"Thomas." She stopped her servant at the door, her voice as cool and remote as ever. "Remember to contact our dinner guests on your way out and let them know we will reschedule."
The vision evaporated, snapped off like a television, her mind closing the door before he could see more. His mind could imagine it too well, however. Thomas's heart had broken that day. Jacob knew it, because he'd seen it in the man's eyes whenever he'd even hinted at what had driven him from his Mistress's service. The wound her words created had not been the shattering blow, however. Jacob suspected it had been her screams coming through the walls as he stood in the servants' quarters, folding socks, placing shirts in a suitcase with his trembling hands.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-three
"So he went to Madrid. With the third mark, a vampire can't shield her mind from her servant when she's under great duress," his lady explained. "It's a protection for the vampire, to ensure if she is exposed to sunlight or threatened in a way that makes her insensible, the servant can feel it and come to her aid. But when not under duress, a vampire can sever the link and then, even under duress, until she reactivates it, it cannot be felt."
She met his gaze, reminding him of his unguarded thoughts earlier. "It's a loss beyond measure," she confirmed softly. "To both of us, but at the time I thought it was the best thing. So many things went wrong after that point, I no longer know which one thing or group of things I could have changed to make it turn out differently." She looked down at her hands, an unusually self-conscious gesture for her. "I'm old enough to know wishful thinking is simply pointless."
"No one knows everything, my lady. Thomas never doubted your love for him. Never. You can look into my mind and see the truth of it."
Though she kept her head bowed, he felt her reach out, confirming it. She lifted a shoulder. "That is meager comfort considering everything, but thank you, Jacob."
"He wasn't sick at that point. Neither of you were."
"No."
He didn't want her to stop, but he knew some stories couldn't be told all at once. He had to be appreciative of how much she'd been willing to give him. When he looked at her drawn face, the shuttered eyes, he knew her head could easily begin throbbing again. Reaching out, he ran his knuckles alongside her face. "I want to know, my lady, but not at the cost of draining you. It's been a long night. Perhaps you could tell me later."
She nodded. "But I do need you to understand this, Jacob. Never underestimate Carnal. I did, to my eternal regret. Carnal exploited Rex's struggle with Ennui and poisoned his mind, convincing him the other high-ranking vampires viewed him as little more than a sycophant, living off my riches and the power earned through my title and command of politics."
Shifting to prop her head on the opposite side of the chair, she turned her attention back to the fire. "One of the unfortunate things you learn when you live a long time, Sir Vagabond, is that love can erode. Once it begins to do that, it can be sculpted by the right forces into any manner of vile and evil thing. Carnal was a master sculptor.
"You're right," she said abruptly. "I'm too tired to tell you more. Leave me."
Cursing himself, for he could see the pain back to simmering behind her eyes, he ignored her command. Instead, he left her to fix another compress and came back to her side, kneeling by the chair. Laying his hand over the cloth he placed upon her brow, he wished he could will the pain into himself, lessen the throbbing.
"I thought I told you to leave me."
"Aye, you did. I disobeyed, as you tell me I tend to do."
She had her eyes closed and said no more. Since she didn't order him to go again, he kept vigil quietly at her side, his hand over the compress, his thumb moving slowly over her temple.
As the fire crackled and stillness settled over the room, shadows began to collect in the corners of his mind. Shifting, moving. Becoming figures, voices. Offering him images and thoughts not his own. After a while, they drew his attention so he moved toward them cautiously, a man in the dark learning his way. A startled moment later he realized somehow he was following a misty path from his mind into hers. Suddenly, there was a lurch, and he stepped hip deep into the quicksand of her memories, so squarely he almost jumped at the sensation, for he'd expected more resistance.
Outside of his mind, his lady's lips were tight as she swallowed like a person fighting nausea, her color even paler than usual. Stroking her temples, he hummed the soft Gaelic lullaby. Her brow eased, her fingers reaching for his other hand, drawing it onto his lap to curl her fingers loosely around his. She didn't lift her head or open her eyes. It was a moment of simple pleasures, a stark contrast to the vision straight from Hell into which he'd stumbled.
