Willing Sacrifice
Page 28

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been raving mad. And with good reason.
The Synestryn had taken her when she was a child. They’d raised her, fed her their poisonous blood in an effort to alter her body so she could bear their young. She’d been their prisoner for most of a decade, and when she’d finally been rescued, it was too late. She’d been tortured beyond imagination. The offspring she’d delivered had died almost instantly. From the rumors Torr had heard, it might not have been the first stillborn child she’d delivered.
Tori had survived those horrors, but her mind was damaged. She was wild, violent. The taint of demon blood running through her veins had changed her into a fierce and savage creature. Only her sister’s pleading and a pledge of fealty to Brenya had earned Tori a ticket to this place and a possible escape from her pain.
Looking into her eyes now, Torr could see that Brenya’s efforts had failed.
“I will kill you,” promised Tori, digging her knife a bit deeper into his skin.
He felt blood trickle down his ribs, but ignored it. The pain was trivial. The damage she could still do to him was the real concern.
Torr took a breath and let it out before he dared speak. When he did, he kept his tone soft and quiet, as he would when speaking to a wild animal. “You can kill me, but I’d prefer you didn’t.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I know what you want to do to Grace. I saw you.”
His cheeks heated in embarrassment, less because of what he’d been doing than because Tori had been close enough to see them and he hadn’t noticed. “I would never hurt Grace.”
The knife lowered toward his naked groin. “You were stiff. You wanted to hurt her.”
“That wasn’t about pain. I know what you’ve been through, but—”
The knife dug into his lower stomach, way too close to his dick for comfort. “You don’t know anything. Don’t pretend like you do.”
He lifted his hands wider, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible. As tall as he was, that wasn’t the easiest feat to accomplish. “Okay. I don’t know. But there are things you don’t know either.”
That caught her attention. He could feel the subtle shift of pressure traveling through the blade slicing into his skin a fraction of an inch. Her grip had relaxed. Not enough for safety, but a little.
“Like what?” she asked.
“What you saw between me and Grace was about love, not pain.”
“She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t even know you anymore. Brenya says we can’t tell her.”
“You’re right. She doesn’t know me. But I know her, and I’d never do anything to hurt her.”
“Then why were you stiff and bulging?”
Poor Tori. She really had no idea about how the world was supposed to work. All she knew was pain, blood, hunger and death.
Torr made sure that none of his pity for the girl showed on his face. While she was physically a grown woman now, inside she was still a child—a feral one who would not appreciate his sympathy for her. In the world of the Synestryn—the world she’d grown up in—pity was weakness, and weakness was to be cut out, culled from the herd.
He chose his words carefully. “I was aroused because I wanted to make her feel good, make her happy.”
Tori snorted in derision and slid the blade to his balls. “You were going to hurt her. Admit it.”
“No. I won’t. I swear I would never hurt Grace.”
“Vow it.”
“What?”
“Use the words of power. Bind yourself to your lies. If you say the words, you have to obey them.”
Torr looked her in the eye. “I promise I will never intentionally hurt Grace.”
“Promise you won’t put that thing in her.”
“No. That’s none of your business. You don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to sex.”
The blade nicked his skin deeper, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from flinching.
“Promise me!” shouted Tori.
This was not going to end well. He’d used up all the patience he could spare. If he didn’t do something now, she was going to do irrevocable damage.
Torr stopped pretending he was harmless and unleashed his power. A blurring burst of speed later, Tori was disarmed and her back was pinned against his front, his arms caging her. She kicked, but the water slowed her down and robbed her of any strength behind her blows.
He felt the moment that she shifted from anger to panic. Her limbs became rigid, and the sour stink of fear poured out of her. Her screams rose an octave, and there was no more intellect to her blows, only pure instinct.
His heart broke. This poor girl had been damaged beyond even Brenya’s ability to repair. There was nothing left for him to do but put her out of her misery.
He gathered a glowing pulse of power and shoved it out his fingers. “Sleep,” he ordered.
Tori fell limp in his grip. He carried her to the shore, then dressed in wet clothes before taking her back to the village. He hoped that when she woke in the morning she’d be calmer, but he wasn’t going to hold his breath.
A girl like Tori didn’t have any calm left in her. The Synestryn had taken it, leaving behind only fear and rage. If he hadn’t already vowed to kill every one of them he could, she alone would have been enough reason to do so.
The only chance she had now was to find the male Theronai who was compatible with her. Maybe he would be able to reach past the crazed violence enough to touch the woman Tori would have been had she not been kidnapped as a child.
Then again, giving someone like Tori access to the almost unlimited power housed inside a male Theronai was one of the worst ideas he could imagine.
Maybe she was better off here where she could do only minimal damage, where she could live out the rest of her years in as much peace as someone like her was able to find. It was the least she deserved for her lifetime of suffering.
•   •   •
Grace slipped into Brenya’s hut before dawn. She needed answers. Now.
“You should have already left, child,” said the older woman. She was wrapped in a fur, huddled against the morning chill.
“I will soon. But first I need to know something.”
“I’ve given you all the knowledge you need.”
“No, it’s something else. I need to know if I was married.”