Bile burning her throat, Andromeda walked out with Lijuan’s favored general. The guards took the frame to the courtyard and placed it on four posts that seemed to have been erected in the center of the open space for exactly this purpose. The angel now faced the cobblestones, held up about a foot from it, his spread-eagled body exposed to the air and to the pitying gaze of others.
Walking over to the sobbing angel, one of Xi’s men began to slice him, the cuts relatively minor. Andromeda’s stomach stopped lurching as she took her first real breath since the angel had been brought into the throne room. If this was his punishment for such a deep betrayal, he’d gotten off with nothing more than a rap over the knuckles in immortal terms. She hoped he understood the depth of his luck.
Perhaps he was a favorite of Lijuan’s.
Then the guard with the blade backed off, and Andromeda heard the barking. “No,” she whispered, stepping instinctively toward the helpless angel.
Xi caught her wrist in an unbreakable grip without taking his eyes from the brutal scene about to play out. “Do not intervene or the hounds will tear you to shreds.”
Two seconds later, the first hound appeared. Drawn to the blood, the sleek black animal licked at the sobbing angel . . . and then it bit. The angel screamed. Andromeda closed her eyes but she couldn’t close her ears to the horrific sounds. She forced her eyes open a heartbeat later. She would escape this place and when she did, she would record this horror.
Of course, the vast majority of angelkind would find nothing wrong with the punishment. Being immortal wasn’t always a good thing. It meant the ones meting out the sentence had had centuries to think of suitable punishments . . . and that to fit the crime, sometimes that punishment was brutal. There was no point lashing an older angel when the wounds would heal within days.
Even Raphael, an archangel not known for cruelty, had once broken every bone in a treasonous vampire’s body. The unfortunate vampire, his body hanging together by stringy tendons and shattered bone that stabbed through his skin, had been left on display in Times Square for three hours.
To betray an archangel was to make a mistake that could never be undone.
The angel who’d made that mistake in Lijuan’s court was covered in bites within minutes, his skin streaming liquid red. He was also missing pieces. The frenzy continued until his screams of terror and pain eventually died down to whimpers, then to silence. That didn’t mean he was dead—Lijuan had given him her word that he’d live, and so he’d live.
Feathers flew into the air as the hounds began to rip at his wings for what appeared to be the fun of it, having already feasted on the flesh that had been their first target.
“How long?” she asked, her voice a rasp. “How long will his punishment last?”
“Until my goddess wills otherwise.” Xi finally released her wrist. “You know his crime deserved no less. Why are you shocked?”
Andromeda swallowed. “It has been centuries since I witnessed such a punishment.” Hundreds of years since she’d run from the terror-soaked home where she’d been born.
“Yes, you are a scholar,” Xi said, as if that explained everything. “Come.”
As they turned to reenter the citadel, Andromeda tried to temper her visceral response to what she’d seen, but she knew she was pale, her skin cold as frost. Not that Lijuan could be surprised by that. Fear, slick and choking, had been the archangel’s intention when she made sure Andromeda witnessed the punishment. A thin scream rose into the air at that instant, as if the angel had found a final dreg of strength.
Andromeda’s hands clenched. “He’ll go mad,” she said to Xi.