Chapter Sixteen – Elaria
Day 1
The rusted lock jerks free, and the door of the cage swings open.
Hands reach in. My arms are yanked forward, dragging my body out like dead weight. The metal floor shifts beneath me, the sea lurching the room slightly to the left. My bare foot scrapes along the edge of the threshold—skin splitting, a raw line torn across the arch.
The floor creaks under us. The boat rocks just enough to twist the movement. I try to brace, but my limbs are dull with exhaustion.
The edge of my foot scrapes against the metal lip of the cage. They drag me down the corridor. Wet wood beneath, damp air pressing from all sides. The hallway narrows near the bulkhead, then widens again into the galley.
Fausto is there.
He stands at the center of the room, hands folded behind his back, the sea coiling behind him through the portholes—gray, endless. The sunlight fractures across the waves, throwing pale slashes against the walls.
He doesn’t look at me immediately.
The men yank the chair forward. Thick wood, bolted legs. My arms are pulled behind me and strapped at the wrists. The rope cuts into skin already split. One loop crosses a burn from yesterday. I feel the pulse in it, the warmth of an infection beginning.
My legs are forced flat against the slats, ankles bound.
They wheel something forward.
A small brazier, old and blackened from use. Its iron mouth yawns open, flames already dancing low inside. Thin blue-orange tongues snap from between the grates, controlled but hungry.
The man guiding it nudges the base under the chair—stopping just short of my heels.
My toes curl on instinct. I don’t mean them to.
Fausto watches it happen. Then finally looks at me.
His head tilts. He steps closer, as though we’re still at the villa, still seated over wine.
I look straight ahead. The heat starts to lift—creeping. It licks the soles of my feet first.
Skin begins to tighten. My breath pulls shallow.
He crouches beside me. Reaches up. His hand is smooth.
The slap comes. My cheek splits on the inside.
He hits me again. Then again.
My head jerks to one side. Blood pools between my gums. I swallow it.
He waits for a sound. I give him nothing.
Fausto’s smile deepens.
He stands. Brushes his hands against his trousers.
“To the flames, then,” he says.
He nods to the man beside the box.
“Watch the fire. I want her to feel it. I don’t want her feet ruined.”
The man kneels. Adjusts a dial. The flame lowers, just enough to tease.
I feel the skin on the balls of my feet begin to tighten. Sweat prickles my temples. My shoulders strain against the ropes. My right foot kicks—reflex. The burn flares across the arch.
Fausto turns. Walks back to his place at the center of the room.
“When you’re ready to speak,” he says without looking back, “I’ll be here.”
The door closes behind him.
The two men retreat only a few paces—just enough to lean against the wall and watch. One folds his arms. The other lights a cigarette.
The flame beneath my feet stays steady. The pain changes.
At first, it was sharp. Like a warning. A burn small enough to resist.
Now it spreads.
The sensation seeps into the soft tissue of my feet, past skin, down to the nerves that scream with contact. The pads of my toes swell. The arch tightens. It feels like the heat is pushing into the marrow.
A sickly wetness forms between the ball of my foot and the plank beneath—sweat or the start of a blister rupturing.
The rope at my ankles pulls tighter each time my muscles jerk involuntarily. I try to hold still. It’s the only thing I can control.
A tremor runs up the backs of my calves.
I close my eyes and try to breathe through my nose. I try to listen.
The boat groans faintly with the tide. Waves slap against the hull. A seagull calls once, far away.
I focus on the rhythm. The pain pulses again.
A burn across the base of my foot, deeper. The nerve endings feel like they’re unraveling one by one.
I shift, reflexive. My heel lifts a fraction—then drops.
The searing shock of contact wrenches a sound from my throat. My teeth dig into the inside of my cheek. Another wave of heat presses upward.
This one doesn’t retreat. It lingers. Like fire crawling beneath the skin.
My vision blurs. I can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears. The salt stings the cracked corner of my mouth.
I try to breathe. A sound slips from my mouth but I bite it down.
I clench my fists behind the chair. My nails dig into my palms, reopening cuts. I bite harder. The next cry escapes anyway.
I drop my head forward, eyes locked on the floor. The wood beneath the brazier darkens with smoke.
The pain becomes a shape. It swells and breathes and presses against the edges of my skull, no longer confined to the body. It pulses in my ears, behind my eyes, a sound more than a feeling.
