Agamemnon Frost and the Hollow Ships by Kim Knox

Author:Kim Knox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

6. Caught beneath the Earth

Mason’s chest heaved, the shock of pure air a surge in his lungs.

A glass cylinder hugged tight to his body. Metal cuffed him, around his calves, thighs, wrists, waist and forehead, making movement impossible. Pain stabbed into his flesh. He glanced down and hissed at the white flare of agony at the base of his neck. A spike drove up into his brain, and thin tendrils moved within him, teasing, twisting...taking.

His breath quickened and the spike piercing his heart took a firmer bite. He groaned, the sound echoing around him in the chamber.

Mason knew what this was and he eased the tight panic making him want to scream out his fear. That was his other, weaker, human self. The remnants he couldn’t shake.

He was in service to his master. The pain was nothing.

But still...the soft slurp and bubble of the pipes and filaments feeding from him ran his pinned heart too fast. And tensing against the invasion revealed a third spike buried deep in his gut.

He wet his dry lips, the movement lancing pain along his jaw. His sudden puff of breath steamed the glass and he counted the slow seconds until it cleared.

He wasn’t alone in his confinement. To his left and to his right were other cylinders, connected and feeding into a central mechane built into the shadowed ceiling. Bright points of light shone against familiar skin and faces. His thyreos filled one chamber, the metal and pipes eating into him in the same way. Frost’s perfection was obvious. The calmness with which he accepted his duty, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the looseness of his body, stabbed at Mason harder than the spikes. The man was a traitor, and yet he bore the invasion with ease, when he as a true soldier to his master struggled.

Mason tried to emulate him, closing his eyes for a brief second. But all he could sense were the searing grind and twist of the tendrils in his modified brain. Instead, he focused on the occupant of the other chamber...and that sent his pulse into a wild spin. Pain ripped over him as he thrashed against the metal that held him.

Theodora Cadwallader. Sir Randolph’s stepdaughter.

Her dark eyes held him, almost serene in their blankness. It caused Mason to still and his blood to slow. He remembered to breathe. She looked away from him and settled on Frost. A line creased between her eyebrows, and the twist in his gut wasn’t only from the spike buried there.

He was jealous. And it burned away any thought of...Pandarus and his right to torture him—them—in this way. His instincts had been right. Theodora was alive. What had she told Pandarus? Had he known all along that transfiguration had failed? That he and Frost were free of his complete control? Or was Theodora’s mind as blank and empty as her eyes?

Another gaze pricked against his skin and Mason willed himself to look at Frost. Shining brown eyes gripped him.

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