Page 16 of Empire of Light

More pain than I had ever felt in her. So vicious it sent the air around me to buzz.

Usually her pain was abated—at least slightly—by her struggle against it. She meditated, moved, screamed—anything to try to dispel the energy ravaging her from the inside out.

But this, she didn’t even fight. She’d just sunk into the purgatory of it, refusing to battle against it.

For three fucking days she’d existed in this shit stew.

Enough.

My foot stomped over the line, crashing through the invisible wall I’d put between us.

Into the cell and my entire body electrified for the pain that hung in the air like a thick cloud of smoke with nowhere to seep away.

The stench of it assaulted my nose, sparking every nerve in my body. Pain like this, I always reveled in. Thrived on.

And all I wanted to do was make it stop.

My footfalls thudded across the floor of the cell and she didn’t twitch, didn’t open her eyes.

I couldn’t hear it through the video feed, but here, in the haze of the cell, the softest tortured moans vibrated from her chest, barely audible. Not even conscious in effort, just the body’s natural response to pain that horrendous.

My toes next to her right arm, I stopped, staring down at her.

The memory that we’d been here before, done this exact same thing long ago flickered through my mind. Yet this wasn’t the same.

Last time, I’d wanted something. Wanted to take her pain away, yes, but I’d also wanted her to understand what I could do, how I could make her feel, the pleasure I could bring.

This time was different.

This time I only wanted one thing.

To take her pain away.

I straddled her body with my feet and then dropped to my knees, hovering over her.

Leaning forward, I threaded my fingers into her light hair and my lips went down onto the left side of her forehead. My mouth opened. No licking away the pain and twisting it into pleasure this time. This time I was only drawing out the pain. Sucking it deep into my lungs where it could sit and fester until I was able to negate its power.

Without twisting the pain into pleasure, it would have to exist in my body for some time, slowly dissipating on its own, but I wasn’t about to put her body through any more stress. Not after what it’d already been through.

My parted lips moved across her brow, millimeter by millimeter, sucking dry a spot, then moving onto the next. The pain fought me, coming out of her twisted, angry, trying to rip away from me to stay seated in her brain and create the chaos.

Almost like she wanted the pain to stay in place—wanted it to keep her down.

Up into her hairline, I had covered most of the right side of her forehead when I finally felt her body shift underneath me.

Her eyes didn’t open, but her arms twitched at her sides, her elbows jabbing into my calves.

A groan, soft with relief from the abated torture drifted into my ears and I almost stopped to look down at her.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

Not with how I still hated her.

Not with how I knew even with that hate, I couldn’t watch her suffer any more.

My lips moved along her scalp, my breath sucking in the angry waves of pain that continued to undulate through her head. My fingers shifted about, siphoning off the easiest sparks of pain ahead of my lips.

The stew of pain deep in my lungs began to ache and throb, there was so much of it, but I pushed forth, determined to not leave the room until there wasn’t a trace of pain sending the slightest quiver into her limbs.