I was engulfed. My skin broke, peeled back, split from my muscle and tissue—the meat of me.
Thiswas pain. Raw. Stripped to its barest form.
I opened my mouth wide in a silent scream. I felt a fool. All my life, and I didn’t know real pain. The discomfort I felt when injured:the whippings, the time I fell down stairs, when I’d been so miserably saddle sore in the crossing. Those occurrences had been nothing. It was all a pale echo of this, the agony in my back so blinding, so bright, so crippling, I could not move, could not breathe. Could not cry out.
My eyes went wide, rolling as my brain slowed and digested in halting bits of recognition.
Oh. Wait. Wait. That hurt. Still hurt. Hurt so much. Hurt not stopping. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt.
I fought it, trying to push past, determined to claw my way through it.
Gritting my teeth, I panted, swallowed steam, bidding my dragon to calm, commanding my blood to obey my will.
My head f lung back on my shoulders. I shook out my hair, unraveling my braid even more, hoping to conceal my back even as impossible and unlikely as that seemed.
Crack.
My dragon roared inside me. My skin snapped. Too hot, hissing like oil in a burning pan. I didn’t have to see myself to know what it looked like. I knew my flesh winked and glistened red-gold. A transformation, thankfully, too subtle to be noticed in the dark.
Please let it be theonlytransformation.
Steam filled my nose, and I inhaled deep and hard, drawing the heat back inside, pushing it down low. My dragon prowled inside me, looking for a way out, gnawing at the walls. It wanted to devour whatever—whoever—was inflicting this pain upon me.
I held it in, shaking from misery, from restraint.
I dragged my hair across my back, across my oozing wounds until the strands grew heavy and wet. Warmth trickled down the slope of my back.Blood… dripping to pool at the base of my spine. Despair settled over me. It couldn’t be hidden. Not with Stig at the end of the whip, looking for this very thing.
Please be red. Please be red.
Crack.
I arched into the unrelenting wall of the tree, grinding skin and bone into bark as though I could flee the blows. Only there was nowhere to go.
Without the ropes, I would have collapsed, and I despised this weakness in myself. My head fell back, my neck boneless, unable to support it.
My eyes rolled, straining, observing a dizzying blur of faces around me. The soldiers watched this spectacle of me. I read no satisfaction in their expressions. Several of them averted their faces, turning away as though what was happening to me was too much for them to bear.
They might take commands from the Terror of the Borderlands, but they were humans with consciences. They did not condone what was happening to me.
The coppery scent of blood teased my nose. I strained for a glimpse over my shoulder, to see the evidence of my weakness, my failure—the betrayal of my body.
Crack.
Blood sprayed. Droplets spattered onto my face, onto the tree—my arms. Even onto my lashes. I blinked.Redblood.
I did it.
Pride lanced through me, bright and pure as the pain. I gasped a wheezy chuckle of relief. I didn’t know how much longer I could last, but I’d controlled my blood this far. Longer than I had ever done when we trained in the pride. I was not the same girl Arkin attacked and caught off guard in the woods. I was prepared. I was in control of myself.
Crack.
This time I felt the barbed tips of dragon scales tear deeper through muscle and sinew and strike bone.
Spots danced before my eyes. Blackness crept in at the edges of my vision. I was slipping, my grip loosening. I struggled, pushing back.
Then Stig was there, at my side, his breath damp in my ear. “You think me a fool? You think I don’t remember? Why do you bleed red? How is that possible? More of your fucking magic?”
Whatever I thought to say came out an incoherent mumble.
