She took a deep breath as he stood. Before she could react, his boot came down, smashing into her face. Her nose cracked under the impact, blood pouring before the pain even registered. Tears stung her eyes, but she did not make a sound.
One, two, three.
Her focus remained on the pain of magic buzzing wildly under her skin as she heard the distinct sound of a dagger being drawn from its sheath. She thrashed against her restraints. That was her dagger. He smirked at the fury in her eyes.
“Such a beautiful blade. You’ve taken great care of it for me—let’s see how well it cuts yourflesh.” She yanked at her short chains. It was a useless action, but she was unable to do nothing. He smiled, the tipof the dagger piercing the skin above her temple as he dragged the point down her face, following the path he had charted with his finger.
Blood ran into her ear. The cut was deep, and the blade scraped against bone, slicing clean through her cheek. She breathed through the pain. He certainly wanted to start strong.
With a satisfied groan, he finished carving her face. “Well, I’m a little disappointed. This only makes you more irresistible,” he whispered.
Even without seeing his face, she could tell he was beaming. He was definitely the kind of male to get off on torture. Her resolve held strong, but she wouldn’t be able to hold this level of silence indefinitely.
“Enough with the foreplay. Let me show you, witch, what real strength looks like,” he spat.
Solveig closed her eyes and let the sting of her magic hold her still. She breathed through every kick to her abdomen. Stayed silent as he shattered her kneecaps. Tears rolled freely down her face, lips pressed together, teeth clenching so hard they might shatter, silently taking each blow.
Time was lost to her, but an eternity later, when he finally finished, she watched him walk away through blurry eyes, his chest heaving from the exertion. He paused at the front of the cave, turning to face her.
“See you tomorrow, puppet.”
Tospitethesun,Solveig counted her stay in the cave byhisvisits. Eighty-seven visits. Eighty-seven days. She learned to despise the light and grew to greet the darkness as an old friend. When the sky was no longer safe, she expected him.
As she predicted, she could not hold her silence entirely.
He ripped screams from her lungs as he whipped her, burned her, scarred her. Each day, he devised a new way to make her scream. Coaxing pain from her defenceless body was an art form he’d spent almost three months mastering.
She retreated deep into herself, where she could barely remember her own name. It was a small mercy that he defiled every part of her but kept his dick in his pants. He’d been close a few times, and she retched at the thought of him on top of her. Every time he was on the verge of attempting something vile, one of her guards stepped in to pull him away.
Apparently even monsters had a line they would not cross.
Solveig lay in the blessed dark on her eighty-seventh night, trying to recover from the day’s fresh horror. As she breathed through the pain of her limbs being torn from her body, or more accurately the attempt of tearing the limbs from her body, she thought about her guards.
Each of the four who sat at the mouth of the cave, listening to her scream, were as recognizable as old friends to her now. They only ever wore the same black outfit that covered every inch of them, but she’d learned their nuances none the less.
How they moved, sat, and spoke. Even though they disguised their voices, she recognized the different sounds. She even knew the way they guarded her and how her magic reacted to each of them.
She named them so they’d be easier to keep track of. The only female in the group was easy—she was Water. Fluid and graceful, but a strong force that could suffocate without a thought, which she often did. Solveig’s magic emitted a territorial hiss in her veins when Water approached. The desire to gouge her eyes out was ever present.
Two of the males she called Thick and Stick. Not clever names, but in her state, it was all she could come up with.
Their shifts were always a slight relief. Thick was huge and he moved heavily, his steps reverberating off the cave walls. Her magic didn’t have a significant response to him, so she was able to relax in his presence. Well, relax as much as she could while chained to the ground, tortured for hours on end each day.
Thick attempted to lighten the mood, making jokes, and sometimes gave her extra food—if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he wasn’t thrilled about what they were doing to her. But she did know better.
Stick, contrary to what the nickname suggested, was almost as muscular as Thick but moved as though he was harbouring a stick up his ass. He never showed any kind of mercy or kindness. Her magic wasalways agitated when he was around, causing her to constantly fidget in his presence.
He sat staring directly at her, huffing every time she tried to move. On her petty days, she would attempt to irritate him as much as possible, trying to create music out of his increasingly frustrated breathing sounds. He was not amused, but it was a small source of pleasure for her.
The male who had captured her was Fear. Her magic never settled around him. No matter how many days he sat in the cave, facing away, never acknowledging her, she was terrified of him. Her magic warned her—he would destroy her if given the chance.
She never slept while he was guarding her, which was difficult as the days went on because he began taking more shifts than the others. In the beginning, the rotation was easy to follow. Water, Thick, Stick, Fear.
Weeks passed before the rotation became scrambled and eventually Fear took over the majority of the watch, more than every other day. Sometimes he’d be there for days in a row, back straight, head bowed over his lap, doing gods knew what.
Solveig was exhausted, but unless they forced her into unconsciousness, she was awake and vigilant when he was near.
It confused her at first, when she kept waking up.
