CHAPTER FIVE

SHE NEVER CRIED, NEVER even gasped as the whip flayed her delicate skin.

Nicolai was chained to Odette’s bed. He hadn’t marked Jane as he’d wanted, but he was somehow attuned to her in a way he doubted he had ever been attuned to another. He should not have been able to focus on her, especially since he’d been fighting sizzling desire for her—her body, her blood—and all other thoughts had become fogged and insignificant in comparison.

Now, he felt fury. So much fury, and every bit of it was leveled on the guards.

They had dragged Jane along the opulent corridor filled with portraits of the queen and her daughters, down the winding stairs with dark velvet carpeting, and to the extravagant banqueting hall. Though she was no longer in the bedroom, Nicolai saw her still. As if their minds were somehow connected. She struggled the entire way. Only when they bent her over the dining table, her face pressed into the polished wood, only when they stripped away the back of her gown, had she settled.

Panting, she twisted her head to gaze over at the queen. The Queen of Hearts, a woman known to dine on the still beating organ during the spells and incantations used in her never-ending quest for youth.

“Don’t do this,” Jane pleaded. “I meant no offense.”

The queen raised one of her many chins, the ones beneath it jiggling. “And yet it was offense that you gave.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You will be more so.”

“Please,” Jane said, her skin both pallid with fear and bright with exertion. “Give me another chance.”

Perhaps the queen replied. Nicolai would never know. He was too focused on Jane’s back. Already she bore scars. More than he could possibly count. They twined from her spine to her rib cage, red and angry, badges of pain. They stretched past the robe’s gaping material, perhaps even riding the length of her legs.

What the hell had been done to her?

His guilt sprang back to instant, shattering life, and he was unable to destroy it this time. He had placed her in this situation. This delicate, haunted woman with the tantalizing scent, who had offered him the only glimpse of sunlight in a darkened void. She had come to save him, had trusted him enough to straddle him while talking to him. To rub against him, ratcheting his desire to unequaled heights, even without climax. And her resistance…gods, he’d wanted to quash it. Still did. Wanted her to know his bite, his kiss.

His possession.

Perhaps she was merely a challenge he had to triumph above. He didn’t care. Quite simply, she was his. That was not in question. Mine, his cells continued to scream. All mine.

He could not allow her to be whipped.

Nicolai looked at the key resting at his side. Jane had tossed it at him, and it had landed on the mattress. A brave gesture on her part, but useless. He could not bend enough to reach it with his mouth. He could not angle his hands to grab it. He could not do anything with it. Yet the fact that she’d tried, that she’d thought of him in the face of her own peril…affected him. He would escape. However necessary. He would save her.

Never before had he been left on his own outside of his cell, with no guards within sight or hearing distance. He jerked at his cuffs. The metal links scraped his already cut skin, digging deeper, deeper. He’d pulled at them while straining toward Jane, but at the time he hadn’t cared, hadn’t felt any sting but that of passion. Now, he felt the pain. That didn’t stop him, however.

Just as before, the latches held, both to him and to the bed. He gritted his teeth. His hate for Laila, her mother and even Delfina grew exponentially. Destroy…

He closed his eyes, concentrating on the power still swirling inside him. There it was, dark, so dark, churning, an untapped storm just waiting, desperate to be unleashed; and all he had to do was break through the glass cage that had been erected within him.

A glass cage with thin, riverlike cracks running through the center.

Exploit. He banged against the mental glass, over and over again. Nothing. He clawed at it. Still nothing. Damn it!

“Now,” he heard the queen say, pulling Nicolai back to the present. To Jane and their connection. Somehow, enough of his magic had escaped to allow him to continue watching her despite the distance between them.

Leather whistled through air. The first blow landed. Jane squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together. She grimaced, but not a sound did she make.

They had done it. They had whipped her.

Just like that, something inside of Nicolai broke. Not the glass cage, but something far more dangerous, roaring like a wild animal pushed beyond its limits.

From the first moment Nicolai had spotted Jane, his body had reacted to her. He had experienced lust, guilt and possessiveness in varying degrees. Now, the possessiveness simply took over.

Mine, he thought again.

This time, the word sprung from deep inside him, as unstoppable as an avalanche. He did not understand the fierceness accompanying the thought, and refused to ponder it now. Later. He would ponder later. Right now, more than before, he knew only that she was his—his savior, his woman—and nothing else mattered.

