Abby looked down at Rune, a spark of surprise lighting her odd eyes. She eased the pressure of her fingers immediately. At last, she nodded. “The witch was growing tired of the…the game. The torturer knew she had one, maybe two days left before her cruel mistress would order her thrown back into the dungeons to live out the rest of her life in darkness and regret.
“Perhaps she would order the torturer to become the tortured. The bird would not become the torturer—there was no fear in that. There was not enough spirit left in her. There was not enough strength left in her. She hung on the wall of the castle and became fodder for the carricorns.”
Cree was suddenly silent.
“She’s fainted,” one of the prisoners murmured.
“Then the torturer decided with her one or two days remaining as entertainer of the witch and torturer of the bird, she’d do something drastic to gain that elusive and oh so desirable favor.”
“What did you do?” Rune asked. Her hoarse voice hurt her throat, but still she didn’t lick the water from the floor.
It wasn’t like the thirst would kill her.
“I’d done everything there was to do to the poor thing,” Abby said, not even a little surprised that Rune knew or dared to call her out as the torturer. “I’d cut off body parts and allow her to shift to regrow them. I’d…well, there is no use detailing all the horrors done to her, is there? Except one. That last one.”
“What did you do?” Rune asked again, a little stronger. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Get up now,” Abby said, suddenly. She forced her fingers off Rune’s head with a sound like sucking air. “Hurry before…hurry.”
Rune didn’t have the strength to get up—not without help.
Nikolai grabbed her arms and jerked her away from Abby. “Good girl, Abby.”
Abby ignored him. She dropped her face into her hands and gulped, over and over and over, as though a chunk of meat had caught in her throat and refused to go down.
Finally, she lifted her head. “I took the only thing she had left. I took her wings. One feather at a time, one scream at a time, I took her gorgeous wings.
“I took her wings, and I took her ability to shift.” She shook her head. “She was a huge, magnificent eagle. Now she is a husk waiting to die. Wishing she could die.
“But she will not die, because she has been ordered by the witch not to.”
And Wicked Abby laughed and laughed.
Somewhere deep in the wet shadows, Cree Stark wept.
Rune realized Nikolai had pulled her to his lap when his erection pressed against her backside. “Are you fucking kidding me,” she hissed.
“It has been a very long time since I have held such power in my arms,” he said.
“Power,” she scoffed. “I have no power left, vampire. The witch has it all. Jerk off to images of her.”
Abby stopped laughing and turned her back to all of them, twirling her long, unkempt hair around her fingers.
“Princess,” Nikolai said, suddenly stern. “She has only what she could snatch. You are the princess, and the power of Skyll is inside you. No one can steal that. Heal, daughter of Skyll. Heal, and get us the fuck out of hell.”
Excited murmurs followed his plea, and Rune’s heart picked up speed.
Could it be?
Was there something left inside her?
She leaned back against Nikolai, no longer caring if his dick was hard.
In the grand scheme of things, a hard dick was the least of her problems.
So she closed her eyes and drifted down, deeper and deeper, into the recesses of her mind. Her soul.
Her spirit.
There was no monster.
But there was something else.
She felt it.
A spark, a brightness.
A power.
Hiding, maybe, from Damascus.
When she finally caught sight of it, she grabbed it with both hands, sank her teeth into it, and pulled that motherfucker to the surface.
She would heal, eventually.
She would study the power inside her.
And as soon as she figured out what it was and how to use it, she was going after the horror that was Damascus.
Once and for all.
And then she was going the fuck home.
If, of course, the echoes had not deserted her.
Chapter Forty-One
“I need your help,” she said. “If you want out, you have to fucking fight. Use your fear!”
Snow had begun to visit her in her dreams.
“I’m damaged, Snow.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. Close your eyes. Open your heart. Let me in.”