by Raye Wagner
Maybe there was a fist of fight left in me.
My eyes were gritty and ached with the need to close. More than that, my mind begged for a chance to sort through what was happening. I needed to close my eyes for a few minutes, to fill in the hole in my heart that throbbed; every part of my mind, body, and soul yearned for a moment of peace. I wanted them to leave me alone.
“Please?” I begged, pulling on my captor, resisting him with all my meager strength. “Just give me a few minutes.”
But Jotun didn’t even deign to look my way, speeding up instead.
One look at his face, and the obvious futility dried up my pleas. His previously dull eyes were alight with anticipation that made my stomach roil.
Without breaking his stride, he flung me forward. My legs tangled, and I landed on my knees. The top layers of skin from my palms and knees disappeared into the rough stone floor, and I yelped as I rolled off the painful abrasions.
The beast grabbed my forearm and dragged me over the sharp stone ground.
My shoulder screamed in protest, a new pain overriding the burning of my knees, and the searing pain tore through my shoulder, my back, down my side, and into my chest. I gasped and sobbed, tears spilling from my eyes. The stone clawed and sliced through my tunic and then my skin. A loud keening carried from one of the chambers, the sound swelling louder and louder as we seemed to follow it to my doom. The wailing intensified, and my soul echoed the sound of grief and pain. When Jotun stopped, I couldn’t do anything but sag in a heap of grazed pain at his feet. The person’s weeping waned to whimpers, and I wondered if the terrified woman was as tired as I was. She sounded like she was. Had she suffered a similar torture?
Jotun pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked a door. He kicked me savagely and I scampered into the room, not needing any more of his vicious encouragement. I was willing to make this easier on myself. What was happening was beyond my understanding—the hurt, the unkindness, this entire situation. The deepest recesses of my soul couldn’t make sense of why someone would hurt me this way.
The sound of a key twisting in a lock echoed in the room, my mind, my heart, and my soul. The scrape of metal on metal undid the last of my courage.
Jotun rounded on me, smiling for the first time.
I watched him draw closer with burning eyes, already searching for the place inside me that Madeline spoke of; The place that would help me survive when I woke from this terrible nightmare.
10
The tang of blood and charred meat singed my nose, and my dream for a dungeon cell evaporated before my eyes. This wasn’t the accommodation I’d hoped for. This was no quiet cell with dirty straw in a corner and a promise of solitude.
In the center of the cramped room was a thick wooden table, similar in size to the ones in the throne room. The table filled most of the space, leaving enough room for a man to pass on either side. Heavy leather straps hung from the table’s sides, the ends fastened around a metal buckle, the perfect contraption for holding someone to the table against their will.
The woman’s screams began again, her voice expressing the horror in my soul. I scanned the rest of the room, and fear trickled into my pores, making my skin crawl.
The walls were lined with metal hooks, spikes of various materials and in various sizes, as well as thick mallets and heavy hammers. Ropes of barbed metal wound into loops hung from pegs and boxed contraptions.
I ran my tongue over my lips, and the high-pitched keening stopped. Understanding dawned on me as I noticed my sandpaper-dry mouth for the first time. I’d been the one screaming. That terrible wailing had been me.
Jotun grabbed both my arms and lifted me to the table.
Panic ran through me. Adrenaline I’d thought gone flooded me with a desperate need to escape before he could employ any of the atrocious tools of torture on the wall. I writhed, trying to escape, and he released my right arm. I flailed, hitting his arms, chest, and face several times before his hand circled my neck and slammed my head against the table.
Bursts of light blinded me with the impact, and I gasped for air as his hold tightened. The explosions of white stars increased, and I clawed at Jotun’s hand, trying to get him to release me. My vision tunneled, and I knew it was over. I’d lost.
I awoke to sharp pain digging into my back. I tried to arch away from the pain but couldn’t. I jolted to full consciousness and shifted in desperation, testing my arms and legs. My range of motion was only a hair’s breadth in any direction. I was strapped to the table!
