Chapter 74

In the throne room, Cedric pulls his blade free from Brendan’s abdomen with a sickening, wet, slick blood spattering immediately onto the marble floor to join the growing pool of red.

Brendan’s head lolls on his shoulders, his vision blinking in and out from a haze of whites and duplicates, pallor drained almost entirely of color.

His hands and legs are bound in a metal chain. There is a metal collar on his neck, which bit into his skin as the blood trips down from there. His hand is covered with black fur, which is sticking together as the blood-soaked and dried on it.

His fingers turned into claws, and his razor-sharp nails are fallen at his clawed feet. Cedric took his sweet time cutting them all out.

Brendan doesn’t have the energy or a will to summon his magic or power, but a faint black shadow still surrounds him. Trying to protect him from the torcher, from the agony but-

The shadows are barely visible to the naked eye as it gets lost in the black fur adorning his body. But it