Читать книгу Zenith - Lindsay Cummings, Sasha Alsberg - Страница 23

Chapter Fifteen

VALEN

THE HISS OF the whip sang through the darkness.

A crackle, a pop, and with it, the stench of singed flesh.

The electric whip bit into Valen’s skin, over and over, until he couldn’t suppress his screams anymore, until his throat felt ragged and blood coated the floor like a warm, wet carpet.

They were unraveling him, bit by bit.

I am Valen Cortas, he thought. But as the whip came down again, a crackle of blue that lit up the splatters across the stone walls, it drowned out his own voice in his head.

His torture had begun three months prior, when he arrived at this prison—first with starvation, a hunger so deep he’d felt as if his stomach was shredding itself apart. Then came the questions, the beatings and, shortly after, the floggings.

Since then, Valen had lost track of the times he’d been slashed by the whip or pummeled by the guards’ electric gauntlets.

If he sunk into the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness, they would bring him back with an injection, a prisoner to the horrors he couldn’t escape. The cycle continued without end, until Valen thought the walls had grown claws that tore at him. Until he thought he’d drown in his own blood. Until the very mention of his home planet of Arcardius brought forth maniacal laughter from his lips. Home was nowhere as he drowned in pain in the darkness of Cell 306, a place without color or laughter or light.

I am Valen Cortas, he thought as the whip kissed his skin again, tearing at the tendons beneath. Vengeance will be mine.

More than once, he’d wondered if he had died and been dragged down to hell. But even hell couldn’t possibly be this cruel.

Hiss, rip, singe.

On and on it went until his mantra was replaced by something else.

Why are you taking it? Fight back! a small voice said in his head. Valen nearly laughed as the whip came down again, drowning out the voice. But then it came back, stronger this time.

Don’t be weak like your father thinks you are. Fight back!

How could he fight when he was nothing? How could he shout when they’d stolen his voice, when his body was too weak and too mutilated to move?

Hiss, rip, singe.

Then, as if right next to Valen’s ear, the voice screamed, You will never get vengeance if you allow them to have their way. You have to fight, Valen. Fight back!

As if he’d been plunged into arctic waters, a feeling radiated through him, something he had never felt before.

A power, a want, a need.

The crackle of the whip hissed overhead, promising a swift return. He couldn’t take it. He wouldn’t take it.

“STOP!” Valen yelled. His voice reverberated against the room’s obsidinite walls.

He waited for the next slash, but when it didn’t come, he craned his neck to the side. Even that slight movement sent a wave of pain through him, like he was being dragged across a bed of nails. His vision flickered in and out, unconsciousness tugging at him like a welcome friend.

But what he saw puzzled him.

His torturer, a large man with arms the size of Valen’s torso, had paused midswing. The whip still crackled overhead, bathing the room in an eerie, flickering blue.

Valen didn’t have time to make sense of it before the heavy door groaned open, two soldiers standing guard.

Between them, a robed figure glided in.

“Hello, Valen,” the figure said, and Valen gasped as she drew back her hood. Dark ringlets fell across her shoulders, where a collar of ruby red encircled her throat. And her eyes, Valen saw, were a gold so bright that in his delirium, Valen smiled and imagined painting them. She stopped before him, reaching down to slide a lock of hair off his forehead with a golden metal hand. The fingertips were designed to look like delicate claws.

She was an angel of darkness, come to him in the pits of hell.

When she looked down at him, her smile was as bright as fire.