The guards had touched her, hurt her. They would die. Painfully. By the time he finished with them they would probably thank him for killing them.

All he had to do was free himself. And he would. Nothing would stop him. Not now, not anymore.

“Soon” had at last arrived.

Being a magical vampire, as Jane had called him, was not going to aid him; he admitted that now. Still his determination intensified, blending with the hate, the burn of that possessiveness. He would reach her by grit alone; he would save her. No matter what he had to do. His gaze strayed to the wrist cuffs and narrowed. Without his thumbs, his hands would slide right through.

He didn’t have to think about it. Goodbye, thumbs.

Biting his tongue against the pain he knew was to come, he slammed his hands, thumbs out, into the headboard. Crunch. The bones broke with that very first punch. He sucked in a breath, but, like Jane, he did not utter a sound. Punch, punch, punch. Each new blow caused even more damage, ripping tendon, tearing muscle, flattening bone.

By the time he finished, he was sweating, bleeding, his hands limp. But his top half was free. With a growl, he jolted upright. Heard the whistle of leather through air, a soft inhalation of breath. Another lash against Jane’s delicate skin.

Skin he wanted to caress.

His hands were too mutilated to grab the key. In fact, his efforts sent the little piece of metal sliding to the floor with a clink. He would need it later, to remove the neck cuff, and so he would pick it up with his mouth—after he’d freed himself.

Through narrowed eyes, he peered down at his feet. At a different angle, those feet would glide straight through the metal rings. And all he had to do to achieve that different angle was break every bone that ran from his ankle to his toes.

Nicolai started kicking the footboard.

JANE CLOSED HER EYES to hide the tears trying so determinedly to form and spill. It wasn’t like she’d never experienced pain before. For God’s sake, her spine had been broken, her legs unusable for months. Then there’d been the surgeries. Surgery after surgery to pin her bones in their proper places. Then, of course, the rehabilitation.

So, this whipping? Not even a blip on her agony radar. And yet, the humiliation of being bent over a table, her clothing ripped away, her scars revealed to those who sought to harm her, her body bound with ties she couldn’t see—magic?—nearly undid her. And for what? For failing to speak with a fat, ugly woman when summoned?

Poor Odette. Was this how she’d lived? Always fearing the next punishment? And poor Nicolai. Jane could not blame him for doing everything within his power to save himself. She would have done the same.

In fact, she could blame only herself for this. Had she listened to Nicolai, had she freed him when he’d wanted, they would have been far, far away from this dreadful place. Well, he would have been. He would have left her behind. And he still might, she thought. During their talk, she had not garnered a promise from him. Not to keep her with him, not to protect her. And now, it was too late. There was no way she’d leave him bound after this. Not for any reason. She would free him the moment she was physically able, then take off on her own.

Dumb on her part, maybe. Probably. Okay, definitely. Allowing herself to be separated from the one person who knew who and what she was, the one person who could get her home…so damn foolish. But that still wasn’t going to stop her.

And, wow. Jane Parker, considered a dummy. That was a first. She laughed without humor. A novelty in the face of pain. Nice.

“This amuses you?” the queen demanded.

Jane refused to acknowledge her.

There was a squeak of outrage. “Clearly you are not hitting her hard enough. You.” The queen snapped her fingers. “Take over the whip. Your arms are stronger, as I can well attest.”

Oh, gross.

A pause, then the whip continued to descend. Harder, so much harder. Over and over again, minutes ticking by. Still Jane did not utter a sound. She wanted to go home. Back to her boring life, where she was in control.

The whip stopped falling. Finally, a reprieve.

“Have you at last learned your lesson, Odette?” the queen asked, expectant. “Or shall I have him remove the skin on your legs, as well?”

She opened her mouth to tell the bitch to go to hell—no ignoring her this time—but she stopped herself before a single word escaped. Did these people believe in hell, or even know what it was? Would she announce her humanity and lose the protection—what little there was—in being thought of as Princess Odette?

“Silence will not—”

A roar echoed from the walls, harsh, guttural and a promise of pain.

Everyone in the room stilled. Jane forgot to breathe. That sound…she’d never heard its like. There was an animal on the loose, a lion probably, there just had to be. And people were clearly on the menu.

Another roar, followed by the crash of furniture and the shattering of knickknacks. Screams of agony. Gasps, racing footsteps. Had her guards left?