I pried his jaw open as he screamed—I didn't ease up for a second. Bruised and fading, my head swimming worse by the second, I drove my thumbs deeper into his eyes with everything I had.
Blood slicked my fingers. He thrashed, trying to rip free; the pressure on my throat slackened. I dragged in a ragged breath and pushed harder. He howled, clawed at my wrists, tried to tear my hands away—
—I cinched my legs tighter around his waist, twisted, and rolled him. In one heave I reversed us and pinned him beneath me.
My hair fell around my face. Blood from the cut at my temple dripped onto his cheeks—nothing compared to the rivers pouring from his ruined eyes. I ground the back of his skull into the floor and pressed both thumbs in deeper.
He bucked and shrieked, but his eyes were little more than pulp. Panting, greedily filling my lungs, I planted my knees on his forearms so he couldn't use his hands. He screamed for help until his voice broke into a rasp.
I wrenched my bloody thumbs out of the sockets, stared at the red pits I'd carved, and growled, "This is for the eyes you took from me."
Still shaking with fury, I bent, grabbed a shard of glass from the floor beside his head.
He was still screaming. "I'll k—kill you, you—"
I shoved my hand into his mouth, hooked his tongue, yanked it out—then drove the shard down.
"This is for the voice you tried to steal," I hissed as I sliced the tip before he could clamp his jaw.
His mouth flooded; blood streamed from the ruined sockets. He gagged on it, drowning in his own filth, spilling out broken, animal sounds—pure pain. I'd waited a long time to hear them.
He choked and gurgled, gurgling in his own dirty blood. I leaned to his ear and whispered, "See you in hell, bastard."
A hand yanked my arm back hard. I whipped the glass up—only for Ashur to snake an arm around my waist, catch my wrist with his free hand, and stop the shard inches from his throat.
I stared at him, stunned. Those cold, empty eyes were locked on mine. We were close—my chest pressed to his, his arm banded tight around me. My lungs raced; my heart hammered against its cage.
I looked around the lab in a daze. He'd killed more than a dozen with his bare hands. Red-clad bodies lay heaped; Patrick's wet, rattling breath gurgled nearby—gurgling in his own dirty blood.
Ashur held my gaze and said, voice low and frostbitten, "I th— thought when I said I wanted to see you o— out of the glass as fast as p— possible, I'd made myself clear."