Chapter 140 Guard Falls
"You look horrific, Arch-Duchess," Silas observed softly. His breathy voice echoed off the domed ceiling. He nodded toward my face. "You are bleeding from the nose. Your eyes are sunken. You are vibrating like a plucked string."
I stared at him, my expression entirely dead. I tasted the copper in my mouth, swallowing hard to moisten my cracked throat.
"Did the Emperor send you to sit and watch me die?" I asked. My voice was a dry, scraping whisper, but it didn't shake.
Silas smiled, a slow, calculated upward curve of his lips. He raised the silver goblet, swirling the dark crimson liquid inside. The heavy, metallic scent of fresh vampire blood hit my senses.
"The Emperor sent me to evaluate your mental state," Silas corrected. He took a slow sip from the goblet, his red eyes never leaving my face. "He is curious as to why the Anchor hasn't snapped yet. By all biological metrics, the Admiral should be a mindless, feral beast right now. He hasn't fed. He is bleeding heavily. The suppressor collar is cooking his throat. And yet, when I went down to the dungeon an hour ago to check his chains, he looked at me with completely lucid eyes."
My heart hammered against my ribs, a sudden, frantic rhythm. Silas was too sharp. He was looking for the variable the Emperor had missed.
"He is the Grand Admiral," I said coldly, leaning my shoulder against the thick gold bars. The metal was freezing against my skin. "He has three centuries of discipline. He will not break just because you put him in the dark."
"Discipline does not rewrite biology," Silas countered smoothly. He stood up from the chair, walking slowly around the perimeter of my cage. "An immortal deprived of blood loses higher cognitive function. It is an absolute law of our nature. But Klaus is fighting it. He is drawing strength from an external source."
Silas stopped on the right side of the cage, crouching down until he was eye-level with me.
"What are you doing to him, Siren?" Silas whispered, his gaze dropping to my chained hands resting in my lap.
"Nothing," I replied, keeping my hands perfectly still. I forced my breathing to remain shallow and even.
"Lie to me again, and I will go back downstairs and take his right eye," Silas offered pleasantly.
A violent, suffocating surge of hatred seized my chest. The cold magic at the base of my lungs flared, a dark, churning storm begging to be unleashed. I wanted to reach through the gold bars, grab Silas by his throat, and rot the flesh straight off his bones.
Through the tether, Klaus felt the sudden, massive spike of my rage.
Nerissa, hold steady, Klaus warned, his mental grip tightening around my mind, a heavy, grounding anchor in the storm. Do not let him bait you. He wants you to lash out.
I forced the magic down, burying it deep. I looked Silas directly in his burning red eyes.
"I am bound to a cage," I said, my voice dripping with absolute venom. "I am starved. I am chained. If you cannot break a single prisoner in your own dungeon, Commander, that is a failure of your methods, not a triumph of my magic. Perhaps you are just incompetent."
Silas didn't blink. He simply stared at me for a long, quiet moment. The silence in the Throne Room grew so heavy it felt like the air itself was turning to lead.
Slowly, Silas stood up. He brushed a speck of invisible dust from his gold-trimmed breastplate.
"You are exceptionally arrogant for a woman sitting in her own tomb," Silas murmured. He walked back to the wooden chair, picking it up easily with one hand. "The Emperor believes he can force you to sing submission. I told him he was wasting his time. You will never kneel."
He turned his back on me, walking toward the heavy obsidian doors.
"I will give you twelve hours," Silas called over his shoulder, not bothering to look back. "If you do not break by tomorrow morning, I will stop using the silver whip on his back. I will start using it on his face. We will see how much of that discipline remains when I remove his jaw."
The heavy doors groaned open, swallowing Silas into the dark corridors beyond, and slammed shut with a booming, final crash.
I was alone again.
My entire body shook violently. The threat wasn't a bluff. Silas was a meticulous sadist, and the Emperor had given him absolute authority over Klaus's body. I had twelve hours before Silas went back into the dark to butcher the man I loved.
I looked down at the iron shackles binding my wrists.
I didn't have time to rest. I didn't have time to worry about my plummeting heart rate or the blood leaking from my nose.
I uncrossed my legs, kneeling on the hard, polished marble floor of the cage. I pulled the short, rusted chain tight between my hands, wrapping my raw, bleeding fingers around the thickest center link.
I closed my eyes, diving into the dark, freezing depths of my own power.
I am sorry, I pushed the thought down the tether, flooding the bond with every ounce of love, terror, and desperate fury I possessed. I cannot stop.
Klaus didn't argue this time. He felt the absolute, unyielding iron of my resolve. He opened his mind entirely, accepting the heavy, agonizing burden of my failing physical state, silently bracing himself to weather the storm with me.