AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fine, keep me on display for Kane’s brother.”
He sets me down immediately. Warrose laughs. And I scramble to pull my uniform back onto my body.
The Ringmaster appears on his special raised platform, surrounded by fire scorching the moist air. His speech is brief as a teenage boy dressed in a soldier’s matte black armor, chains, and piercings steps onto the stage with a stoic look of confidence. His left arm is extended behind him, pulling a leather rope irritably.
I step forward with raised eyebrows. What the hell?
It’s not just a leather rope. It’s a leash. And it’s pulling a woman in her late thirties across the stage. She crawls behind him with bruised, brittle knees, stained rags for clothing, and matted hair that hasn’t seen a comb in months.
“Is this another weird sex thing?” Niles whispers.
God, I hope not. The look on her face says it wouldn’t be consensual. She’s gawking up at the crowd, tears collecting at the corners of her eyes, and stumbling to keep up as her leash is jerked forward. She chokes and gasps while falling to the ground, scrambling to crawl again behind the teenage soldier.
The teenage boy ties her leash to a wooden post in the center of the stage, ripping off her rags to expose her scarred, gnarled back.
The crowd cheers for the boy, and he grins up at the masses with a victorious fist in the air.
The Ringmaster starts shouting again, throwing his hands up, pointing at the leashed woman with menace glinting in his beady eyes.
“Ruth?” I look back at her watching the Ringmaster intently.
“The boy has been in training his whole life, keeping his mother as a pet to…abuse.”
We whip our heads back to the mother. She’s been abused by her own son? A pet on a leash? What the fuck is wrong with this country?
“That’s fucked,” Warrose grunts.
“This is his test before he can make it to the finals. He must degrade, humiliate, and whip his mother in front of the legions. If he shows any sign of sympathy, any hesitation, he’ll be thrown into this prison as a faulty product, shamed for being incapable of joining the Vexamen Breed.” Ruth circles her hand around my wrist, looking up at me with pleading eyes. “That poor woman.”
There are female inmates sobbing around us, holding their dirty hands over their mouths to stifle the noise. It’s the first time I stop to think. What were they convicted for? Are these prisoners here for failing to conform? Is this place like the Emerald Lake Asylum? Victims of a deranged patriarchy?
I bite down on my lip, looking up at Dessin, seeing the same dreadful contemplation hardening his jaw.
The woman begs in another language, trying to get her son’s attention as he unravels a whip. The edges are laced with small blades. The handle is shaped in the head of a wolf, brass and aged.
“She’s trying to remind him of the moments she held him in her belly, how she loved him before meeting him, how she’ll forgive him no matter what,” Ruth translates with a trembling voice.
Dessin clenches his fists so hard, they turn stark white. It’s been a while since the veil of the void nudged at my mind, coaxing me to see what it has to offer. Looking at the hard lines on Dessin’s face, I know the void is luring me to a moment only Dessin can see.
I mentally step close to the void, pressing my ear against the soft plasma of its border.
“It’s okay, sweet boy,” Sophia says softly. “You and Arthur are going to make it without me. I’ll always be with you.”
I remember the night by the lagoon. The night Dessin told me the start of their trauma. How Sophia told him everything would be okay. A mother’s love in the face of certain death.
Dessin’s eyes are red and murderous, glaring at the scene spinning out of control.
“I’ll always love you, my son.” Ruth chokes as her eyes fill with tears.
“No.” I shake my head. “Stop…”
My feet move without conscious demand. And it’s as if we are one soul, the way Dessin moves with me. Falling in step as I stride toward the wooden post, setting my focus on the quivering mother.
“No!” I shout, shoving past other inmates, leaping onto the stage as the teenage boy winds his arm back.
The mother’s body bears down as the whip slices through the air, and—
Dessin’s hand snatches the teenage boy’s wrist mid-swing. The crowd gasps and stands at the sudden intrusion. The boy soldier appears genuinely shocked that anyone would disrupt this sacred ritual. His golden eyes stare into Dessin’s with a thousand questions, yet no sound passes his lips.
