Wynn was pacing in frustration.
It was Fate’s only comfort in the dungeon of the chalet. Blood dribbled off him from too many wounds to count, often times further tormenting the delicate skin around injuries that had already begun to heal. He gazed at the stone ceiling above him, unable to move. Spread eagled and naked on his back with his limbs tied tightly a little too far from one another to increase his misery, he was in one piece. Wynn had ordered him tortured but all of his appendages remained accounted for.
For now.
Wynn’s first demand came as no surprise but his second, revealed today, had Fate wondering if his favorite appendage was going to survive the Immortal.
He’d been able to neatly avoid the sensation of pain for tens of thousands of years, an advantage of being able to see the future. The feeling shocked him at first. Similar to his first kiss as a human-ish being, he wasn’t accustomed to how intense humans experienced their world. But in the six weeks since this mess in Wynn’s basement first began, he’d begun to categorize the kinds of pain and soreness to keep his mind occupied on his misery and not wandering into worry.
Warm pain, hot pain, agony, anguish. Slow, creeping pain … bright, sudden pain … He’d ranked them from bad to worst and was currently debating whether the initial pain from broken bones or that from fire held the number one spot for worst pain ever.
“It’s simple,” Wynn said, calming. He sat once more in the chair beside Fate’s suspended form. “I will get what I want from you.”
Fate said nothing. He was enjoying the breather too much. A tremor of concern went through him. He’d been awake for multiple days straight, too long for him to recall when he’d last called in a favor from a fellow deity to extend the tenuous protection he arranged for Stephanie. He dared not waste a favor by calling it in too soon, but if his human mind was too confused to know for certain, he risked exposing her to everyone who was looking for her by not acting.
He tried again to count how many days it’d been. There was a blank spot in his mind where he had no idea how much time had passed.
“One favor from Fate. Just one,” Wynn continued. “Don’t you think your life is worth one favor?”
Fate had no intention of cracking. He surprised himself with his resolve. He hadn’t been physically tested in millennia. His normal game was mental, and he was pleased he made it this far.
“Try the second request,” Wynn’s chief tormenter, an Immortal with one eye, said from the corner. “He blinked when you mentioned her.”
Ah. He caught that. Fate’s physical weakness and exhaustion were wearing on his mental sharpness, which was what Wynn intended. People under physical duress were easier to manipulate than those who weren’t, a technique Fate had used countless times.
“It’s not a request,” Wynn replied. “It’s an order.”
“You can’t order me not to claim my mate,” Fate said, amused despite his pain. “Your Code forbids anyone from interfering.”
“If you choose to abandon her, it’s not me interfering,” Wynn responded acidly. “What does a deity know of selflessness? Of love?”
“What do you know of either?” Fate tugged at one of his bonds restlessly. The human experience was starting to get old, but he only began to worry when he realized he had no idea of he was succeeding in giving Stephanie her life back.
He didn’t even know if she was alive. The stark limitations of a human’s mind had begun to fuck with his thinking and knowledge of the world. Wynn wasn’t going to let anything happen to her before he got what he wanted, yet the uncertainty, the fear for his mate, remained.
“You look down upon Immortals and humans alike but it is you who is not worthy of us,” Wynn added. “You think I’ll turn my daughter over to a creature like you? You have no value for life.”
“You’ve never cared for any of your children let alone a daughter you only just met.” Fate grimaced.
“I care for all my children.”
“You’re not after her,” Fate ventured. “But something she can offer you. What?”
New pain, this one stemming from a slap with a barbed whip by the one-eyed tormenter, flashed through him.
“Is this vengeance … or something else?” he gasped.
“Vengeance is a good start. There are six of you I have particular plans for,” Wynn replied.
“Hurting me will hurt your daughter.”
“Perhaps. But it’ll hurt you more.” Wynn rose and motioned to the tormentor. “Put him on the wheel for the night.”
Damn. Fate didn’t particularly care to be tortured but the wheel was his least favorite. The medieval contraption meant he neither slept nor was able to heal, not when he was being inflicted with new wounds for a solid eight hours in a row.
“And so you know, I wouldn’t object to her being mated to a deity. I object to her being mated to you,” Wynn added from his position standing at the door.
“Because I had a hand in killing you.”
“Because you don’t know how to do anything but manipulate and lie. You’d trade her to the demons for a favor.”
Wynn left, slamming the door open on his way out.
The words resonated within Fate. Would he view a mate as nothing more than an additional tool in his toolbox to manipulate? Everyone in his life had a purpose and a role, and not one of them was present out of a sense of friendship or loyalty. Fate didn’t know the meaning of fidelity to anything, except for Karma, who he still planned to use when needed.
His fatigue, coupled with the incessant pain preventing him from real rest, was wearing down more than his resistance to Wynn. His own perception of the past millennia had begun to shift in a timespan not worth remembering given the extent of his lifetime.
For once, his focus wasn’t on the great game, on what hobby he wanted to master next, on the drama among deities and Immortals that kept him entertained. His mind was on the one thing he’d never put much thought into – how he filled his life with hobbies, politics and games because there was nothing else to fill it with. Time, living and the Future had lost their value to him. His existence had become a series of distractions, one after the next.
Alone with his thoughts – or strapped to the wheel, experiencing pain as a human – he began to notice how, when the distractions were stripped away, his life was filled with nothingness. Tons of it.
The tormentor brought in two more of his thugs to lift Fate from his position and carry him into the room next door, where the wooden wheel awaited him. At each of four points was some tool of torture. The wheel dragged him through water at its lowest point, fire at its highest, razorblades on the eastern point and feathers on the west.
After several nights on the wheel, he dreaded the feathers the most.
Pain radiated through him, distracting him from his thoughts. They strapped him to the wheel, face down tonight, and stepped aside to move the torture devices in place.
Fate rested his cheek against the wooden wheel and steeled himself for hours of agony.
Without the distractions, what was there? Further, who was he if we wasn’t searching for distractions? Was this what Karma had meant about him losing himself?
He had no answers, and this disturbed him more than hearing the motor of the wheel rumble to life.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered, sensing Karma.
His sister had visited often in the past few days. Her hair and eyes were black, and she was wringing her hands.
“I can’t find her,” she said, distraught. “I had her and then …”
“Is she safe?”
She nodded. “She was but then she was just gone. Brother, if I could just talk to the Ancient, I could -”
“Absolutely not. I’ve warned you many times. You do not do business with them.” Concern made Fate lift his head. “If you want to help me, find her, Karma. Please.”
His sister nodded, and the wheel began to turn.