Chapter 23 Of Blood & Defiance #4
When the second manacle released, my knees buckled.
I collapsed like the puppet I was, my strings severed, unable to catch myself without the foreign appendages attached to my body.
The impact with the stone floor knocked what little breath I had from my lungs, and for several seconds, I could do nothing but lie there, my face pressed against the cold stone.
Then the true agony began.
Blood rushed back into my arms, bringing with it a pain so intense that the world narrowed to pinpoints of light behind my tightly closed eyes.
A sound escaped me—not quite a scream, but a high, thin keening that seemed to come from somewhere outside myself.
My fingers spasmed uncontrollably as circulation returned, each heartbeat sending fresh waves of fire through nerve endings awakening from their numb sleep.
“Get her covered up,” ordered the new lead guard, his voice seeming to come from a great distance.
Something soft landed beside my face—fabric, I realized dimly. A clean shift to replace the one Valen had destroyed. The thought of moving to retrieve it seemed impossible, let alone the monumental task of clothing myself.
“She needs water,” said the third guard. He sounded like the youngest of them, his voice pitched low as if he didn’t want me to hear the concern in it.
“Then leave her some,” replied the leader impatiently. “We are not to touch the king’s plaything.”
Footsteps moved away, then returned. The clank of a cup being placed on stone, the softer sound of a bowl beside it. The smell of broth reached me—thin but warm, carrying the promise of sustenance.
“She’ll need help,” insisted the younger guard.
“Not from us,” came the curt reply. “Orders were to let her down, leave supplies, and go. I am not meeting the same fate as Brovar.”
A pause, then the reluctant shuffling of feet retreating toward the door. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see whatever pity or revulsion might be written on their faces.
“She won’t last a week of this,” murmured one, their voice carrying in the stone chamber despite the attempt at quiet.
“Not our problem,” responded another. “King’s got his reasons.”
The cell door closed with a dull thud, and the lock engaged with a metallic click that echoed in the sudden silence. I was alone again, but free from the chains—a freedom that felt like another form of torture as my body screamed with returning sensation.
I remained motionless on the floor, waiting for the worst of the pain to subside.
Gradually, the fire in my arms dulled to a persistent throb, and I found I could move my fingers with deliberate effort.
My shoulders felt wrenched from their sockets, though I knew they weren’t dislocated—just strained beyond what any joint should endure.
The cuts Valen had carved into my skin burned anew as awareness of my body returned piece by agonizing piece.
When I finally opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the clean shift they’d left for me—white linen, plain but undamaged.
The sight of it, this simple courtesy in the midst of cruelty, nearly undid me.
Tears pressed hot against my eyelids, threatening to spill over.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, using the sharp pain to center myself.
I would not cry.
Not with the possibility that Valen might be watching somehow, drinking in my suffering like he’d tasted my blood from his fingertips.
With excruciating slowness, I dragged the shift toward me, then began the torturous process of sitting up.
Each movement sent fresh stabs of pain through my abused muscles.
By the time I managed to pull the garment over my head, sweat beaded on my forehead from the effort, and my breath came in short, sharp gasps.
The shift fell to my knees, covering the worst of the cuts on my body, though some still showed on my arms and lower legs. Valen had healed them enough to prevent infection, as he’d promised, but they remained red and angry against my pale skin—a map of his ownership drawn in my flesh.
I leaned back against the wall, taking inventory of my injuries.
Besides the visible cuts and the deep ache in my shoulders and arms, my wrists were raw from the manacles, the skin abraded and weeping clear fluid.
My mouth was dry as dust, my lips cracked from dehydration.
The broth and water the guards had left tempted me, but they sat across the cell, and the thought of crossing that distance seemed insurmountable.
Still, I would not die of thirst out of sheer stubbornness.
After several steadying breaths, I began the slow journey across the stone floor, moving on hands and knees when standing proved impossible.
Each movement was a negotiation with pain, each inch forward a small victory against my body’s desire to surrender.
When I finally reached the cup of water, I drank slowly, knowing that gulping it down would only make me sick.
The liquid soothed my parched throat, bringing with it a clarity that had been absent in the haze of pain.
Next came the broth—thin and barely warm now, but containing enough nourishment to quiet the gnawing emptiness in my stomach.
Strength trickled back into my limbs, not enough to stand or move with any grace, but sufficient to keep me conscious and thinking. And with thought came anger—hot and clarifying, burning away some of the fog of suffering.
I dragged myself to the wall that separated my cell from the Prisoner’s, leaning my back against the cold stone at the point where I believed he could best hear me.