My lips were wet but my mouth still parched, and I instinctively licked at the moisture and gagged at the oily substance coating them, its taste foul and rancid.
“It’s funny how licking the lips is always the first thing people do when they wake,” a man said.
I cracked open my eyes and stared at the king.
“In this position, if you vomit, you’ll choke. If you’re dead, you become useless,” the king said in a flat tone, his face illuminated by the weak light from the single window.
The sharp pain from my back disappeared, and the king waved a bloodied needle in front of my face before setting the tiny weapon down. “I’m surprised you passed out so quickly. Jotun wasn’t even able to welcome you properly. I should have told him that extracting information quickly didn’t mean killing you—yet.”
It didn’t seem kingly to be down here in the dungeon, amidst the evidence of my torture. Yet Irdelron seemed more at home here than on his throne.
I said nothing, afraid if I spoke, I would have to swallow. Instead, I stared at the ceiling and let the saliva pool in my mouth until there was enough to push the foul substance out with the collected drool. It trickled down the side of my face and neck and into my sawed-off hair, crawling along my skin, a disgusting trail of vileness.
“Well now, it seems that you are revived enough for my attention,” Irdelron said and moved into my line of sight. I flinched from the cruel pleasure lighting his fair face. He was in a white aketon, fitted much like the one Irrik wore, tight to his torso and sleeveless. Gold thread embroidered the edges in a filigree to highlight his muscular build. He smiled down on me as if he were my savior. “I’m so glad you will be with us. I’m most curious to see who has my Drae wrapped in knots. This is the first time in one hundred and five years he’s shown any interest in a prisoner. It’s quite interesting to behold, especially because it seems you hold some power over him. It’s good to remind my subjects of where they stand now and again, don’t you think, girl? Even a Drae.” His eyes grew distant. “Especially a Drae.” He straightened. “And a rebel, too.” He leaned over me and whispered, “You’ll help me crush the rebellion and remind Lord Irrik he is a subject, not king.”
I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.
“Tell me, girl. Who conspires against me? Give me names, and I shall end your suffering with mercy.”
Right. Everyone knew King Irdelron had no mercy, and probably never did. Besides, I’d never let Arnik or Dyter suffer on my account.
The king’s breath was warm on my face. “Last chance.”
I refused to answer. As the king withdrew, a heavy dread settled in my stomach.
A hot sting sliced across my nose and cheek with the crack of a whip. I tried to turn my head away from the source of agony. I screamed as my cheek burst into searing pain, and I thrashed in my restraints, unable to avoid what was causing my anguish. The burning spread across my face and down my neck to my chest with successive lashes.
“No more!” I begged.
The burning waned, and a dull throbbing took its place. Tears leaked from my eyes, and snot ran from my nose through the substance on my lips and into my mouth. I retched, but my stomach was empty, and I spit the bile and snot and poison out as I coughed.
“You’ve deluded yourself. You think this is as bad as it will get?” Irdelron shook his head in mock sympathy as he leaned over me, the gilded vial of Phaetyn blood dangling from his neck. “I already know yo
u’ll give me the answers I seek,” he whispered, caressing my face. “Everyone does. This? Jotun and I do this for fun. I have an odd . . . obsession with besting mortality. Have you ever noticed how easy it is for one life to end? I own that power. It’s my life’s work.”
He reached for the vial, his eyes losing focus.
I was being foolish. I knew it before I acted, but his fake sympathy was too much. I spat at him, that vile mixture in my mouth. My spittle sprayed his chin, neck, and the top portion of his pristine aketon.
In an instant, the fake kindness was gone, and white-lipped fury took its place. Irdelron slapped me, the force of his hand jerking my head to the side. He spun, his back blocking my view of what he was grabbing. Then he seized my hand and smashed it flat. He held the object high, and I pleaded with him as the stake glinted in the weak light. But he only laughed. He brought the weapon down, splicing it through my left hand.
