’ve never had me.”
Her head lulled to the side to rest on her arm and she looked up at me, tears flooding her lower lashes. “You can’t do anything.”
“I’m a master at pleasure, Ada. You think I don’t know my way around pain?”
Her head shook and she took a breath in, gritting her teeth against the pain. “I don’t want help. Not from you.”
“Yet you’re getting it. You’re going to let me help you.”
“No.” She ducked her head under her arm, her body shaking as she curled into a ball like she could just disappear from sight.
My fingers went onto her shoulder and I almost snapped my hand away for the savage energy that spun up into my touch. “I can feel the pain in you and you can’t fight both the pain and me at the same time. I can already see that.”
It took long seconds and several tortured breaths before she uncurled her arm from in front of her face and she looked up at me. The defeat in her green eyes raw, breaking her in two. “What can you do?”
“Touch you.”
There it was. Her choice.
How bad was this? How bad was the pain? Horrendous enough to let me touch her?
She looked away, her stare off to the dank corner of the storage room. After an excruciating silence, her gaze shifted back to me. She nodded.
“I need to hear the words.”
Even through the pain, defiance flashed in her eyes. Defiance that was no match for the pain.