Chapter 11 Vhaena
Chapter Eleven
Vhaena
THE SHIP
Ididn’t want to open my eyes. I didn’t want to come back to a world where my brother was dead. I didn’t want to see where I had been taken. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t capable of accepting my fate.
I’m sure as shit not going to survive with this mentality.
Whether I was ready or not, I had no choice but to confront reality.
Vosten was dead. And I had been taken, which meant Ma was alone—she had no one. No one to help her, no one to take care of her, feed her, or provide for her.
She needed me. I had to survive.
My head throbbed as I returned to consciousness.
I immediately felt nauseous as my body moved back and forth, back and forth.
I registered that I was lying on a hard surface with a stinging pain in my wrists.
The pungent odor of excrement, bile, and salt assaulted my senses, jarring me awake fully.
Then came sound—quiet voices, soft whimpering, gagging…
My eyes flung open.
Big mistake. I should have kept them closed. I should have stayed in my dream state a little longer, because what my life had come to was much worse than I imagined.
The first thing I saw was a large wooden post in front of my face—one I was manacled to with iron chains.
The chains dangled from above, down to my wrists, and were just loose enough I could sit, lie down, and move a little.
Glancing around the post, I noticed a figure with long brown hair resting against it on the other side. Another woman.
I pushed up to a sitting position, twisting around so my back was against the post, and my stomach churned. My head was spinning from the dizziness. Or…not spinning. It was rocking. The entire space was. I looked around, and the sight made my breath catch.
There were twenty—no, twenty-five—posts in the room, with two women chained to each of them.
I counted them all just to be sure. Fifty women, all aged from what looked to be twenty to…
god…seventy. The posts were separated enough that none of us would be able to reach each other—besides the person sharing the post—even if we lay down and stretched our legs.
Each post also had a bucket for waste fastened to it.
The damp floor had been carved out around them so that the buckets sat deep enough inside that they didn’t slide away.
At least now I knew why it reeked. I choked on a trapped cry as the reality set in, gagging from the overwhelming stench.
The sound of water crashing against the exterior indicated we were on some kind of boat.
More like a ship, based on the size of the room we were in.
I wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about ships, but this one seemed as if it were specifically built for the purpose of transporting captives—prey.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were made from long planks of wood.
There were no windows, only a couple of oil lanterns on the walls, swaying with the waves and casting a dim glow that illuminated the room just enough.
“This is so fucked up…” I whispered.
“Ain’t that the truth,” a quiet voice scoffed from behind.
I turned my head to find the other woman on my post glancing at me from over her shoulder. Her skin was a deep bronze, and her brown hair was threaded in two braids that framed her soft face. She had bluish-gray eyes that reminded me of a storm, and I could see the scars of her life within them.
“Morning. I think. I’m Inka. And welcome to a living nightmare.” She gave a sad smile.
“I can see that,” I mumbled. “I’m Vhaena. Are we really on a ship?” I already knew the answer, but I couldn’t comprehend this was actually happening.
“Yep,” she drawled with a pop of her lips.
“On our way to the island. The demons put us all down here. We’ve heard them up on deck a few times, so we know they’re still here.
And every single one of them are masked.
Isn’t that odd? What does it matter if we see their faces if they’re just going to kill us anyway? Freaky little shits.”
I swallowed, remembering the ones who had broken into the house and Vosten… I shook my head, stopping my thoughts before they could go any further. “How long have we been here?”
She shrugged. “A few hours. You were here before I was, but you were passed out. How’s your head? You’ve got a nasty bump.”
I lifted one of my hands to touch the side of my head, only to remember that my hands were chained together, so I had to lift them both. The other one had something clenched in it that I hadn’t noticed.
Hells… It was the damn spoon. How I hadn’t let it go while I was unconscious was beyond me.
Well, at least I have a useless weapon. Why didn’t I grab a knife or a fork for fuck’s sake? So stupid…
I placed the cooking utensil down before carefully touching my head. There was a tender spot at the crown and some dried blood crusted in my hair, but it didn’t seem that bad.
“I’ll live.”
“For now,” another woman mocked coldly, and I glanced at the post beside ours. She was a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, a heavy-set body, and a black eye. Her long, dark dress had a stain on it from where it looked like she had thrown up.
My first reaction was to tell her to go fuck herself, but after seeing the state of her, I decided against it. She looked as if she had been through the hells and back.
Let her be rude. She had earned it. We all had. We were all trapped and pissed.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Every single one of us had been sent to our deaths.
Our towns had collectively decided we were the worst of society.
My town had picked me out for death, even if I didn’t know how.
My name wasn’t even on the ballot… But it didn’t matter now.
I was already here, and I doubted there was anything I could have done about it.
From the sounds of it, no amount of begging would have made a difference.
“We were all voted…” I sighed, leaning my head back against the post.
“Not everyone.”
I opened my eyes, tilting my head toward another woman.
She had cropped dark hair and was tall and muscular, so unlike the majority of the women here.
While everyone else was wearing a dress or a nightgown—likely having been taken from their beds—this woman was wearing loose pants, a vest, and a long-sleeved shirt with leather bands around her wrists and boots.
I’d never seen a woman dressed in pants before, and she almost looked like a man if not for her hair and the slight curves of her chest.
“And you are?” the black-eyed woman on the other side of me asked.
“Amalia Inglemann of Kilead,” she said, raising her chin.
I’d seen Kilead on a map of Erdenvale—the only map I’d seen of our world—but I didn’t know anything about it. I’d never been farther than a few surrounding towns. It was in the northeast, practically the farthest town from Nillah.
“If you weren’t voted, how are you here? You came to die willingly?” I asked skeptically. Who in their right mind would have chosen this for themselves?
The Hunt was notorious for being nothing but a death sentence.
In my twenty-six years, I’d never seen or heard of a woman coming back alive.
Sure, I’d heard stories about survivors in the past, and it was how the world had learned more about the Hunt—but as far as I was aware, no one had survived in my lifetime.
Amalia smiled proudly. “I came willingly, yes. But not to die; to survive. This is a great honor where I come from.”
“Why?” My brow quirked. I might have been the crazy one with a big spoon, but I wasn’t that deranged.
“Our women train for this all year, and then compete. The strongest wins and is taken by the demons,” she said with a nod.
“Wh—Why would you or anyone want to be hunted down?” I asked. Maybe the whole town of Kilead was deranged.
Amalia tilted her head, and I noticed everyone else leaning in and peering around others to hear her answer.
“Honor and choice. Freedom, by not being forced. If we survive, we are not only rewarded with our lives, but we are revered. Kilead takes care of the women who survive for the rest of their lives. For making the sacrifice. So the weaker ones don’t have to suffer and be forced to die.
And even if we don’t survive, the very least we can do is try to take out as many of the demons as we can. ”
Damn. Why couldn’t Nillah have been like that? Spared me and chosen someone who could have actually stood a chance? Me and my fucking spoon… So ridiculous.
It didn’t matter. I was here now, and I needed to find a way to survive. Amalia clearly had the best chance of making it.
“We could work together,” Inka offered, with a hopeful smile.
Some of the other women started to sit up a little straighter at her words.
That could work. If we worked together, we could survive. Besides, it would have to be harder to kill all of us together, right? I didn’t particularly care for the idea of being around a bunch of women for seven days, but if it was what I had to do, I would. I had to. Ma needed me.
Except for the hunting-down-and-killing-demons part. I wasn’t equipped, nor was I strong enough for that. And I wasn’t sure any of us were, not even Amalia. But surviving together? I could get behind that.
“No,” Amalia clipped.
My brows scrunched. “Why not? We’d all have a better chance of surviving if we did.”