Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Talamayas stepped into the cell and the Song quivered, his fear filling the air with perspiration and rattling his chains. Shan had helped him shackle the man up on the wall, stripped bare down to his pants to remove layers of protective mage wear as well as anything identifying him as a Song. It demoralized prisoners to lose their identity as much as leaving them naked disarmed them emotionally. That, and it left the man's fully muscled chest bare for Tala's hands to sear agony through him. If the Song could spit on him, he would, but they had a cloth gag wedged between his teeth in case he tried to bite his tongue off.
Any Song would rather kill themselves than face Talamayas' wrath.
There was enough red hair for Tala to grip it and pull the man's face to his, but not so much as his mate's. "Care to share a name?" Talamayas whispered against his face, his lips so close they touched skin as he moved his mouth. Just the contact had the Song gasping for breath, and Tala trailed his fingers down the man's bare chest, bringing with them tepid heat as a promise of what was to come. "Come now, don't be shy." Tala ran the edges of his lips against the man's jaw bone before lifting his chin with the tips of his free fingers.
The Song growled something into his gag, but Tala couldn't make it out. It would also serve him little to try and torture information out of a man who couldn't speak, so he yanked the cloth out. The man had been biting so hard that his teeth clicked together once the resistance was gone, and a groan of pain escaped him.
"Rot in hell, Talamayas Sol." The man spit the words in his face, and the dead look in his grey eyes told Tala all he needed to know about him. This one would say nothing, not under threat nor torture, until he died screaming under the flames. Grief did that to a man, ruined any rational thought just as much as self-preservation. Without his son, this man had no reason to live, and he clearly assumed Cadence long since dead.
"If I was a fan of comeuppance, I'd have left Cadence to die in the castle as it collapsed in on us." Just the use of his son's name had the Song swallowing a growing lump in his throat as his eyes hollowed. "You would have spite for no one but yourself if you crushed him to death with your own stupidity. And here I was nice enough to keep him alive for you."
Tears filled the Song's eyes, overflowing down his cheeks in a heavy downpour that Tala felt no guilt for. This man had attacked his people and taken his mate, so he could suffer in any way Tala could inflict. It wasn't in Tala to physically harm him when it would tear Cadence apart, so this was the most he could do, though he certainly wouldn't tell his prisoner that.
"It's Harper," the man said into the ground. "Harper Song. What can I do to earn my son mercy?"
"Nothing," Talamayas growled low, tapping the side of Harper's face just hard enough that the man flinched. "If you answer everything I ask of you truthfully, I will take you to him, but that is all you'll get." Tala burned his crimson eyes into Harper's as he gripped his chin in steel fingers. "Why did you take my mate?"