The skin on my feet is broken. I know it. I feel it. Blisters ruptured, flesh exposed, the raw nerve endings firing all at once.
And then—it stops.
The heat vanishes. Just like that.
A shadow moves beside me.
Soft steps on the floorboards. She kneels beside me.
Giovanna. Her hand lifts gently and touches my hair. She doesn’t pull it back, just strokes it. Fingers brushing sweat-damp strands from my forehead.
“My poor baby.”
She smiles, and it doesn’t hurt to look at her.
“Do you want a hug?”
I do. Her arms come around me, careful not to jostle the bindings. She leans in, and her hand rests lightly between my shoulder blades.
Her body is warm. Not just skin-warm. Radiant. Like a hearth. My back relaxes. My shoulders release. My limbs go slack.
Her hand strokes my hair again.
The scent of her—rose water, something faintly citrus—fills my lungs.
My chin tilts forward. The pain fades behind a thick wall. It’s still there. I know that. But I don’t feel it.
Only her. Only the warmth.
And then—the dark comes. And I follow.
****
Day 2
My eyes open to metal. Wet steel against my cheek. My skin is sticky with sweat, lips stuck together. Every joint aches. My feet—
The nerves there still scream. Even without movement, they throb in waves.
I try to shift. The pain is instant.
Raw, open flesh stick to the cage floor. The skin at the arches feel loose, like it was peeling. I can’t see them. But I can smell it. The sour scent of scorched skin, the hint of blood where blisters must have broken.
I reach for the bars.
That is when I see the syringe.
A hand from outside. Quick. No face. Just the arm—shoved between the bars.
The needle slides into the bend of my arm. There is no warning.
The plunger depressed.
And I find myself in darkness again.
****
I wake to motion.
Two sets of hands again.
Dragging me from the cage.
My head lolls forward, then back. The world tilts sideways—corridor, ceiling, boots.
My legs trail behind me, heels dragging. Every contact sends a jolt up my spine. The flesh on my soles has dried and cracked, half-healed and raw again.
The skin feels tight, the burn stiff with clotting. Every brush against the floor is a fresh tear.
They pull me into the same room. The brazier is gone. The scorch marks remain.
Fausto is waiting again.
He stands near the same spot, arms crossed behind his back. A small stool has been added near the wall. One of the men sits on it, wiping something off a metal hook.
Fausto looks at me and smiles. The two men shift their grip.
One hoists me under the arms. The other takes my legs. Pain shoots through my lower body as they lift. The burns stretch. Something wet leaks from the broken skin.
My body twitches once—then slumps. They carry me toward the center of the ceiling.
A chain dangles there, connected to a pulley.
The hook gleams silver in the strip of light coming from the small, dirty window.
They turn me so my back faces the ceiling. My feet are raised.
They bind my ankles first—tightly, together, the coarse rope digging into half-healed flesh.
Then they lift me. The pulley creaks.
My body rises. The world flips. I am upside down.
All the blood rushes to my head. My skull pulses instantly, a deep, throbbing ache behind my eyes. My fingers curl. My neck cranes forward without permission. My hair falls over my face, damp with sweat and salt.
The ceiling sways. So does the floor. The boat rocks beneath me as I hang from the ceiling.
Each shift of the hull sends my body swinging. But enough to stir the nausea.
My arms hang useless below me, trembling.
The pressure builds behind my eyes. My head fills with heat. My temples pound. My nose begins to bleed—just a trickle at first, then more.
The blood trails up across my cheek, toward my brow. Gravity carves it wrong.
Fausto walks into view. He crouches until he’s level with my inverted gaze.
“All I need is the map,” he says.
His tone is almost gentle.
“Just tell me where it is. And we can move past this.”
I meet his eyes. Fausto sighs and stands.
He nods to the men.
“Let me know when she speaks.”
He walks away. The blood in my head thickens. My chest tightens. My hands twitch.
The blood in my head pulses like a drumbeat. Every second that passes, the pressure builds behind my eyes, pressing against the sockets until they feel too full.
My vision begins to darken at the edges—not just from lack of air, but from everything pulling toward the floor.
My shoulders ache from hanging. My arms dangle loosely, too heavy to lift. Numbness creeps from my fingers, up my forearms, past the elbow.
My feet—bound tightly at the ankles—burn in their own private agony. The rope cuts into the soft tissue, already blistered and ruptured from the brazier. I feel the sticky drag of reopened wounds, the warmth of blood sliding down my calves and dripping toward my back.
