Chapter 1
Warm blood runs along my spine with each crack of the whip as it cuts my back open.
I hardly feel the stinging anymore. I’m already back at the pond, watching my father reel in another trout. The sound of his belly laughs when the fish jumps out of his hands and back into the water makes my heart smile. It’s a sound I never want to forget.
Another lash of the whip threatens to pull me back, but I’ve gotten good at disassociating.
Two months of torture. Two months of refusing to use my power. Two months of disobeying King Cimmerian’s requests. Two months of playing back every one of Damien’s betrayals. Two months to learn how to trick my mind into escaping into the memory of my father and me fishing in the pond behind our house.
It’s now as if I’m two people. I’m not sure who is more real—the little girl wearing the sundress, hugging her father, or the girl who is bound by chains and torture. Neither of them feels right, and yet, they are all I am now.
I don’t even notice when I’m tossed back into my cell until Kane pulls me from the mental prison I’ve made my home.
“Reign, you can’t keep doing this. You’re going to have to give him something.”
“Over my dead body,” I promise.
“You know he won’t kill you. You’re too valuable to him.”
“Not if I keep my powers locked away,” I argue.
“He’s going to find a way to break you. It’s only a matter of time,” Slader hisses from his dark corner.
“Well, he’s going to have to do more than torture me then.”
It doesn’t matter what he does, I refuse to be a pawn in his game. I’ve been on the brink of death more times than I can count these past two months. He’s going to have to kill me because I’d rather die than let him use my power.
“I don’t get why he hasn’t just used his powers to manipulate you into doing his bidding like he does with the rest of us,” Kane contemplates aloud.
“Maybe he’s just saving that move as a last resort,” Slader offers.
“If he does that, he’ll have to admit to himself that he couldn’t break me, and I don’t think his fragile ego can handle that.”
Kane lets out a half-hearted laugh. “You have a point there.”
Just as Slader is about to say something, the doors down the dimly lit corridor creak open.
“The king wants to see you.”
The burly man, who was assigned by the king to bring us meals and escort us throughout the dungeons, starts to unlockmy cell. He takes off the shackle attached to my right ankle and locks two around my wrists instead.
The look Kane flashes me as I pass by his cell tells me I should be more concerned than I am, but there’s not much else the king can do to me. Killing me now would only be a welcome escape from this hell.
When we get to the Throne Room, King Cimmerian is already perched on the dais surrounded by ribbons of black shadows. Once I’m only a few feet from the steps, the man who goes by Orien, shoves me to the ground and forces me to my knees, still holding onto the chain attached to the power dampener locked around my neck.
“You don’t look so good, Reign.”
I loathe the way my name sounds on his lips.
When I don’t respond, the king claps his hands and motions to someone hidden behind one of the columns.
“You should see for yourself.”
A skinny man, who looks as if he too has been chained up for far too long, walks out holding a large oval mirror. His bony arms shake from the weight of the mirror as his shackles force him to shuffle slowly across the room. Once he reaches his destination, he sets down the mirror in front of me, forcing me to face the truth of what I have become.
The girl looking back at me now is unrecognizable.
Her cheekbones have hollowed, and her face has grown gaunt from hunger. The light in her eyes has gone dark, matching the circles just underneath them. The protruding edges of her collarbone stick out farther than they should, and patches of dirt cover her body and face.