I screamed in agony as the pain exploded. I writhed, but every movement made the pain worse, and I attempted to hold still. I tried to wiggle my fingers, but even that sent excruciating waves of anguish up my arm. The rest of the world melted away, and my entire universe was the brutal torment crushing the bones and veins in my left hand.
Jotun’s impassive face came into focus when the initial pain diminished, leaving an almost unbearable throb. I glimpsed the door swinging shut out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white aketon showing as it did. Irdelron was gone. I whimpered in relief.
Jotun turned to the wall, to his weapons, and my heart fell.
He came to my side, a thin needle pinched between his thick, now gloved, fingers. He set a clay container down on the edge, by the hand that was nailed to the table, and removed the lid.
I swallowed, clenching my jaw, tightening my core in anticipation of more pain. I closed my eyes, not sure if it was better to remain in ignorance or see the next means of torture.
He pinched the inside of my elbow, and shards of ice crawled up my arm toward my heart. I opened my eyes, and the room fractionated into tiny slivers that shifted and twirled, preventing me from making any sense of the countless pieces in front of me. I had a single moment of relief before the torment began.
The tiny ice pieces surged inside me, ballooning as they morphed into insects and arachnids. They coalesced in purpose and descended, gnawing and clawing at me, shredding my skin and burrowing deep to lay their eggs. They climbed under my ragged tunic and into my hair. I tried to turn my head, but there was no way to prevent them from digging into my ears. I forced air out my nostrils again and again, trying to keep them from my nose, but the number multiplied, and I had to close my eyes as a second wave descended.
The bugs pinched at my lips, and I folded them in between my teeth to prevent the insects from getting into my mouth, but as they filled my nostrils with their clawing, crawling legs, I was forced to open my mouth so I could breathe. The eggs under my skin started hatching, and the new creatures tore their way out. I screamed, chomping the bugs and spitting them out as fast as I could. Their legs stuck to my tongue, and I spit and chomped while trying to suck in enough air to stay alive. But I was slowly losing. A slithering centipede with millions of feet crawled across my cheek toward my mouth. I whimpered in horror, gagging as I tried to chomp the creature so I could breathe. But the pieces of the one became dozens of smaller invertebrate, and their segmented bodies wriggled into my throat and then into my lungs. I screamed, my voice raw from the overuse, and then I retched.
Pain shot up my arm as another creeping beast gnawed through the rest of my hand, the dead fingers discarded to the ground for other crawling things to eat.
They were in my ears, in my brain, eating away at everything that made me, destroying me until there was nothing left.
11
My arm flopped forward, stirring me from the escape of unconsciousness. Someone was here, shifting through the space, back and forth, silently.
I floated in and out of awareness, and each time, the person was in a different place.
Working from left to right. Methodically. Curiosity forced one eye open—the other was too swollen to cooperate.
The person stopped and turned toward me. His height and broad shoulders bespoke his gender as well as his square jaw, which was shaven clean. His downturned lips were visible, but the rest of his features were hidden beneath a dark hood pulled low over his face.
His lips thinned to a meager line, and he draped me with a cloth. Then he turned his back to me and continued wiping and storing the instruments in the room. Jotun’s cleanup crew. I couldn’t have done a single thing to protect myself if I tried.
I slipped away into oblivion.
The putrid stench of feces and sulfur was my first indication I was still alive. But I was warm. I had to be dreaming. Or dead, I thought, remembering the bugs and my torn throat and mind. How could I be alive after that? Were the bugs real? Or did the injections cause me to hallucinate? I shifted and inhaled sharply as I realized I had moved, unrestrained.
Not only was I warm and unrestrained, but nothing hurt. Nothing. Not my face, my skin, or my left hand. I clenched my left hand, it was heavily bandaged, but I could feel my fingers. Someone had tended to me.
I opened my eyes just enough to see I was no longer on the table in the torture room but on a stained mattress on a stone floor, buried in a mound of blankets.
