CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE MORNING WAS bustling when sunlight peeked through the roof and onto Nyssa's body.
She was stiff with the terror of the day before, of the whip the wife liked to use. She'd been punished after being put back in her room after the latest meeting. The meeting had gone well. She'd stayed after to inform the Noble of the exaggerations of his guests. But it wasn't Quinn who had escorted her back to her room.
Shae had discovered her husband using Nyssa to do his bidding and taken it upon herself to take Nyssa back to the room and interrogate her herself. Nyssa had taken Shae’s verbal abuses with a clench of her jaw. She'd stood stiff as the wife accosted her about how much of a whore she was for being the only woman in a room full of men and reporting lies back to her husband. She'd told her her husband was only using her for a show.
And then she'd brought in the whip.
A strike for every time Nyssa didn't respond to her question.
A lashing for every time the wife thought her husband wanted to bed her.
And finally, when the wife had stripped her to look over the scars on her shoulders and told her they were worse than the spots, Nyssa lost it.
She'd lunged at the wife in her chains and called her a fool for not realizing burns would scar.
Nyssa had been so exhausted and enraged by the wife’s idiocy that she couldn't help herself.
The whip had come down across her back five more times for the comment. And she'd not been reclothed or cleaned after.
Nyssa begged herself to move, even if it was only an inch. Her body felt heavier than it had the day before, as though the slats on her back had broken her somehow. But she forced movement into her bones, wanting to at least push some blood through her veins and frigid muscles.
The shackle on her ankle clanked, and she reached down to rub the rawness beneath it. The scarlet rash was welted on her flesh. Her heart numbed, and she laid back down on the hard wood.
Breathe, Nyssa, she could hear her sister and brother saying.
One.
Two.
Three.
All the way up to fifty-six.
One inhale for every day since her sister’s death.
One exhale for every day she knew she might one day try to shudder out—even though she knew she couldn't.
Her lungs were tight with the smoke she’d breathed in.
But she would keep inhaling it.
And she would exhale the fire of her reality.
For her family.
For her friends.
For the freedom she hoped to one day secure for her people.
For Haerland.
The shriek of her eagle sounded overhead as she laid on her stomach, her arms forked out at her sides. Her eagle, whom she had only just been able to speak with again the night before.
At least with him there, she was not completely alone.
Tears ran down her numb face as the wood cradled her striped muscles.
