Chapter 1
Silence screamed inside of her mind. The pain of the hooks slipped into her flesh echoed against the walls, the stinging aches reverberating off of the stone walls. Her heartbeat sent wave after wave of excruciating torment throughout her flesh, the burning sensation mounting against her mind and clamping down on her bare chest.
Breathe, just breathe, one at a time, in and out, in and out. You can do this. You can do anything.
Even in the darkness where not even a water drop broke the tormenting silence, she tried to survive. It was all she knew how to do, try to survive. The streets of Halafar where she had been abandoned had been the unforgiving mother where she had survived as a child. Cherlie's slave caravan had been the father of her adolescent years, rejecting and beating her, yet she had survived. She could survive this. She was a survivor.
Just Breathe, one at a time. You are stronger than this, you can do this. You will live.
The pain, and the silence, carried on.
It wasn't that she couldn't cry out, or struggle, or fight. She had spent her entire life fighting against forces and people and circumstances bigger and greater than she was. The city could come crashing down on you like a dragon, laying its full weight of thugs or the guard or a passing rumor upon her, crushing her to death. Cherlie's caravan had been a serpent, ready to sting with the whip for disobedience, or break you with starvation for a lack of work. There had been a thousand other moments she had survived and she knew one thing that most did not account for; this too, shall pass.
Despite the cold chill slipping over her naked body like a hand caressing her filthy flesh, sweat beaded on her chest, the effort of staying alive and sane wearing on her soul. Every so often, a trickle of sweat running over her skin reminded her of how she was suspended in the room. Hooks with sickle sharp points were snaked into the skin and sinew of her wrists and ankles. Chains linked to those hooks stretched to each corner of the rectangular room. Six more dug into her along her sides. Two were nestled painfully against her rib cage near her armpit, two created bloody yet supposedly harmless piercings just over her hips, and two more made a home in her thighs. The last two had a unique sensation of burning and she suspected that it came from the muscles being pierced and pulled. When the drop of sweat on her chest slid down her thin torso, tickling her ribs, the twitch reminded her of just how acutely each hook in her flesh pulled. The tension of every chain kept her body taught and suspended in the air.
She twitched. The chains clinked and rattled and terror imploded her heart. The icy cold fear sucked her breath inward and every muscle, already tense from being drawn and pulled taught in mid air, tightened impossibly, giving the metal links another tiny rattle.
Her breath started coming faster and she had to remind herself to slow down or she would panic. She looked down her ripped and bloody body, watching her chest rise and fall.
It might draw him back. Fear of being left alone in the dark, starving or dying of thirst was horrific. The sounds of her torment could call the Sorcerer back. Her silence was all that kept him away. She wanted him to stay away for as long as possible. He had cold promises of using her body while she screamed and had left her to imagine what that could mean with a scythe like smile.
Her breasts were heavy on her chest and she focused on not lifting them with each breath. The weight of them rested just below her collar bone and she remembered once the comforting feeling of a thick heavy blanket resting on her chest. She cast her mind into that memory while staring at her chest, letting herself get lost in the past, if only for a second.
In Cherlie's caravan she had been slave labor. Winter had set on but Cherlie hadn't bothered to offer warm clothes or fire or even a blanket. More than one of the slaves had died in the cold wind, huddled under the wagons that carried his goods. One of the guards had found her huddled against a wheel in a shallow pit she had dug with her bare hands to block the wind and given her a blanket. She remembered being terrified as a mouse caught in a cat's paw, mewling like a babe when he reached under the wagon to offer it to her. She hadn't taken it, but he eventually left it on the ground and walked away from her without a word. A scarf was wrapped about his mouth, under his helm and all she could see were his bright blue eyes, hard as rocks she had thought at the time.
That same blue eyed man had been the one to teach her how to use a knife and how to kill a man, and what men would want from a pretty girl like her, and what they would expect from her and how she could use that to live; to survive. The memory faded and the stones of the dungeon like room erected themselves around her again.
Light lanced into the room, sudden and unstoppable. Her heart leapt into her chest but she managed not to twitch, the chains silent and still. The doorway was across the room from her feet. She could look down her body and a little to the left to see it. It was an arched doorway, the door made of wood planks and iron strapping. Its hinges were silent while it swung open, light entering the room in arrogant fashion, as if to say it belonged here, and everywhere, in spite of the stones blocking it out.
A black cloaked figure, hooded with face hidden, shuffled into the room without a hurry. White bony hands perched in front of him, fingers hanging down like icicles dangling from rooftops. He didn't bother to shut the door as he shuffled up to her. He didn't voice a sound but his mouth sucked at the air, his chest crackling with each inhale.
She didn't twitch, the pain from being held taught by the hooks a constant reminder of her helpless position. She wasn't able to control the shuddering revulsion that crept over her skull and down her spine, like ice water poured down her back.
The sorcerer reached out a pale bony hand and placed a finger on her chest between her bare breasts. "Yes, I think you are ready now," his voice was harsh, like rocks grinding against each other, but weak. He spared a moment to grope one of her breasts with a cold flaccid hand then disappeared behind her slowly, placing himself above her head.
I will survive
she told herself silently. Muttering began from out of her view, coming from the Sorcerer. She tried not to listen, instead speaking to herself.
