2. AURORA #2
Finally naked, I’m left standing fully exposed under flickering fluorescent lights. My white skin looks like gooseflesh. I want to cover myself, to curl into a ball, but I refuse to let these bastards see me blink.
Then comes the visual inspection.
“Lift your hair,” she commands. I gather my matted gold strands, baring my neck.
“Open. Tongue up.”
I obey. I’m sure my breath smells foul at this point. I hope she chokes on it.
“Turn. Bend. Spread and cough.”
My soul tries to leave my body. When I don’t move fast enough, she smacks her baton against my bare back. The sting is sharp, waking up every nerve I was trying to numb.
“I said, bend over. Might as well get practiced in this position, Drakeward. It’s gonna get real familiar.”
No, no, no. no.
Bile swirls in my throat, and as I submit, it takes everything not to puke. Her gloved fingers probe and poke when none have gone before. This might be what breaks me.
In the next cubicle over, I can hear Julian screaming and cursing, his precious dignity disappearing with the fingers up his ass.
Finally, I’m shoved under a showerhead with water so cold it feels like liquid nitrogen hitting my skin.
Wump—ppp. Wump—ppp.
My heart fumbles the beat, slamming hard against that internal patch of scar tissue like a dancer tripping on a loose floorboard. I press my palm flat against the freezing wet tile of the wall, waiting for the muscle to find its rhythm, desperate to keep the panic from swallowing me whole.
The water roaring out of the rusted pipes sounds too much like the whoosh of the high-pressure breathing vents at the Havengard Medical Center.
The specialists had called it a miracle that I survived the gasoline fire at all. It fucked up my lungs before the alarms even started ringing, but the moments afterward did the real damage. My heart had kept beating in that vacuum of oxygen until the muscle itself began to suffocate.
The specialists called it "patchy fibrosis." A nice way of saying a piece of my heart turned to stone that night. Now, that patch of scar tissue sits there like a landmine. Most of the time, it’s quiet. But when I’m pushed too hard, or the freezing shock of reality hits too fast, the electrical current hits that dead spot and bounces back, dragging at my lungs until I’m starving for oxygen.
Don’t break, Rory. Not here. Please, Gods.
The water shuts off and before I can even draw a clean breath, I’m doused with a heavy chemical powder that stings my eyes until I’m half blind, the harsh white dust coating my damp skin like ash.
A bundle of cloth is shoved into my arms. “Dress,” the woman says.
The clothes are like hospital scrubs, and an ugly yellow color. At least the cheap towelling spa slippers give my feet some relief from the cold, concrete floor.
My wrists are raw, my lip is a swollen mess, and my magic is non-existent.
I’m shoved against a wall.
Flash.
This photo will be a permanent record of the fall of Aurora Drakeward.
And this is just the beginning.
Motherfuckers. I hate them all.
I see Julian being led away by the male guard. He’s dressed in deep red scrubs, looking small and broken as the heavy doors swallow him whole. But I’m turned in a different direction.
Trunchbull takes me down a corridor into a bland, industrial looking office. A pretty girl about my age sits at a desk. She also wears the yellow scrubs—and a face full of bruises.
The Trunchbull-guard grunts, checking her watch as a muffled phone rings from deep inside the inner office. “Stay put, Drakeward. Don’t even breathe.” She points a thick finger at me for a beat, then disappears through the door, leaving me alone with the girl in yellow.
The room is silent apart from the low hum of the fluorescent lights.
The girl at the desk is beautiful, or she would be, if her skin wasn’t a patchwork of shadows and swelling.
The bruises around her neck are in the shape of thumbprints.
A collar of violent purple and sickly yellow.
Her fingers tremble against a manila folder.
“What’s your name?” I whisper.
She flinches then her gaze flickers to the closed door then back at the desk surface. “Simone,” she breathes, so softly I almost miss it.
“I’m Aurora.” I take a step closer. “Who did that to you?” I gesture toward her neck.
Simone finally looks at me. Her eyes are a dull, flat brown, stripped of any life.
“The Warden likes his birds to be quiet,” she says, her voice devoid of emotion.
His birds? What does that mean?
She looks at my bloody wrists. “At least up here, you get real blankets, nicer food. I don’t have to worry about being shanked for my shoes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s going to offer you a choice. He’ll say yellow is better than red.”
Not a clue what she’s talking about but I press on. “Is yellow better?” I ask.
Simone touches the bruises on her neck. “The cell blocks are…bad. Being here, with the warden…” She pauses, a wave of weary hopelessness rolling off her. “Maybe this job is an improvement. Maybe not.”
The heavy click of the door handle makes her go rigid. She starts fumbling with the folders, her head ducked low. Trunchbull stomps back out, her face sour. “Move it, slut. He’s ready to see you.”
As I’m shoved toward the inner office, I glance back. Simone doesn’t look up, but her shoulders are shaking.
The guard knocks on yet another closed door.
“Come.”
This office is different. It’s luxuriously appointed—dark wood, leather, the smell of expensive cigars.
In the center sits a man in his sixties with small, beady eyes and thinning hair.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit so immaculate that Cosmo would have known the designer and the price tag within five seconds.
My heart pangs at the thought of my brother.
“Aurora Drakeward,” the man says, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. “My name is Warden Voss. Welcome.”
He stands and circles the desk, then stops just inches from me. “You don’t look much like an Elite princess. You look like the rest of the gutter rats in this place. Pathetic. Desperate. A whole lot of nothing.”
That’s where you’re fucking wrong.
I refuse to be any of those things.
Voss lowers his voice, his breath smelling of breathmint. “In Quo, I can be your greatest ally or your most relentless enemy. Since you carry the Drakeward name, I’m giving you the luxury of choice.”
He leans back against his desk, crossing his ankles with the casual ease of a man who knows he has all the power. “Choose me as a friend, and you’ll find a home in the administrative wing. A real bed. Hot meals. The privilege of living in the light, far away from the scum.”
It sounds tempting. It sounds like a lifeline. But I can still see the thumbprints on Simone’s neck.
“The girls who work here are my little birds. My canaries. They are pretty, and they… please me, to remain in my good graces. Are you willing to be one of my yellow birds, Aurora?”
The way he says “please me” makes my skin crawl. Simone’s vacant stare and bruised throat make perfect, horrifying sense now.
“The alternative,” Voss says, his eyes drifting toward the window, “is the yard. And you, my dear, aren’t built for the bullpen.
” He gestures to the floodlit concrete expanse below.
“Out there, the paths are short and they lead to a hell you won’t survive.
On one side, you have the Guild. Currently sixty-three witches who are nearly all male.
They are not the type you’re used to, Aurora.
They are the bad seeds, desperate delinquents who treat their women as disposable objects—assets to be used until they break.
When the Guild learns your name, you’ll be an instant bargaining chip, to trade, to humiliate, whatever they wish and it will be out of my hands. ”
Well, that sounds fan-fucking-tastic.
He paces toward me, his shadow stretching over my face.
“Then you have the Diggers. Two hundred and seventeen pieces of human trash, crammed into the sub-levels. They live in squalid, cramped quarters, breathing in boiler fumes and sewage. They are the scum of the earth—humans who hate your kind on principle. To them, you’ll represent every Elite who ever put a boot on their necks. ”
The Trunchbull-guard steps forward, placing a bundle of thin, rough red fabric on the desk.
“So, there are your choices. Stay here with me, or face sixty-three predators and two hundred and seventeen starving animals,” Voss says softly. “A sensible girl would choose to wear that yellow cloth and keep my protection. A sensible girl wants to keep her skin intact.”