Hours turned into days, and I soon lost all track of time. Occasionally Ares would stop and beat me or have one of the elves do it. They didn’t break any bones. Without my magic I wouldn’t have been able to heal, but my ribs had already been busted and every bit of extra damage further hastened the mess that Ares was making out of my mind.
I hung from the ceiling for hours at a time, only occasionally allowed down when Ares decided I’d taken too much punishment, and I was allowed to sleep. But then it began again. At one point Erebus tried to step in, to get me to concentrate on him, but Ares was so powerful his empath abilities brushed Erebus aside. Ares knew what Erebus had attempted, and had anticipated it, returning to cause me more anguish as soon as he felt it safe to do so.
“Is that nightmare back yet?” Ares asked after days or weeks of not seeing Erebus.
Sweat dripped from my face, running down my bare chest to where Lucie’s blood had dried on my stomach. Even after all this time, they hadn’t let me wash. I looked down at where her body had been. They hadn’t bothered removing it for a considerable amount of time after her murder. They’d used her to weaken me, and I’d helped them by allowing my hate to take over. My need for vengeance had been my downfall.
“No, it’s just me and you,” Ares said after moving my face so he could stare me in the eyes. “You’re stronger than I expected. I see why Deimos was unable to break you.”
“He’s a coward,” I said.
Ares smiled. “Yes, he is. I beat him when he came back to me after you broke his mind. I beat him over and over until he realized what a waste he was. And then he wanted to destroy your name. He thought it would elevate him in my eyes.”
“I’m going to kill him when I get out of here.”
“Are you trying to anger me?” Ares asked. “That’s not a very good way of dealing with this. You should be angry with Tommy and Olivia, with Elaine and the rest of them. Angry that they left you here, angry that they’re not going to save you. They let Lucie die. They let Galahad die. They didn’t help you fight us. They’ve done nothing.”
I nodded. “They abandoned me.”
Ares smiled. “That they did. You know who’s there for you, don’t you?”
“Gawain. He wants me to stand beside Arthur. To make this world better. For us to have our rightful place.”
“Do you want that?”
I nodded weakly. My body hurt, and I had trouble keeping my eyes open. “More than anything. I want to work for Arthur. I want to change the world in his image. Please, let me.”
“I think we’re not quite there yet. There was a little pause. You’re still thinking you can escape from this.”
I shook my head.
Ares continued with the punishment once again. Showing Tommy, Olivia dead, showing me standing over their bodies, making me feel good about it, making me feel like that was the right way to move forward. He showed me hunting down the others, skewering Elaine with a spear, decapitating Morgan, burning Zamek alive, torturing Mordred until he wept and begged to be let go. Everything I saw, Ares made me feel good about. Made me want. Made me need.
Eventually the images stopped for a second time. Ares lifted my head, which sagged against my chest. “I think we can have a break here,” he said. “Keep him company. I’ll be back soon.”
I heard Ares walk out of the room, closing the door behind him. I watched the blood elf who had been left behind as he walked over to the chair and took a seat.
“Nate,” Erebus said.
“Leave me,” I said in my mind. “Now is not the time.”
“Nate, you can’t possibly think that your friends are people who should be killed.”
“Erebus,” I snapped out loud. “Leave me.”
The blood elf laughed and walked over to me, standing in front of me and pushing me in the stomach so I swayed back and forth. They’d taken the chair long ago, and my arms felt sore again.
“Your nightmare trying to help you?” the blood elf said with a smile. “Ares will be pleased that you banished it. We’ll break you yet, sorcerer. We’ll break that nightmare and force it out of your body if need be.”
“Going to have to kill me for that,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” the blood elf said. “You don’t know, do you? You don’t know why Gawain has you kept alive.”
“Enlighten me,” I said.
“Because he knew that if you died, all of your marks would disappear. Your nightmare would take control. He told Ares about it. He wants your mind broken before you die so that when your last mark goes and your nightmare takes control, you’ll be reborn loyal to whoever they need you to be loyal to.”
“That’s how the last mark goes? With my death?”
“Apparently so. Got to break you first, though.”
“Have you ever seen Lethal Weapon?”
The blood elf looked confused. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s a film from the nineteen eighties. It hasn’t aged that well, if I’m honest, but there was one bit in that, and if you haven’t seen it, this will all be new to you.”
“What will?”
I kicked the blood elf in the face, then wrapped my legs around his neck and used it as a lever to push myself up and pull the chain from the ceiling hook. I let my weight fall onto the neck and shoulders of the blood elf, and we collapsed to the floor. I broke his neck a second after, then removed his sword and decapitated him.
He didn’t wear a bracelet, so I still had no access to my magic, but he did have some keys. I unlocked my shackles and dropped them to the floor next to where Lucie’s body had been before putting the keys in my pocket.
Images of me murdering my friends flickered into my mind, making me feel like I needed to hunt them, to end their lives so that Arthur would accept me, would allow me to stand beside him. I pushed the thoughts away—I would deal with them later.
I left the cell and found myself in a corridor with dozens of identical doors along either side. A gate sat at one end, a stone wall at the other, which made the choice easy.
I unlocked the gate and pushed it open, making more noise than I was happy with, and paused at the bottom of a stone staircase to wait for anyone who might investigate what they’d heard. After ten seconds, and with no one seemingly interested in the sound of the gate opening, I slowly crept up the stairs, making sure to keep low. I was close to the top when I realized that the room beyond was empty.
A long table sat in the middle of the room, with several wooden chairs around it. It was littered with scraps of food and bottles of drink—it looked like they’d had a real party here. A small fireplace was close to the table, next to an ancient-looking wardrobe. A large wooden door at the far end of the room appeared to be the only exit other than the stairs to the cells, and I had no intention of going back down there.