Nick’s stomach tightened. His gaze skipped past the females, toward the steel door, which was now closed, and through the small window to see who was watching.
Darkness reflected in the glass. But that didn’t mean they were alone. Zagreus was always somewhere watching Nick’s torture. Feeding off it. Waiting for him to break.
Turning to the dark-haired nymph on her right, Cynna handed the female the jar and said, “Use this. But do not touch him anywhere save where he bleeds.”
The nymph nodded and approached, her cheeks a deep cherry red, her breaths shallow. She unscrewed the lid and set it on the rocks at her feet, then gathered a scoop of whatever was in the jar and lowered to her knees in front of him.
Nick sucked in a breath. She was inches away, his groin hidden only by the small towel. Her fingers grazed the wound on his thigh, a tickling sensation that made his muscles tense, but the healing balm was cool where it coated the gash. He relaxed as she rubbed the balm into the wound, feeling the jagged skin already knitting back together, feeling his body healing faster than it would on its own, feeling a heat he didn’t expect warming his skin.
“Enough,” Cynna said. “Now the other one.”
The dark-haired nymph pushed to her feet, still didn’t look Nick in the eye, and moved around behind him. Again he felt her fingers gliding over his skin, and he tensed, then the balm slathered the wound in his shoulder, slowly warming his skin, repairing the damage and relaxing him from the outside in.
Cynna’s deep brown eyes remained blank as she watched the nymph work. No emotion crossed her face. No pleasure or excitement over what was to come, as Zagreus always showed. Nothing but emptiness. An emptiness Nick had gotten used to seeing on her flawless face.
Only…that wasn’t true. When he’d been in the ring earlier, when he’d dropped his weapon in defiance of Zagreus’s desire to make him fight, he’d seen something in her eyes then. Something that had looked a lot like panic.
“That’s enough,” Cynna said.
The nymph’s fingers lifted from Nick’s skin, and she stepped back. Moving around him, she knelt to pick up the lid, recapped the jar, then sank back against the far wall near the other nymph.
Cynna moved forward, her eyes never wavering from Nick’s, and the scent of jasmine hit him as it always did when she drew close, filling his senses, messing with his mind. She was tall for a female, at least five ten, and in those ridiculously high-heeled boots, only a few inches shorter than him. Today her blonde hair was swept over one shoulder, a blue streak near her temple contrasting sharply with her caramel skin. Her face was heavily made up, her eyes rimmed in thick black, making her look every bit the dominatrix. And though he knew he should be anxious over whatever she and Zagreus had cooked up for him next, he wasn’t. Because there was something about her that interested him. Perplexed him. Made him want to know more.
He’d never admit it, but the mystery of who she was and how she’d come to be here had saved him. Saved him from going mad or giving in to all that dark energy Zagreus was waiting to claim.
“You just…won’t…break.”
Her words were a whisper, a frustration, a surprise. She never spoke to him. Though he’d spent more time with her than anyone else in this hellhole, she never addressed him directly. She gave the commands to her grunts, and they did her dirty work. She never even got near him.
Something about today was different, though. A tiny voice in the back of his head screamed what was about to happen in this cell was on a whole different level from what he’d been through before.
She stepped close, so close he could feel her heat but not close enough to touch, then moved to her right, slowly making her way around him. His stomach tightened, and that blistering arousal came rushing back.
“This isn’t a game.” Her warm breath fanned his nape, sending a shiver across his bare skin. And in his wounds, where the nymph had spread the balm, heat gathered and grew, radiating outward, heading for his belly. “You cannot beat Zagreus. No one wins against the Prince of Darkness.”
Nick’s arms flexed, and the chains rattled above his head. He didn’t want to beat the fucker, he only wanted to destroy him. Not just for what he’d put Nick through during the last few months, but for what he put everyone in this wretched place through—Cynna, his gut told him, included.
“I can’t stop what he has planned for you.” She circled around and stopped directly in front of him again. “Give in, and you save yourself the torment. Give in, and this ends now.”
“Give in,” Nick repeated, staring into her dark eyes. But unlike before, they weren’t empty. They weren’t dead. There was something there. Something that looked a lot like…desperation.
Was she warning him of something horrendous to come? Why would she do that? She was Zagreus’s puppet. Or was she simply afraid of what would happen if he didn’t break?
“You want me to give in?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Only stared at him.