I was alone. At last. The words flashed through my mind before I remembered them as the dying lament of the girl, Madeline. I rested back on the lumpy mattress, staring at the ceiling and wondering how much time had passed since Jotun injected me with . . . Horrible shakes raked my body at the memory of the bugs under my skin. They continued for an indiscriminate amount of time in the destitute darkness of my new home.
I was alone.
Mum was gone, and the bit of fight left in me before Jotun strapped me to the table was non-existent now. I could hardly recall I’d had the notion, and I couldn’t remember what it felt like. That piece of myself the girl told me to keep, the place that separated survivors from victims. I didn’t know how to find it or if I had one to begin with.
A tear leaked from the corner of one eye and ran into my hairline and around my skull onto the mattress.
Another followed.
And more, until I was sobbing, face pressed into the filthy mattress to conceal my breaking point as best I could from the other prisoners.
My mother was gone, and I might have killed her.
My mother was gone.
My mother was gone.
Each time the thought circled around, it was more frantic and higher pitched. My chest clenched so tight it hurt as I cried for my mother, and my guilt over leaving her, for the girl Madeline who might’ve been me. For myself because I was not the innocent girl I was before and knew I could never return.
I’d heard stories of Irdelron’s cruelty, but I had no comprehension of his brand of evil. I had no idea such brutality could even exist.
The girl I’d been couldn’t understand it.
Had been.
The girl I was now . . .
I saw the way Irdelron clutched his vial of blood. I now understood the king’s determination for power, no matter the cost or depravity. He’d slaughtered the Drae and the Phaetyn to secure his throne. He drank the blood of the Phaetyn. He enslaved his own people, and reigned with brutality.
But that one person would do such things; that knowledge threatened to overwhelm me. My heart could not accept it.
Staring blankly out of the thick metal bars into the darkness, I sobbed until every ounce of my waking strength was gone.
The next time I awoke, it was to the clang of metal.
I jerked up, pushing my hands into the bed to lift myself. No more sound came, and I slowly relaxed. I lifted my hand. The bandage had been removed since the last time I awoke, and I stared at my hand in awe in the dim dungeon light.
My jaw dropped. Whoever bandaged me had to be a magician, because my hand was wh
ole, completely unmarred from the stake. I pushed the blankets aside and looked at my legs. I felt . . . so much better.
I glanced around the room, taking it in for the first time. The damp square space was mostly empty. A chamber pot sat in one corner with straw scattered around. The rough floor was dark stone, uneven and jagged. Three of the walls were solid, no windows or breaks to allow for light or ventilation. The air carried the weighty dank stench of wet rock and rat droppings. There was space to take three large steps in each direction. I turned in my bed and faced the last wall. Bars spanned from the rock ceiling to the floor and from wall to wall. On the other side of the bars was a narrow, stone hall.
I stood, my tender bare feet protesting the uneven surface, and my knees buckled as I straightened. The room spun, and I put my hand on the wall beside the mattress to stop my collapse.
Balance restored, I gingerly inched my way toward the front of my cell. As I approached, I noticed a bundle on the ground, a dark rag holding a hunk of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a flask I prayed was water. I unstopped the cork and sniffed. The sweet smell was foreign to me. The food and water could be a trap, or poison, but neither of those mattered anymore. I took a sip, and a glorious sweetness danced across my tongue, encouraging my thirst to flee.
I had no idea how long I’d been out, but my stomach didn’t even rumble at the food, so I knew I had to be well down the path of starvation. It wasn’t like I’d had fat stores beforehand.
My tummy churned when the fluid hit, but instead of protesting, I craved more. I sipped the fluid and nibbled on the bread, relieved when I kept it down. I stashed the remaining food back in the cloth and wrapped the cloth and flagon in a blanket before depositing it on the corner of my mattress.
I returned to the wall of bars and peered left and right down the hall. I could only see a few feet in either direction. The dark and narrow hall outside my cell extended past my limited vision. If there were other cells, or other prisoners, I couldn’t see them, and I wasn’t foolish enough to call out.
