Tempting Darkness(Darkness Series)

Chapter 5

Hours pass. I spend most of the day sleeping on the cold concrete floor. I am too lethargic to move. My ass went numb hours ago, and my legs are asleep, full of pins and needles. Yet, moving them for relief feels like too much effort. My teeth chatter as my temperature plummets and the day slowly rolls into night. The coldness of night seeps into my bones, making them ache worse. I am asleep when I hear the steel door open.

“And you are back. Is it morning already?” I murmur. Hearing the cell door open, I instantly sense something is wrong, as my normal morning visitor never once entered the cell. My eyes fly open to see Darius standing in front of me.

Immediately upon noticing him, I sit up and scramble back on my hands and feet, yet I am much too weak for me to move quickly enough. “Oh, s**t!” I curse under my breath.

Darius doesn’t bother to shut the cell door behind him. Instead, he stalks toward me, his eyes flashing with malicious intent—his hands fist at his sides. “Oh, s**t’ is right. Why aren’t you eating?” he demands, stopping in front of me. I freeze, worried about what he may do if I try to continue to move away from him.

“I asked you a question.” he sneers, and my heart races in my chest.

“I’m not hungry,” I tell him, and my traitorous stomach growls at the mention of food. His eyes flicker, and he glares down at me, his teeth clenching. He walks even closer, and I have to fight the urge to shrivel into a ball.

Darius growls again before reaching down and grabbing my hair. He jerks my head back painfully, but I can’t even fight to loosen his grip, having exhausted what little energy I had on trying to get away from him. My entire body feels like a dead weight. He sneers at me, looking me up and down.

“f*****g disgusting,” he spits at me; letting me go, he shoves me against the brick wall. My back hits the wall so hard it knocks the air from my lungs in one short wheeze. A pained noise escapes me, and my back arches.

“Just let me go. You don’t even want me, so why keep me?” I ask, trying to catch my breath.

“You’re weak. Eat, or I will force-feed you,” he says, kicking the plate toward me. The bread is stiff and dry. The texture of this so-called questionable bread resembles toast, only white with no color. I turn my face away, looking back at the brick wall.

“I am going to give you three seconds, or I will make you eat,” he says coldly. “One… two… three…”

I glare at him—a big mistake when his foot comes down my shin. I scream, the sounds tearing out of me and shredding my throat. The sound echoes off the walls and makes my ears ring as the bone breaks under the impact.

Pain radiates up my leg, and I blink back tears while staring at his foot on my leg, crushing it still as I pant. He counts slowly again, and I can only gasp and stare at him in horror at what he has done.

Looking up at him, his face is expressionless, like hurting me means nothing to him. I suppose it did mean nothing, or he wouldn’t have done it.

“One… two… three…” He twists his foot, earning another scream from me, yet I am too weak to stop him, and my magic is all but gone. I highly doubt he would give me any to renew mine.

“Stop! Stop! Stop, Darius!” My scream is filled with agony, and I try to clutch my aching leg, only for him to stomp on my hand. I hear the sickening crack of my three middle fingers. Bile rises in my throat, and I twist, lurching forward and throwing up the emptiness of my stomach. Stomach acid burns my throat while I gasp for air as bile spills from my lips onto the ground beside me.

He removes his foot from my hand, and I clutch it to my chest when the door opens behind him. My entire body trembles and Darius steps away from me. Catching my breath, which is hoarse and raspy, I see Darius look toward whoever entered. The pressure on my leg fades, but it is bent inward in the middle. Just moving causes me pain, and my blood coats the floor beneath it. The bone is jutting out of my skin. The gruesome display has me fighting the urge to throw up again.

I can only stare at my leg in horror at what he has done. The pain recedes, and I realize I must be in shock. I welcome the shock, anything to replace the pain, but I know it will wear off any minute, and it does.

“What’s going on?” asks Tobias, making me look toward him, but I can’t see him, with Darius blocking my view.

“She wouldn’t eat. So I am making her,” Darius says, simply as if he did this sort of thing every day, and it is merely some annoying chore to him.

“Just leave her be. Hopefully, she dies. We don’t need her,” Tobias snarls coldly, and his words are like a dagger in my chest as the bond I share with them tugs painfully. Tobias steps to the side and glances at me with an inscrutable expression on his face. His eyes dart to my leg, and he raises an eyebrow at Darius, but does not comment about him torturing me. “Well, at least we know she can bleed,” Tobias states, looking at the blood that is pooling on the floor beneath me. His eyes move up my body to the hand I have clutched to my chest, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. Fleetingly, his eyes move to mine before he turns his attention back to Darius.

Darius grunts but adds nothing else, closing my cell door and leaving me as he follows Tobias. The moment the steel door shuts, I fall apart; uncontrollable sobs wrack my body, causing more pain as the floodgates open without mercy. I can no longer contain it.

My hand shakes as I try to use the one that isn’t broken to pull my pant leg up, the fabric catching on the jutted-out bone. Pain steals my breath away, and I slump back, trying to breathe through it as my leg throbs to its own beat. Tears trek down my cheeks and drip from my chin.

He broke it; he broke my leg and hand and just left me here.

“Why?” I whisper to no one. Is my life always going to be a battle, some disaster I have to survive constantly? Do the fates think I am indestructible? Because if they do, they are wrong. Gosh, how they are wrong.

Pairing me with these monsters is just cruel. I know I will never survive them, and I have been asking why ever since their mark appeared on my wrist. The wrist Darius just broke with not one ounce of feeling or remorse. I should have chosen death. Surviving them will be impossible.

I can’t fathom how they can hate me so much. I hate them for a good reason, yet I would never inflict this on someone or hurt them as Darius did me. I stare down at my leg, hoping it will go numb like the rest of me. No such luck. Haven’t they taken enough from me? What did they want? They clearly hate me, so why keep me trapped here?