EZRA
I should have died that night. I should have let myself sink into the abyss and never crawl back out. It would have been easier. Less painful. Less humiliating.
But Lucius wouldn't let me die.
No, he needed me to suffer. He needed me to feel every single second of agony, to let the pain seep into my bones and rot me from the inside out. He wanted me to break, to watch the light drain from my eyes, and know that he was the one who put it out.
And he succeeded.
By the time he was finished with me, I was barely conscious, drowning in pain so sharp it turned numb. My arm hung limply at my side, dislocated from the repeated blows. My ribs cracked, maybe broken. My lip split open, blood pooling in my mouth and dripping down my chin. The floor was cold beneath me, but I barely felt it. I barely felt anything anymore.
I could still hear his laughter. That cruel, mocking sound that made my stomach twist with something far worse than pain. I had known he was capable of monstrous things I had seen it, lived it, but there was something different about the way he tormented me that night. Something more personal.
And Malachai…
He was forced to watch. Held down by Lucius' men, forced to look at what was left of me. I had seen the rage in his eyes, the way his body shook with fury, but he could do nothing. Just like I could do nothing the night before, when he was the one suffering.
The cycle continued.
When it was finally over, when Lucius had his fill of watching me squirm, he made sure I was dragged back to my room. But not to be treated, no. That would be too merciful.
No one was allowed to enter my room. No food, no water, no medical attention. Just me and my broken body, left to fester in my own misery.
The first night, I thought I would die. The pain was unbearable, every breath a struggle, every movement sending fresh waves of agony through me. My body screamed for relief, for something, anything, to make it stop. But there was nothing.
The second night, I stopped fighting. I lay still, staring blankly at the ceiling, my mind a hollow void. I didn't think. I didn't feel. I just existed.
By the third night, something inside me shifted.
The pain was still there, but it no longer controlled me. The hunger clawed at my stomach, the thirst dried my throat, but they no longer mattered. I wasn't just surviving anymore…..I was changing.
Lucius thought he was breaking me. He thought he was crushing me into dust, turning me into nothing but a hollow shell of the boy I once was.
But he was wrong.
He wasn't breaking me. He was rebuilding me.
The boy who flinched at pain, who still held onto the illusion of hope, who still believed in something as foolish as kindness he was gone.
What was left in his place was something far darker.
Something far more dangerous.
By the end of the week, when the door finally creaked open, when Lucius' men finally came to drag me out of my prison, I didn't tremble.
I smiled.