8. Chapter 8
Arwen
Iscream.
White floods my vision as the sharp blade presses into my leg, heat flaring before pain has time to catch up.
The raw and ugly screams tear out of me, no matter how hard I try to repress them.
The metal drags through my skin, slow and deliberate, followed by a warm trickle of liquid as blood slips free and runs down my calf.
I’m strapped flat on my back, wrists and ankles locked down, leather biting into already-bruised skin from yesterday’s torture. My blood pools and spreads, sticky and dark. Somewhere distant I register my teeth are chattering—not from cold, but from the effort of staying conscious.
At some point, they decided electricity wasn’t doing the trick.
They spent weeks with that fucking probing wand, jabbing and shocking me until my skin was covered with angry welts and burns, until every nerve was flayed and overexposed.
When nothing came of it and my power refused to surface, they decided a new method was required.
Clean blades for slow cuts and precision.
Councilor Blaise showed up for the first day of it. Watched. Smiled. Offered suggestions while he waited to see if my power would spring forward.
He hasn’t returned since.
I know the tactics. Let me rot in it. Let the pain do the work for him.
Atticus sees me every day, dragged back into my cell half-conscious, bleeding and shaking. His panic is feral now, pacing and shouting and gripping the bars until his knuckles split. I think he’s breaking faster than I am. I need to figure something out before we both go insane.
Another slice. This time, my arm.
The blade moves as it opens my skin. I suck in a breath through clenched teeth, my vision blurring at the edges.
A tear slips sideways into my hairline before I can stop it.
I’ve never cared much about being beautiful, but the thought of scars mapping my body forever, carrying Greed’s handiwork etched into my skin… it burns.
The thought barely finishes before the knife crosses my forearm.
Dr. Plinth doesn’t look at my face. He never does.
His expression fixed like stone, his movements precise and detached, like he’s trimming a hedge instead of cutting into a living person.
Five other scientists stand nearby, murmuring, watching, recording.
I’m not Arwen to them. I’m a variable in an experiment.
A failed one, so far.
The only sign of emotion Plinth shows is a faint sigh as he steps back, examining his work with mild irritation.
“We’re running out of skin to cut,” he says calmly. “Whatever will we do when we run out of room?”
He tilts his head, considering me.
“Perhaps we’ll take a trip back to that charming little hellhole you call home,” he continues. “Furycliff, was it? Any family there willing to take your place, I wonder?”
Sadie’s face flashes behind my eyes. Her bright smile as we made mud pies behind her hut when we were nine, her gentle words of reassurance when I turned sixteen without manifesting a power, her timid and anxious expression as we waited in line for sin testing.
I see her here, strapped down where I am now, her skin split open under this evil man’s hands.
Her face folding in pain.
Something inside me snaps. The Wrath in me surges hot and violent, flooding my chest, boiling up my spine. I don’t feel fear. I can’t feel the pain. All I feel is fury.
When the knife drags across my stomach, I scream again, but this time it isn’t pain ripping out of me.
It’s rage.
The sound is feral, torn from somewhere deep and ancient. My vision sharpens as the room narrows. I force inward, grabbing, clawing for whatever is buried inside me.
Most of it slips through my grasp, untamed and wild.
But I catch something. A fragment of the power. I narrow on that feeling, on that tiny spark.
And I grip it as hard as I can.
Above my skin, a void snaps into existence around the knife as I glare at Dr. Plinth. How dare he threaten my family? The small, imperfect, storm-black globe hums for a heartbeat, devouring the light, raging.
And then it disappears.
Flashes out. Gone as quickly as it came. If I hadn’t felt the power so clearly, I would question a hallucination.
The knife drops from Plinth’s hand with a clatter, drawing my attention.
Only half of it remains… The blade is a jagged stump of metal.
Silence slams into the room as everyone stares at what’s left of the blade.
No one moves. No one breathes.
“Extraordinary,” Dr. Plinth breathes at last, awe cracking through his composure. He turns to his colleague.
“Did we get that?”
One scientist nods. “All of it is on film, sir. Multiple angles.”
“Excellent.” He moves to the video monitors.
I lie there gasping, chest heaving, staring at the blood slicking my skin, and at the proof that I’m not powerless. Not completely… but I feel drained. Sapped of all my strength.
“Patch the subject up,” Plinth says. “Clean her. Stitch the vital ones. Return her to her cell.”
He pauses, then adds, almost reverently, “We need to inform the Councilor immediately.”