Chapter 12
To spite the sun, Solveig counted her stay in the cave by his visits. Eighty-seven visits. Eighty-seven days. She learned to despise the light and grew to greet the darkness as an old friend. When the sky was no longer safe, she expected him.
As she predicted, she could not hold her silence entirely.
He ripped screams from her lungs as he whipped her, burned her, scarred her. Each day, he devised a new way to make her scream. Coaxing pain from her defenceless body was an art form he’d spent almost three months mastering.
She retreated deep into herself, where she could barely remember her own name.
It was a small mercy that he defiled every part of her but kept his dick in his pants.
He’d been close a few times, and she retched at the thought of him on top of her.
Every time he was on the verge of attempting something vile, one of her guards stepped in to pull him away.
Apparently even monsters had a line they would not cross.
Solveig lay in the blessed dark on her eighty-seventh night, trying to recover from the day’s fresh horror. As she breathed through the pain of her limbs being torn from her body, or more accurately the attempt of tearing the limbs from her body, she thought about her guards.
Each of the four who sat at the mouth of the cave, listening to her scream, were as recognizable as old friends to her now. They only ever wore the same black outfit that covered every inch of them, but she’d learned their nuances none the less.
How they moved, sat, and spoke. Even though they disguised their voices, she recognized the different sounds. She even knew the way they guarded her and how her magic reacted to each of them.
She named them so they’d be easier to keep track of.
The only female in the group was easy—she was Water.
Fluid and graceful, but a strong force that could suffocate without a thought, which she often did.
Solveig’s magic emitted a territorial hiss in her veins when Water approached.
The desire to gouge her eyes out was ever present.
Two of the males she called Thick and Stick. Not clever names, but in her state, it was all she could come up with.
Their shifts were always a slight relief.
Thick was huge and he moved heavily, his steps reverberating off the cave walls.
Her magic didn’t have a significant response to him, so she was able to relax in his presence.
Well, relax as much as she could while chained to the ground, tortured for hours on end each day.
Thick attempted to lighten the mood, making jokes, and sometimes gave her extra food—if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he wasn’t thrilled about what they were doing to her. But she did know better.
Stick, contrary to what the nickname suggested, was almost as muscular as Thick but moved as though he was harbouring a stick up his ass. He never showed any kind of mercy or kindness. Her magic was always agitated when he was around, causing her to constantly fidget in his presence.
He sat staring directly at her, huffing every time she tried to move. On her petty days, she would attempt to irritate him as much as possible, trying to create music out of his increasingly frustrated breathing sounds. He was not amused, but it was a small source of pleasure for her.
The male who had captured her was Fear. Her magic never settled around him. No matter how many days he sat in the cave, facing away, never acknowledging her, she was terrified of him. Her magic warned her—he would destroy her if given the chance.
She never slept while he was guarding her, which was difficult as the days went on because he began taking more shifts than the others. In the beginning, the rotation was easy to follow. Water, Thick, Stick, Fear.
Weeks passed before the rotation became scrambled and eventually Fear took over the majority of the watch, more than every other day. Sometimes he’d be there for days in a row, back straight, head bowed over his lap, doing gods knew what.
Solveig was exhausted, but unless they forced her into unconsciousness, she was awake and vigilant when he was near.
It confused her at first, when she kept waking up.
Her torturer would bring her to the verge of death, but when she woke the next morning, she would be mostly healed. There were visible scars on her body, and her face still hurt from the first time he cut her with her own dagger. But otherwise, she woke up intact, ready for a fresh new Hel.
She formed a few theories about how she was healing.
When she was unconscious, they could be using a healing salve.
This theory was the least likely because magical healing solutions were incredibly rare and expensive.
No new salves could be made with the Block in place, so the finite stores of magical remedies were hoarded and protected at all costs.
It was futile to use such a valuable product on her.
Her second theory was one of her guards—or maybe an unseen person—still had magic. She would’ve thought this impossible, but her own magic pulsed under her skin as proof. Maybe others had found a way to break through the Block as well.
The third theory was the most likely. Her magic was strong enough to repair any life-threatening damage.
It made sense since she still woke with scars and bruises but her bones and internal wounds healed overnight.
If this theory was correct, her captors would be just as confused as she was, making her more interesting to them.
She had no point of reference for how long they kept their previous captives alive, but nearly three months seemed excessive. Her people had never kept anyone they captured alive that long.
They also didn’t have a sadist torturing their prisoners. Like her thoughts conjured him, he strode into the cave, a little spring in his step as the sun began its dreadful rise.
Day eighty-eight.
Solveig hadn’t named him. She knew the way he smelled, like a mix of her blood and dog piss.
Her magic froze in her veins at the sight of him, unadulterated hatred frenzied her magic, desperate for revenge.
She didn’t need to name him. He was a dead man, and when Latham finally found her, she would bury him alive.
“Good morning, puppet!” he greeted her cheerfully. She could hear the smile in his voice but didn’t respond. She knew the drill. Whoever accompanied him this morning would ask her the same questions.
“Who is the general of the Vanir legion known as the Southern Wilds?”
“Where is the Vanir camp located?”
“What orders do the queens give to the Vanir general?”
“What were you looking for in the mortal villages?”
Those same four questions. Every day they asked, and every day she stared at the top of the cave. The only sounds she gave them were cries and screams. Sometimes when she was feeling particularly salty, she’d raise her middle finger at them.
She’d learned this gesture from one of the mortals she had captured.
She gathered it was meant to be insulting and took a liking to it.
She almost laughed the first time she used it here.
They’d thought she was communicating something to them and tried to decipher the gesture. So she played with them.
Each day for a week she gave them a new signal and started to create a pattern.
It gave her a little bit of joy to think about them discussing it.
Eventually, when they caught on that she was giving them nothing, he broke all the bones in her hands and each of her fingers before nearly cutting them all off.
They healed themselves the next day, to Solveig’s relief.
Her stomach dropped in terror when he walked in alone on the eighty-eighth day.
He was so much more ruthless when he wasn’t being kept in check.
However, he was also chattier, and the small tidbits she’d gleaned about where she was and who they were only came when he felt free to talk her ear off as he skinned her alive.
She’d learned they were Forest Fae of Idavoll, not Asgardian Fae, and were keeping her north of the Southern Wilds, somewhere close to where Vanaheim bordered Idavoll. Not much to go on after eighty-eight days, but it was something.
Today he swaggered over to her, an extra bounce in his step Solveig was wary of. She tried to keep her breathing even since it riled him up when she didn’t respond, and she was feeling defiant this morning. Solveig made eye contact with him for the first time in several weeks.
“Whoa, look who woke up with some fire in her belly this morning! Ready to play, puppet?”