Fire (Pirate Cove Academy #3) - Rae Foxx Page 0,39

little icing on the payback cake.” She gestured to her Siren guards, “Put them all in this one. Against the walls.”

Another squeak of a door and we were brought into a stale and empty room except for chains that were attached to the walls. Caspian was first to get chained up. They cuffed his wrists and then his ankles before doing the same to the rest of us. Except our tails were chained to the wall instead of legs.

I’d give anything for legs at that moment. The cement walls behind me were cold and solid, already hurting me while I hung from the chains. Pearl had begun to fight against her binds, but finally gave up with a sigh.

We were so fucked.

Kai looked over at me and for the first time in our lives I couldn’t decipher the expression. I turned back to Raven.

“Why did you want to torture my father?” I felt sick even asking the question, but needed the answer more than my next breath.

She sneered and leaned against the opposite wall, looking at all of us like she was proud of her handiwork. “Because I was his daughter. The first daughter. Since my birth, it was clear that I was very powerful, and that’s when Daddy Dearest realized his mistake in having an affair with my mother. He’d created a monster, in his own words. He tried to kill me as an infant, but my mother intercepted. She took me away and hid me. So, at his first opportunity he killed her instead. But you two still had your mother. You were both so fucking carefree, enjoying being your royal selves. So I stayed in hiding, getting stronger by the day, finding a way to hunt your mother. After all, it was only fair. Your mother for the life of mine. I killed her easily enough, but your king, your father, came after me. I barely won the battle against him, but was able to get the Trident in the process. He pathetically tried to kill me with a harpoon, but failed, of course.” She pushed off the wall and began to pace. “You know, he knew what was happening at the school. He was scared of me since I took the trident that he just sat back and did nothing about it anyway. He knew all this time that I was coming for him but I wanted to make him suffer like he made me suffer. Pluck his children from him one by one so that when I went down there to kill him, he would die alone like my mother did. But you and your mother,” She turned to Caspian, “You ruined my fun. Well, most of it. I had my fun down Below already. So now I guess I get to torture you instead of him.”

14

“Zaniah, can you hear me?” Kai’s voice interrupted the small blip of sleep I was allowed between Raven or her goons coming in and the water. Gods, the water. Sometimes it was fresh water, like tiny needles raining down, burning my skin. Other times it was sea water that didn’t burn like the saltless kind, but kept us stranded in that space between Under and Above, never shifting, our legs never quite getting the chance to form again.

That pain alone was enough to make me pass out in between sessions of the watery torture. Some sleep to disguise the pain.

But not enough.

Not by a long shot.

Exhaustion was the worst torture of them all.

“I hear you,” I grumbled back at him. I wasn’t angry at him, simply being jerked back and forth between pain and relief, between sleep and awake. Between peeking at a glimmer of hope and then seeing it squashed in front of me.

I managed to pry my eyes open and looked at him. Concern marred his otherwise perfect face, those green eyes searching mine for something.

“You’re hurting again,” I said, trying to shift my body to give me some sort of semblance of comfort but finding none. We were chained to the wall like mounted dead animals, the pride of the person who put us there.

If I relaxed my body, my entire weight rested on my wrists to hold me up but if I stiffened and tried to use my tail, it raged against me in twisting pain that never seemed to end.

I wished I’d pass out again.

“I’m fine,” He replied, but as he moved his body he groaned. He hadn’t finished healing from the first transition,