Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Would Slaine notice?
    Dixon entered then, ready to collect samples from the demon.
    “His blood’s been drawn,” Declan told her. “The second your lab’s done, you’ll destroy it.” If a mortal drank that blood …
    “But his orders—”
    “Destroy it!”
    She nodded, but she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Paranoia flared again.
    Once Dixon collected the vials and left, Slaine said, “What do you want with me?”
    “There’s much interest in you. In your
genesis
. Today, you’re going to tell me all about it. And tomorrow, my physicians will examine you, to see what makes you faster, stronger.”
    “So you can make more like me?”
    “So we can make sure your kind is never miscreated again.”
    “Maybe you should just … cry?” Natalya said as she sat on the edge of Regin’s bunk.
    Regin lay on her side, curled up as much as the ghastly wound allow. Under her shirt, pasty skin had swelled up around an angry line of seeping staples. Her skin was dim all over. “Leave me alone,” she said in a deadened tone. With effort, she turned to her other side away from the fey.
    Ignore the metal wire holding your ribs together, ignore the staples in your skin.
    Natalya was undeterred, actually beginning to stroke her hair. “Crying can be therapeutic. Or so I’m told. Never have done it myself. But I do know the pain will fade soon.”
    Regin wasn’t afflicted only with physical pain—though that had been worse than any she’d ever known; humiliation seethed inside her as well. For her entire adult life, she’d been a creature with which one didn’t fuck. Now she was defeated, and at the hands of a man who should’ve defended her.
    How the demons and vampires in the ward had gloated!
    “Did they put every part back under the hood, Valkyrie?”
    “Nice piercings.”
    “Surgical steel’s your color.”
    Both allies and enemies had witnessed her at her lowest. Even the ones who hadn’t seen her still knew how intensely she’d reacted. As Natalya had told her, “You were like a nuclear reactor. Your lightning and thunder shook the building.”
    Regin had yearned to be strong, had been resolved. Which was why her reactions had stunned her. After a thousand years of knowing herself, suddenly she’d been
altered
.
    In that operating room, she’d behaved in ways she’d never anticipated. Like a stranger might. Not like a stalwart Valkyrie would.
    “Chase promised me I would beg,” Regin muttered. “He was … right.” A Valkyrie, begging
mortals
for mercy. Shame scalded her.
    “The magister was there?”
    “He ordered it but didn’t have the stones to show. Fegley was there smirking. Dixon, of course.” Regin would never forget the doctor’s eyes behind those freakish glasses—studious and calm as she’d probed and sawed. There was no hate, no patent sense of righteousness.
    Because Dixon truly believed Regin was no more than an animal to be utilized in the pursuit of science.
    In the background, her fellow surgeons had carried on a casual conversation as Regin had screamed in agony. …
    When she shuddered, Natalya laid her hand on Regin’s shoulder. “There’s one thing that’ll make you feel better—and strike fear in the hearts of your enemies once more.”
    This demeaning ordeal wasn’t merely an ego check. Anytime a Lorean was perceived as weak, others called open season. If Regin ever did escape this place, she’d be endangered from this defeat. “And what would that be?”
    “A trophy. Taken from Chase’s body and carried on your person. Like a fashion accessory. I’m going to own a memento from Volós before I die.”
    Despite her pain, Regin grew curious. “What did he do to you?”
    “He tortured me for a couple of years, mainly as court entertainment. Then I was largely forgotten in his vile dungeon for about six years. Until his nephew visited.”
    “The one you killed.”
    “Correct.” In a faraway voice, Natalya said, “Every night in that cell, I sat plotting revenge. With every ratI caught and ate raw for sustenance, with every lash of a barbed whip, I only grew harder, losing myself in fantasies of killing Volós.” Black veins forked out across her irises. “And before I destroy him, I’m going to tell him to send his nephew my regards. I can see it playing out so clearly in my mind.”
    “We’ve got to escape this place first. And I’m not feeling particularly bullish about our odds right now.”
    “You’re feeling downtrodden because