Page 94

Eden’s broken sobs fill the air, fracturing the last tiny thread of my composure.

It’s the cruelest trap imaginable. Either I hurt her, or I let a monster destroy her completely.

Checkmate.

My shoulders slump, the fight draining out of me into the cold floor, and I nod stiffly.“Unlock my hands.”

Veraxia signals the Wardens with a flick of her wrist, and the second the pressure on my arms vanishes, I’m across the room in, my entire world narrowing down to the terrified girl shivering on the stone.

I lean over the slab, expanding my frame until my shoulders block out the lights, the instruments, and the grinning bitch in the corner.

My silver hands frame her face, thumbs sweeping away the salt streaking her cheeks.

“Eden,” I murmur, forcing her gaze to mine. “Look at me. Eyes on me, nowhere else.”

“Malachi, please don't,” she chokes out, her chest heaving against the straps. “Please. It’s going to kill me.”

“I have to, baby girl.” My voice fractures, cracking down the middle, but I weld it back together. I have to be the rock, even if I’m crumbling inside. “If I don’t, they will break you. And neither of us wants that. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to be so, so careful. I promise.”

With tremor-ridden fingers, I reach for the helmet, but I lock my jaw and force them to turn to stone. I cannot shake. Not for this. One slip and I actually lobotomize her.

“I need you to be brave for me,” I whisper, brushing a damp lock of hair off her forehead. “Can you do that? Be a good girl and hold still. The more you move, the more it hurts. So you freeze for me, okay?”

I press a kiss to her forehead, lingering right there, right over the point where the cold steel’s about to go.

“I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

I lift the heavy metal cage, positioning it over her face, my voice dropping into a soft, hypnotic rhythm, trying to drug her with words.

“Now, listen to me,” I say, as gently as if I were reading a bedtime story. “These needles... they look scary, but they’re just going to rest right against the edges of your brain. Just a little pressure. Like a headache. I’m going to slip in, find what they want, and slip out. I’ll be so fast you won’t even know I was there.”

I pause, the shadow of the helmet falling over her face like an eclipse.

“Eden,” I say, my voice laced with regret. “To do this... to do this right, without hurting you... I have to turn off. I have to go into work mode. So the man you see in a second? It won’t look like me. It won’t sound like me. But I promise, I am right here. Under the surface. I’ve got you.”

I close my eyes and shove my own panic into a lead box, nailing it shut with a mental hammer, smothering the Malachi who jumps realms and runs around with a mortal woman without a care in the world, emerging as the Torture Administrator—the cold, efficient machine that makes grown men beg for the silence of the grave.

The heavy iron is seated against her temples with a final, hollow clunk.

Metal gears grind together as I turn the primary dial, and the mechanism engages. The needles descend slowly. And as the first row pierces the skin, a raw, agonising screams rips out of my little summoners throat, flaying through the air.

My shoulders jerk as if I’m the one being stabbed, my own heart stuttering, trying to reject the reality of what I’m doing. But my hands keep turning. They have to. If I stop now, the calibration slips and I scramble her into someone unrecognizable.

“I know,” I grind out, the words vibrating through my clenched teeth, sounding like gravel in a blender. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Stay with me, Eden.”

As the needles punch through the periosteum—that thin membrane between the bone and the truth—the wall of monitors flares to life.

The insectile buzzing of the static dies, replaced by a high-pitched whine as the connection bridges. Flickering images from her memory vomit onto the screens—confused colors, flashes of her apartment, the sensation of pain visualized in harsh red spikes.

“Veraxia!” I roar, not breaking my rhythm on the crank, staring only at Eden’s dilated, panicked pupils. “Turn the screens! Turn them away from her so she can breathe!”

My cunt of a sister doesn’t even look up from where she’s leaning against a torture rack, idly making a tick on her clipboard with her quill.

“Standard procedure requires visual confirmation from the subject, Malachi,” she hums. “You know the protocol.”

A low, guttural growl rips out of my chest, vibrating through the stone floor. I swallow the bile rising in my throat. Fine. If the only way out is through, then I have to drive the spike deep. I have to be the demon she needs me to be.

“Focus,” I snap at Eden cruelly. “Go back to the night I came through the Veil.”