Rex had taken her down into some part of the mansion Jacob was thankful he hadn't yet seen and hoped had been destroyed. There'd been a rough wooden stock there, something directly out of a medieval village, but the cuffs were lined with some type of substance that burned the skin and made it difficult for a vampire to use her strength to free herself. He'd put her in that stock, gagged her with the bloodstained whip, fastening the two ends to the wood so it stretched her mouth like a horse's bit and kept her head up, her neck at a painful arch where he could see every nuance of her face. Because her beautiful hair was matted on her face, down her back, he gathered it up, twisted it into a knot and then nailed that knot to the wood, wrenching her head to the right. He'd then readjusted the hold of the whip so he could see her windpipe struggling to process air she didn't need but still rasped alarmingly in her throat.
Bloody fucking Christ. With the hair out of the way, Jacob could see Rex had flogged her until her skin hung off her back in strips, the welts so numerous and blood so thick her upper body was a mangled mass, as well as her buttocks. Since he was in her mind, surrounded by the hazy drift of her thoughts, he knew she'd managed to keep from screaming until the very end. She hoped until Thomas had left, despite the fact Jacob thought Rex might have eased off if she'd given in to the urge sooner.
Her teeth bit into the thick blood-soaked braiding while Rex fucked her from behind, digging his hands into the destruction of her back.
Jacob learned then that vampires could not pass out from too much pain. Her muffled cries made an eerie backdrop to the howling of Bran and his siblings. Rex had locked them out, and they were circling the foundation of the house, baying, Bran going mad at being unable to come to her aid.
But even as Jacob watched, horrified and loathing Rex, he was forced to see Rex through her eyes, because these were her memories. He saw in him what she saw. A man with a desperate emptiness taking him over, fixated on the subjugation of his wife as the answer to his need to feel, his ultimate victory that would make everything all right.
One dinner guest had apparently not been dissuaded from coming. Jacob felt his hot rage become ice-cold as Carnal entered the dungeon room, removing the tie of his elegant suit. His eyes greedily drank in the sight of Lyssa's naked and tortured body. He spoke, egging on his sire, telling him he was right to do what he was doing, that she had to understand Rex was the true Master of this Region and of her, now and forever. She was his property… his slave to share as he chose.
Jacob saw Rex's hesitation at that. Lyssa did not react to it at first. Apparently, the fact that Carnal had made such a suggestion did not shock her. However, when Rex's face reflected his decision on the matter, her reaction changed.
She'd not been able to hold back her screams, but she hadn't shed any tears. Only when Rex stepped aside and let Carnal take hold of her hips, driving his cock into her rectum with savage ferocity, did she cry. Rex knelt, kissing every tear off her face as if they were jewels he'd won, instead of the rain Jacob knew was washing away all vestiges of the bond they'd shared as husband and wife.
It wasn't the pain, though that was enough that even the residual experience of it made Jacob want to vomit and never eat again. It was the realization Rex was truly lost to her.
Jacob was so deep in her mind now he felt the impact of that in her soul, the searing pain as her heart shattered. But he also witnessed the birth of the ominous realization of what she had to do. She would have to be the catalyst to bring this tragedy to its inevitable conclusion. Only in its infancy then, the idea was a small enough voice to be denied that night. But if she had heeded it then, Thomas would have lived.
And his lady would not be dying.
White-hot pain shot through his mind, shoving him brutally out of her thoughts. Jacob only had a moment to reorient himself to the present before her hand clamped down onto his forearm. His lady twisted ruthlessly, coming out of the chair, slamming him onto his back on the carpet, one leg bent at a painful angle beneath him because of his kneeling position.
Another rough twist, and his forearm snapped under her grip. Agony took the form of fire burning up through his arm to his shoulder, wrenching a hoarse cry from his throat, particularly as she didn't let go, pressing forward, planting her foot on his chest.
"You've no right. No permission." It was a hiss, her eyes glowing red with a menace he'd never seen from her before. "You forget your place, servant. You don't know the meaning of what you just saw. It's something you can't understand so you won't judge it, you hear me? You won't judge me or my husband. I'm done with you tonight. Take your simple cures and be gone."