CHAPTER 128: HER AMUSEMENT

Silence stretched between them. Finally, Lysander spoke, his voice measured. "Do you swear you’ll take good care of her?"

Until now, he hadn’t trusted Leroy. He thought Leroy only considered Lorraine as a substitute for his one true love Elyse. But more recent whispers told a different story: how Leroy had cut Elyse’s hair in retribution for ruining Lorraine’s portrait, how he had dismissed his mistress from the household, how he and Lorraine now lived so closely that even the servants blushed at their intimacy.

Perhaps Leroy wasn’t the monster Lysander had believed. Perhaps, for his sister’s sake, he could be given a chance.

Leroy gave a single, steady nod. "With my whole heart."

Lysander’s gaze hardened, though his voice shook faintly. "The accident that cost my sister’s hearing... it was no accident. It was our father. He tried to kill her and our mother. He succeeded in killing our mother, but Lorraine..."

The breath punched out of Leroy in a gasp. His eyes widened, the ground seeming to tilt beneath him. "How are you sure?"

Lysander drew in a long, pained breath. "An old maid. One our father kept in the dungeons. She told me everything."

Leroy’s hand flew instinctively to his pocket, to the folded message Damian had given him. His face shifted. His initial shock gave way to clarity, and then fierce resolve.

Without another word, he spun and bolted for the door.

Lysander stared after him, bewildered. Why run like a man chased by a bear?

But Leroy knew.

Hadrian had vanished. Elyse had disappeared. Gaston was rotting from sudden illness. Lorraine was missing.

And now she had found out the truth of her mother’s murder and her own maiming traced back to her father.

It was all connected.

Lorraine was still in the city. He could feel it in his bones.

The only question that mattered was...

Where?

She wasn’t in the tunnels in the red-light district and in her usual places. Where else would she be?

-----

Hadrian’s eyes snapped open. Fire seared down his back, each lash a brand that made his jaw clench until his teeth ached. He longed for the mercy of unconsciousness, but his tormentors knew exactly how to strike and how to keep him balanced on the knife’s edge of agony without letting him fall into oblivion.

His body trembled with the effort of restraint. He would not break. He would not soil himself like some beaten cur in a gutter.

His gaze dragged upward and found her.

Lazira.

She lounged in the chair before him, her expression one of idle amusement, as if his suffering were nothing more than a passing diversion. Her eyes glittered, sharp and pitiless, while his wrists strained uselessly against their bonds.

I will not break, he told himself. Not for her. Not for anyone.

Her voice sliced through the silence. "Do you think your precious daughter is searching for you? Or is she too busy wallowing in her own self-pity?"

Hadrian’s throat burned, dry and raw. He forced air past it anyway, though the sound came ragged. He would not beg. He would not answer.

The pain pressed at the edges of his vision, coaxing him toward surrender. But he clung to a single anchor—Elyse. As long as she was safe, nothing else mattered.

"Take it out on me," he rasped. "I can bear it."

Lazira tilted her head, her voice mocking. "Why? Because Elyse is weak? Is that what you’re saying?"

His lips twisted, the fight draining from him. "Fine. Say that’s the case." He exhaled, defeated. "Tell me then... What offense have I given you?"

Because it was clear she had something against his daughter. Against him.

He could feel that Lazira carried a grudge against Elyse. The venom in her words was too precise, too deliberate.

He had done so much for his daughter. Too much. Blood on his hands, lives ruined, innocents sacrificed, all for Elyse’s sake.

And now, staring into the pitiless eyes behind that mask, he could no longer tell where the truth ended. Was it Lazira herself who hated Elyse? Or was she merely the blade hired by someone else, someone even darker, cutting him down piece by piece?

Suddenly, a scream tore through the dungeon, sharp enough to rattle the stone walls.

Lazira’s head turned lazily toward the sound, her expression one of feline amusement. Shadows rippled in the far corner where the cry had come from.

"Well, well," she drawled. "Look who finally found her voice."

She shifted her gaze back to Hadrian, her lips curling. "Aren’t I magnificent? I made your mute daughter scream."

Hadrian didn’t even lift his head. His chest rose and fell in shallow bursts, his face slack with indifference. Why should he care about the mongrel whimpering in the dark?

Lorraine, hidden behind Lazira’s mask, saw it. Saw the apathy. Her eyes narrowed like blades. With a flick of her wrist, she gave a signal.

"Hadrian. Praise me."

At once, torches flared along the dungeon walls, one by one, throwing light into the shadows.

A second scream followed.

"Hadrian, look!" Lazira’s voice cracked into something sharp, menacing, almost hysterical. "Look at your daughter!"

"Papa!"

The word cut through him.

Hadrian’s head jerked up as if wrenched by invisible chains. His bleary eyes focused, and froze. A woman stood tied to the post, her hair shorn, her back exposed and bleeding beneath the whip. Her tear-streaked face lifted, and his heart split open.

"Elyse!" His voice shattered, his eyes spilling tears as though his very soul had been torn from him.

Lorraine threw her head back and laughed. She laughed until her stomach hurt, until her legs kicked in wild delight. "Look at you, Hadrian!"

Her fingers snapped. The whip came down again. Elyse’s body writhed, convulsing with every strike. She was not a woman hardened to suffering; her life had spared her pain, save for childbirth. And now each lash broke her like brittle glass.

"Papa! Papa!" Her cries split the air.

Hadrian screamed with her, every lash across her back branding itself into his heart. His own roars mingled with hers until the chamber shook with their torment.

"Stop this!" he bellowed. His voice cracked, raw with rage. "I’ll kill you! Do you hear me? I’ll kill you!"

Lazira only laughed, her voice echoing like a mad symphony in the dark.