The Faerie Curses

Chapter Forty-Nine: The Face of Vengeance

I want my dreams back.

There was just enough time for The Master's words to echo through my mind, once, then twice, before he had hurled me at the dirt. I slammed heavily into the ground, the stab wound in my leg flaring with new bursts of agony. There was no chance of escape; there was no chance of fighting back as I felt The Master's iron leg slam into my side over and over again.

He kicked me relentlessly, driving his foot at my stomach and pounded the air from my lungs. I wheezed and coughed, sputtering desperately as I felt the impact. I tried to crawl away, recoiling from my own dying gasps. The Master's fist curled around strands of my hair, and he wrenched my head back until my neck snapped up towards his simmering eyes. My body was thrown towards him, and he took my shoulders and pounded them against the blazing touch of his iron armor.

Over, and over, and over.

The pain became a rhythm as I curled into myself. The cracking of my bones became a snapping melody. Sweat and tears gathered in my eyes as I screamed over and over, forcing down sobs as The Master brutalized me harder and harder.

"Marissa!"

I could hear Glen's screams as he thrashed against the tree roots binding him in place, his pleas as he called out my name over and over. His voice is so distant now, so far away as his lips beg The Master to spare me.

I couldn't see Glen. Every time I look for his face through sheens of tears and sweat, I'm smacked back into the ground and the unforgiving dark.

"Don't you see, Marissa?" The Master murmured in my ear as I jerked my face away from his. I didn't want to see my own torture reflected back at me on a merciless iron surface. "I've had nothing but this. I've had nothing but the shadows, the dark, and the hell. But what is most beautiful is that hell never came from the darkness or the shadows like you may think."

He surveyed me with amusement as I squirmed helplessly in his grip. His hands pressed down into the gaping wound in my thigh, and white exploded in my eyes. My hoarse voice cried out into the nothingness as my entire spirit seemed to break beneath The Master's hold.

"Hell, dear Marissa, is born of people." The sprite told me, his voice deep with delight. "Only people bring us hell. Only the living make us want to die more than anything."

"I don't want to die," I spat, hurling a glob of saliva at The Master's mask. "It just makes me want to kill you even more, you son of a bitch."

"Then I have taught you nothing."

The Master's iron hand slapped across my face, smacking my head to the side as my cheek swelled at his reddening touch.

There was a rising satisfaction, a sick pleasure in his eyes as my pain reached him. He relished in it, he fed off it as his insides longed for more. He thrived off my suffering, the sensation of watching warm blood spill from my lips as my teeth grated painfully together. He gulped it down, burning me and punching me and kicking me until the world was a haze of darkness and agony with nothing but devil's laughter and blackening bruises.

My entire body was swelling with pain, with pain, with pain, and nothing else existed.

"Please, I'll do anything!" Glen roared in the distance. "Hurt me all you want! Let her go, dammit! Just let her go!"

"Glen," I muttered, feeling myself fading. I folded inside myself, hiding there as The Master hit me with blows that did nothing but numb me now. I lay still, my ballgown clinging to my body with blood and sweat as I blinked my bleary eyes.