“I know you’re there,” I said, my voice rough from holding back my screams. “I know you heard everything. Every cut, every drop of blood, every moment of his… pleasure in my pain.”
No response came, but I felt his attention from the other side of the wall—a prickling awareness that I was not speaking to emptiness.
“I hope you’re happy,” I continued, bitterness coating each word. “This is your doing, after all. You could have given me death when I asked for it, but instead, you left me for him—left me to be carved up for his amusement.”
The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of my own labored breathing.
I closed my eyes, exhaustion threatening to pull me under.
He wouldn’t answer. He must have decided I wasn’t worth his time.
That I was to be left alone in this hell, with only the memory of Valen’s hungry eyes for company.
Then, so suddenly it startled me, his voice came through the wall, low and clear, carrying strain I would not expect from one who had taken thrill in my pain.
“Your suffering brings me no joy, little fawn.”
The response sent a jolt through me, my eyes flying open.
“Liar,” I whispered, but my voice trembled, betraying how desperately I needed the lie. Even his voice, cold and indifferent, felt like the closest thing to mercy I’d been granted. “You refused to help when you could have. And now you claim my pain doesn’t please you?”
“I claim only the truth,” he replied, his voice carrying a gentleness that merely irritated me further. “What Vharok does to you serves his purpose, not mine.”
I laughed, the sound brittle even to my own ears. “How convenient. Meanwhile, I’m bleeding for his entertainment.”
“Yes,” he agreed, the simple acknowledgment more devastating than argument would have been. “You are. And that is...” Another pause. “Regrettable.”
My gasp was audible in the following silence.
“Regrettable,” I echoed, disbelief coloring my tone. “He carved patterns into my skin while I hung like meat in a butcher’s shop, and you find it regrettable? How very magnanimous of you.”
“Would you prefer I lie?” His voice had changed subtly—a hint of something like frustration threading through it. “Would it ease your suffering if I claimed to be tortured by your pain? If I beat against these walls in helpless sympathy?”
“I’d prefer you had let me die when I asked,” I hissed back. “I’d prefer you hadn’t given me false hope with talk of freedom from this life and then left me to face Valen’s torture. You are no better than he is.”
His laugh was abrupt, cold and ancient, as if his regret had suddenly extinguished.
“Do not compare us, Mireille, for you will find I am infinitely worse. Vharok plays at cruelty, but I invented it,” he said, a darkness coiling through his words.
“I am not your salvation. I am not your hero. Do not mistake my regret for mercy.”
His words sent ice through my veins, and I had a belated thought that maybe I shouldn’t provoke this strange prisoner beside me.
“You should understand something, my little fawn,” he continued, each word measured and deliberate.
“I am not good. I am not kind. That small, insignificant piece of your soul I took? I would take a thousand more. Watch Vharok nearly kill you a thousand times over. As long as it meant another chain removed from my body.”
His words hit me like a slap across the face, the casual admission stealing my breath more effectively than any physical hit. I pressed my palm against the stone wall, as if I could somehow reach through it to strike him.
“You would still deny me death?” I whispered, horror crawling up my throat. “After what he has done to me? After what he has promised to do?”
“For freedom?” My harbinger’s voice dropped lower, intimate in its honesty. “Yes. Without hesitation.”
The hollowness in my chest throbbed, as if the missing piece of my soul recognized the truth in his words. I should have expected this—what loyalty did I imagine existed between us?
“Do not confuse my conversation with concern,” he continued, his voice cooling to that ancient, indifferent tone I’d first heard in the darkness.
“I speak to you not out of care for your fate, but merely because I happen to be chained in proximity to your suffering. You are noise in an otherwise endless monotony of darkness. Nothing more.”
The words struck deeper than Valen’s cuts, slicing through what little hope I’d foolishly nurtured.
How pathetic I’d been, seeking connection with this man as if we shared some bond forged in mutual captivity. As if he’d ever seen me as anything but a momentary diversion from his imprisonment. I must have been delusional to think he would see me as something more than insignificant.
“I see.” The words came soft and brittle, unable to hide the hurt beneath them. I shifted away from the wall, wincing as my abused muscles protested. “Then I won’t trouble you further with my company.”
He said nothing in response. No apology, no retraction. Just silence, as cold and unyielding as the stone between us.
I turned away from the wall, dragging myself toward the thin mat that now seemed a luxury after hanging from chains all night.
My body protested every movement, cuts reopening as I stretched abused muscles.
By the time I reached the mat, fresh blood stained my new shift, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Laying down carefully, I positioned myself to cause the least pain to my ravaged shoulders. The ceiling above me blurred as exhaustion pulled at my consciousness.
If I was nothing more than noise, let my silence become its own kind of violence.