I knew that after three hundred and sixty-four days.
“Looks like I will be executing the first-floor guard for letting your poor attempt at escape proceed.”
“Too late,” I retorted, calling across the yard. “I already did it for you.”
Thohfsa huffed out a surprised snort and a few of the guards gasped at my audacity, but I didn’t spare them a glance. I focused all my anger on Thohfsa, rolling the sharp stone in my hand and running over my slim options.
Thohfsa turned to the men around her. “Give the prisoners on the first floor an extra ration. They deserve it after alerting us to Dania’s escape. And prepare the interrogation room for her.”
“No need for interrogation, I’d hate to spend more time with you than necessary.” My voice was so hoarse from disuse, it sounded like a sad wheeze, but it didn’t stop my retort. “I’d rather keep company with the fleas in my cell.”
Thohfsa laughed, a cruel bark she often gave before enacting a punishment.
I could trace the marks she had made on my skin—as if the scars on my body created a map of my own disobedience. Just the thought of them flooded me with renewed rage. I wasn’t going to just stand here and let her arrest me again without putting up a fight. I gripped the sharpened stone so hard my fingers felt numb. Thohfsa tilted her chin up, looking at me like I was a slug underneath the heel of her boot.
Fuck it. If I was going down, I would take the bitch with me.
I rushed at her, stone in hand, scream ripping from my throat.
She didn’t move, except to flutter her hand at the guards flanking her.
A sharp pain exploded in the back of my skull, and blackness consumed me.
My skin burned from the fresh welts coating it. Every attempt to move brought renewed waves of agony so strong I threw up the nonexistent contents of my stomach. After retching, I tried to push my body up from my cell floor.
I could barely drag myself, not when the worst of Thohfsa’s torturecentered around my limbs. The smell was sharp and acrid—there was nothing like the scent of your own charred flesh to remind you of your position in life.
They had dumped me here after Thohfsa was done beating me, and I lay facedown on the cold stone, wishing I could turn to stone myself. Then I wouldn’t have the constant companion of this pain. I wouldn’t have the familiar ache of not knowing what became of my family after I left.
Of not knowing what happened to my father, my grandmother, even my cat.
I had been accused of murder. Treason. That would have tainted them all. I rolled my tongue across my teeth, tasting the bitter anger that had lived with me every day since I had been charged.
Since I had been framed for a crime that had never been mine.
Now, because of that, I had a family with no honor. My father likely couldn’t operate his smith anymore, and my grandmother’s friends would have turned away from her in disgust. I wanted to tear out my hair at the thought of them going through all that without me, and there was nothing I could do to help.
Why hadn’t the emperor just executed me? I exhaled slowly, stopping myself from spiraling. I needed to focus on surviving. Just being alive, one more day, despite the pain, despite the darkness.
Escaping. Seeing my family again.
Revenge.
A soft scratching jolted me from my thoughts.
I turned my head, pain splintering through my brain at the movement. I looked around my cell for the source of the sound, the moonlight pouring through the bars in the window above, creating shadows on the floor.
But nothing was there. My cell was empty except for a few loose bits of straw and my waste bucket.
Could it have been a rat?
My belly had a loud reaction to that, and I eyed my empty foodbowl. A rat for dinner would be something different, at least, though I wasn’t sure I could catch one in the state I was in.
I heard it again and stiffened. It was undeniable, a scraping against the stone.
It bounced off the granite walls and surrounded me as if it were echoing inside my head. I pressed my hands to my ears, wondering if I’d finally gone mad from all this.
But the sound was still there, insistent.