The boat rocks. The sway is slow, but every motion twists something inside me. My stomach knots. My mouth tastes like metal and salt.
I try to focus, Try to hold onto something.
And then I see Giovanna.
She’s sitting in the corner of the room. Legs tucked to the side, like she’s always belonged there.
Her hair sparkles in the light—soft, impossibly clean, reflecting gold where the sunlight breaks through the porthole.
She’s smiling.
Her face is calm. As if this is a visit. As if I’m supposed to be here, and she’s just been waiting.
The pain spikes again—this time behind my jaw, a tightening that makes my vision blur. A hot line of blood trails from my left nostril. I can feel it running across my cheek, drawn upward by gravity.
I chuckle. It’s barely a sound.
A dry rasp pulled from my throat. It stings on the way out. Giovanna rises.
She crosses the room—without sound, without shadow. She kneels in front of me. She leans in. Her hand cups the back of my neck.
She kisses my forehead.
And then I feel the blood spill faster.
It leaks down into my hairline, slides past my temple, pools along my brow. The heat in my skull becomes unbearable, like my brain is pressing outward, desperate to escape.
My mouth falls open.
Breath staggers. Giovanna’s hand stays at my neck, holding me.
I try to speak. Nothing comes.
And then—
The light folds in on itself and the sound of the sea fades.
****
Day 3
The cold hits first.
A rush of water, full force, slamming into my face and chest.
I jolt.
My limbs twitch uncontrollably. My eyes snap open, and the pain roars in behind them like a tide. My head whips to the side. Coughs claw up my throat.
My body is soaked. The floor beneath me is slick, rough wood biting into the burns on my back and thighs. My feet scream beneath me—raw nerves reignited by contact, as if the burns have been torn open again.
Every breath drags. Every joint protests. My muscles seize and shudder.
Above me—
Fausto.
He holds the metal bucket lazily in one hand, water still dripping from the rim.
His boots are dry.
He crouches.
“Still won’t crack?” His voice is light, almost amused. “I could keep you here all year. But then, you’d probably just die.”
He sets the bucket down. It clangs softly against the floor.
I push myself up with trembling arms, barely managing to raise onto one elbow. My head sags. My hair clings to my face in strings.
Fausto leans closer.
“Allegra,” he says. “She helped you escape, didn’t she?”
It’s so small a movement, so short a sound, but he sees it.
His smile widens.
“Ah,” he says. “I see. That’s what you care about, huh?”
He grabs my chin—not hard, just enough to force my gaze up.
“I’ll send her to the grave first. And then Cassian Rivetti.”
His thumb presses just beneath my jaw, not choking, but pinning.
“His uncle told me you two were frolicking around. Makes sense, since he was bound to you.”
I flinch.
Fausto watches it happen.
“I’ll make you watch them die,” he says, still smiling. “And then I’ll keep you here. Alone. Rotting. Starving.”
My lips part. It’s harder than I expect to speak. My tongue is dry. My voice isn’t hoarse—it’s ruined.
“I know who I am,” I say.
Fausto pauses. His hand lifts from my face, but he doesn’t pull away.
I hold his gaze.
“I’m the Fontanesi heiress,” I say, voice low. “That map belongs to me. The estate, the routes, the inheritance. It’s mine. Even if my father died disgraced, I carry his name. His seal. His blood.”
He blinks. Then tilts his head.
“So?”
“If I give you the map,” I say, “you leave Cassian and Allegra alone. I’ll disappear. I’ll vanish. You’ll have the routes. The ports. The estate. I’ll give you everything.”
Fausto straightens.
He studies me.
“Why should I make a deal with you?”
I don’t look away.
“As long as I’m alive,” I say, “you can’t have my father’s estate. Not legally. Not cleanly. You’d always be the man who stole it. But if I give it willingly... you win.”
He looks away from me for a moment, pacing a few steps. His shoulders shake once with amusement.
He turns back.
“You want to say goodbye to your lover boy first?”
“I want to give him a proper farewell,” I say, jaw clenched. “And get the map. It’s in his house. He was kind to me.”
Fausto’s grin sharpens.
He walks toward the door.
“I’ll have the boys prepare you a bath,” he says. “You stink like rust. We’ll feed you, have the doctor come. Then we’ll pay Rivetti a little visit.”
He knocks twice on the door. One of the men outside opens it. Fausto doesn’t look at me again.