Chapter forty-two
The weather was cooler than I was used to as we headed north.
The metal cage was unsteady in its route, causing me to have headaches throughout the days and nights.
It had been five nights since I last saw Maeri, since the last time I saw Aris.
I had never known what hatred felt like until now.
It started small, like a chipped teacup.
Then the crack grew and grew, and it was easy to spread.
I felt my body ache with the pain of anger. I fueled it and fed it as much as my heart wanted. I was so angry with myself for falling for a man who only really wanted blood, death, and praise for his countless conquests of countries. I thought I saw something else in him…
I was angry he had me fooled when he gave me the freedom papers.
Maybe it hadn’t meant anything at all.
I was angry at Maeri and her lies and betrayal.
I was angry that I didn’t see any of this coming.
Between all this anger and the parts of myself that tore my feelings apart, there was a small piece of me that did not admit it, that was angry Aris would never know the truth behind my disappearance.
His fear of me leaving him was coming true, but he didn’t know it was the furthest thing from the truth.
He deserved to know regardless of if I would have stayed with him after seeing the war papers.
Without my mind’s consent, my stomach hurled the little contents I had in it on the side of the carriage.
I couldn’t believe I gave him everything.
I slipped so far and deep in adoration with him, I couldn’t see things straight.
I lost sight of who I was and what was important to me.
They barely fed me, only a few nuts here and there—just enough to keep me alive, I supposed.
They pulled me out of the carriage to do my business in the woods where they stood watching, giving me no privacy.
Stupid fucks.
Thirteen days passed.
I thought the rest of my heart was left in pieces back in Siniya but at last, I wasn’t filled with magic, and I wasn’t a witch.
I did have a heart inside my body, and it was absolutely crushed, causing chaos in my chest.
None of it made sense, and I couldn’t piece it together.
When I would think of him, I tried to think about his true colors and how he was bloodthirsty.
I tried to think of how he was similar to his father.
I tried to remember how he lied to me about the freedom papers.
I tried to think about the fact that he destroyed my lands and killed my people. How he was cold and emotionless—like a true Strokan.
How could I have done this to myself? To my brother who fought for my freedom? I slept with our enemy.
No matter how much I told myself these things, it never lasted.
My mind would turn against itself and would remember what it was like to be in his arms, to be wrapped up in his body.
His sweet and warm kisses lingering on me.
I could still feel them. He was a part of me, a part of my soul.
My mind would make excuses for him.
Maybe he didn’t know of a life without bloodshed and war? Maybe he had given me freedom papers, but Helon took them, anyway? Maybe he did truly want me to be a free woman.
Maybe he really did have feelings for me.
Eighteen days passed until I saw it.
I could barely crawl.
The fat on my bones had nearly disappeared.
The linen trousers I wore were loose on my hips, and the tunic they gave me barely stayed on my shoulders.
The skin on my lips peeled back and bled persistently.
The water in my body was depleted; even my eyes were hard to blink since the dryness hurt every time they closed.
My tongue felt like sand in my mouth.
It felt harder and harder to inhale, and the sounds my throat made became music to my ears along with the rolling wheels and the hooves of the horses on the hard dirt.
But then I saw it.
I swore, I saw the tinge of red in the clouds that lingered above Stroka.
I might have been seeing things at that point—I didn’t doubt it—but it looked real.
I could barely register the fact that we were entering the darkest of lands.
It didn’t matter anymore.
I welcomed it all the same.
I was only a body, after all.
A body that felt things that didn’t have to be real unless I made it so.
I thought that was what freedom was: the ability to say whether something was a reality or not.
My eyes closed, and I thought I died.
It was peacefully quiet, and darkness swaddled my existence.
But I felt hands grab at my body and pull me out of the carriage.
Like my nightmares.
Except now they were real.
No.
I wanted to go back there, in the darkness, where life didn’t have to make sense.
Forcing my dry eyes to open, I saw the magnitude of Stroka, the vast amount of limestone buildings upon buildings.
The city had its rolling hills, but it wasn’t just hundreds and thousands of buildings that caused me to catch my breath but the people that swarmed the dirt streets.
I’d never been somewhere so…massive.
The gray smoke swirled as if it were a tornado in and around the city, filling its streets and above where the palace lay at the top of the hill.
People rushed about as two Strokan guards dragged me by my underarms.
Stroka was ten times what Siniya was in one location.
“It’s a witch!”
a man shouted amongst the crowd before being shoved out of sight by another gaunt man.
“They brought us a witch!”
“Don’t look the devil in the eyes, child!”
A mother grabbed another little one, veering him away from the main road.
I heard hissing and curses and children screaming a witch was coming through as the warriors carried me through the masses.
Their faces wore frowns, almost permanently.
There was no other expression I could find through this spiteful crowd.
My legs trailed behind me for what felt like eternity until they thrust me into another cage, one that was attached to the ground.
My arms weren’t quick enough to catch myself as my face palmed the harsh and wet ground.
It smelled sour, and I shut out the thoughts of what it could be.
I heard the creak of the door slam shut before I used the energy left in me to pull myself up.
I looked at my new surroundings.
It was the size of a small privy chamber but in a metal cage in the midst of a chaotic outdoor market.
Vast amount of tables filled with fruits and vegetables lay in between the narrow buildings in the market, and tapestries on the dirt street displayed homemade leather goods.
People flooded nearby, staring, cocking their heads to the side as if I were an exotic animal.
If they wanted to see an animal, I would be one.
I hissed loudly and stepped towards them.
The people stepped back in fear, holding their children near their bodies with wide eyes.
They muttered amongst themselves with assumptions of who—what I was.
“What is she doing here?”
a young woman asked who seemed to be her father.
“Who is she?”
a boy asked out loud.
“She won’t be anyone for much longer,”
a woman warned the boy, hurrying deeper into the market.
What is this place?
I looked around my metal cage.
The only thing inside of it was me and the straw and dirt on the ground.
I looked through the bars of my cage and saw more cages lined up alongside the one I stood in.
There were others inside, one for each cage. They were prisoners, slaves. Women and men dressed in gray rags, barely breathing. Some were reaching their hands through the metal bars, begging for food and water. Whoever they were, they’d been here for a long time.
Life had drained from their empty bodies.
They looked as if they were dead.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some were.
I was now part of the renowned, infamous Insulatus, where one would lose their sense of self.
I expected a shiver to run down my spine, but none came.
I was no longer afraid.
Stroka was filled with smoke from the hundreds and hundreds of cottages that circled the palace above the small hill.
All I could smell was the smoke and urine that was definitely not in my cage.
More and more women and children crowded near the cages, especially near mine—but not too close.
They were curious.
Fascinated.
Before, I would have kept my eyes glued to the ground.
Before, I would have hidden behind my hair and crawled to the corner of the cage.
But that was before.
Now, I wanted them to see what I was made of.
I looked at each and every one of them with my piercing green eyes, letting everything I felt flow from me and into them.
My crazy shone through, and I loved it.
I wanted them to see, to feel the pain in my eyes and in my body.
Placing my pale dirty fingers around the bars that kept me caged in like an animal, I leaned forward so they would see all of me.
I was no longer hiding.
I could sense the fear in their eyes as they stayed back, muttering cautionary words to their loved ones.
Witch, murderer, witchcraft, whore, thief.
They said it all, the lies they believed, and I didn’t care.
I didn’t care if they called me a witch—maybe I was a witch.
Maybe I’d burn their fucking town square to the ground.
And I let them see that in me, too.
It was amusing, and it felt good to not care anymore.