My head drops as I prepare for the hours ahead.
They are everything I feared when they threw me in the cell. The pain that began in a single wound, its fire already filling me with an agony that ties up my lungs and fills my stomach with rocks, grows with every slice. Every cut. Every puncture and stab and twist. Every laugh and jeer and grope.
So I go away. The Dróttning will punish them if they kill me. My body will be alive when I return. Right now, at this moment, I need to protect my mind. I need to rebuild the walls inside that helped me get through the agony of their questioning without going mad. It will take time, even though the walls I forged before never fully came down.
My mind casts out, escaping the blades that hope to strip away my soul, as it searches. I don’t want to seek him, but I have none of the control I’d found when they held me here before. That will come in time. Today, my scrambling mind needs its anchor. It needs Fhord.
Tomorrow, I’ll build the new barriers I need to protect myself from him.
But he’s not here.
After only a couple of weeks, I know his essence better than my own. I’ve become attuned enough to sense him at the far reaches of the Nest. Even if he was shielding from me, I’d recognize his presence, at least.
He’s not here.
Finally, after my desperate mind has searched everywhere it can reach, it leaves the Nest. I can send it a few vikus away and still reel it back to me. That’s where I find him—perhaps two vikus from the caves. He’s blocked me, of course, as he races south alone on Sigurd. He didn’t even wait for Tindera to be released and must have left soon after the Dróttning entered this cavern. As she sliced my flesh away and tasted my blood.
That’s what breaks me. Not the punishment I’ll face alone, the pain I’ll endure at the hands of the Dróttning and her guards. Not the humiliation of being displayed for leches to see and touch. Not even the despair of knowing I probably can’t escape this time. They won’t make the same mistakes they did before. This is my life until they give up and send me to a prison.
Fhord destroys me, in a way the Dróttning didn’t and never could. I saw his face when he betrayed me and the rational side of me knew. He chose his duty, himself, over a chance of saving me. He gave me up because he would suffer for helping an elf. Anyone would. Survival is the most important instinct in this world.
I still hoped.
I wanted to believe it was an act. That this thing between us was more than lust. It was for me, I know now. I fell for Fhord. I didn’t want to. I should have pushed him away. I should have refused Bevin’s demand, forced him to choose someone else, even if it meant losing all the progress I’d made. I knew when I saw Fhord that he would threaten everything. And I let myself get close to him anyway.
I wanted to believe he cared about me too. But now I know he didn’t. Because if he did, he would have saved me from this fate. This pain.
If Fhord felt the way I do, he would have moved mountains to rescue me.
But he’s not fucking here.
Chapter twenty-five
Sifa
Enough for Now
Theminutesandthenhours flow into each other on the rack.
My mind returns, heartbroken, when I realize Fhord is running away from me. My body is still displayed and tortured. And I hurt so fucking bad. Everywhere I look, my skin is shredded. These guards did exactly what the Dróttning demanded, making sure I would feel each drop of blood they take from me.
The night drags on and I don’t leave my body again. I experience all of it. Every slice of a knife. Every puncture where it will cause the most pain. Every scrape on an open wound. It is pain and pain and more pain. Three times, I nearly leave to find an escape in the clouds. To hide from the agony for a time.
Instead, I stay. Because in the clouds, I would only think ofhim. And that pain is even worse.
So I let the physical pain fuel my anger and resolve. I’ll need every one of those dark emotions when I’m free. The path in front of me shimmers with the vengeance I’ll take against the Dróttning and all who serve her. Every man and woman who acts out her cruel demands. Every person who inflicts pain on another, usually because they take pleasure from it just as the Dróttning does.
Finally, too many hours after they tied me up here, the Dróttning returns. I’m asleep, my body demanding rest even now, when I hear theclick-clackof her heels strolling toward us. Her presence floats into the room, a wave of ice-cold air preparing the way for her. Then she’s here, her face a mask of cold cruelty.
“Well done,” she declares as her hands lift into a mocking clap. “She looks exactly as I’d hoped she would.” Letting her feet carry her toward me, blood seeping into the hem of her dress as it sweeps across the floor, the Dróttning reaches out a hand and swipes it through a wound her guard just opened. Agony follows her long fingernails as they trigger nerves all along their path. She again lifts her fingers to her lips and tastes my torture. “Almost as sweet as your pain.”
“It won’t matter, you know,” I whisper, the words barely passing through my mutilated throat. “I won’t ever give in to you. You’ll never get what you want from me.”
“Maybe not,” she concedes, her lips twisting into a smile of pure malice. “But we’ll have fun trying.” She lifts a hand to cup my cheek, then turns to the closest guard. “Enough for now. I want flawless, unbroken skin the next time I take my knife to her. Replace the manacle and return her to her cell. When she comes back to me, she’ll be bathed and pure.”
She spins to stride away, her hips swaying as her dress leaves a trail through my blood.
Flinching away from the hands that wrap around my naked form, I try and fail to hold back the shudder of relief when they release me. My knees clatter to the ground as I collapse, barely holding myself in a kneeling position.
