Page 4 of Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)
“I will starve you and beat you every day until I am allowed to murder you as you deserve,” my jailer announced on that first morning after waking me up with a deep stab into my chest, just a few inches north of my heart.
“I will make you suffer as she did,” he announced. “I will ensure that you die alone and in pain. And when your flame extinguishes, you’ll know you brought this upon yourself. Both figuratively and literally.”
He smiled as he told me this, his golden eyes gleaming with hate. And then he began what would become my daily torture.
Every morn he pummeled me until at least one bone in my shell broke with a sickening crack. Then he scored the knife along the worst of the bruises he’d made, just as I had with the Betrayer King, while telling me exactly what I’d done to invite his wrath.
He spoke the old language in a soft, melodic whisper. But the slow slashes of the knife between each pronouncement made his words sound as harsh as the music the cattle called thrash metal.
“This is your punishment for never properly revering your fated mate.” Slash. “You must suffer as she suffered.” Slash. Slash. “You deserve this and worse.” Slash. Slash. Slash.
However, after the knife play, there came one divergence from my previous torture protocol. Instead of leaving me to heal in my shell, he snapped my right arm. The same one the North Dakota queen broke when she charged into me that first night of her capture.
The unexpected break from my protocol had surprised me into yelling out that first morning, my voice slamming into the duct tape he’d placed over my mouth. But I quickly learned not to show such weakness again.
“Remember how you stood over her and watched her like a bug until she passed out?” he asked. Before breaking my other arm as well. “This is what will happen when you protest your most deserved punishment. I will hurt you double-fold.”
I had relished the so-called protests of those I’d tortured. I often hadn’t stopped until they cried out as I had, or even better, begged for mercy. So no, he was not quite like me.
But somehow he was me.
He had my face and he wore my clothes. His golden eyes were no longer hidden by custom contacts. And his forked tongue was no longer capped to appear and sound the same as a human’s. But other than that, he looked exactly like me.
It was unfortunate that I was unable to talk, for I had many questions.
Questions like why are you doing this? And perhaps more importantly, how are you doing this?
The first few mornings, his eyes glowed bright with a crazed gleam I recognized well after keeping the Betrayer King imprisoned for so long. But as the weeks went by, his mad eyes calmed. And then one day he came down the stairs with a large smile upon his face, and he once again broke from my original torture protocol.
Usually, he beat me first, but that morn he picked up the butcher knife straight away. He kept the knife the gatekeeper had used to slash his throat on a little worktable by the stairs. Close enough for me to see, but too far for me to reach in my shackles.
“She has honored me as she has never honored you,” he told me with particular relish that morning. Slash. “By choice and enthusiastically.” Slash. “And this makes me want to hurt you even more.” Slash. “How could you have failed so horribly to pay our fated mate her due reverence?” Slash. “She is everything you do not deserve.” Slash. “She is worthy of her new title, Queen of Drakkon. But you…the only thing you have earned is this.”
As if to punctuate his point, he raised his fist to punch me.
“Damianos…?”
My tormentor froze mid-blow, his eyes snapping to the ceiling at the sound of Ola calling out his name.
Your name too, I reminded myself. That was the first time I realized I was beginning to forget who I was. A living being who used to be called Damianos Drákon.
This was how my torture protocol worked. I made sure my victims were in so much pain, they couldn’t think clearly. Eventually, the mental degradation would become so great, they would barely remember their own names, much less formulate a plan to escape.
There had been a drakkon from Zone 5 who had thought to overthrow me. But after enduring similar torture at my hand, he’d slunk back to the region now called Russia and had never been heard from again.
Would I ever be heard from again?
My prospects seemed grim in those moments of remembering what I had forgotten.
But then, my torturer suddenly dropped his fist. Without another word to me, he bounded up the stairs, heeding the she-wolf’s call. And the next thing I heard was the door clicking shut.
