The realization brought reality crashing down upon her. Rain. She was outdoors.
Punished, came the voice.You deserve to be punished.
“No,” whispered Saga, whirling. The cold was sharp and piercing, her surroundings so dark. But the fist of panic squeezed around her ribs, and her heart was careening out of control.
You should have been strung on a pillar with them.
“Please,” she wheezed, trying to draw breath, trying desperately to shove that voice, that day from her mind. Saga spun, trying to get her bearings, but in the darkness, it all looked the same.
Lost,jeered her mind.Trapped. No escape.
Saga gasped for breath, phantom ravens crying out in her skull.Punished,they seemed to say, with each ragged caw torn from their beaks. She stuffed her fingers into her ears, trying to smother it, trying to stop it…
Do you know how many men I lost to your vile father?he whispered, the ghost of his fingers skimming down her face.
“No,” Saga whimpered, placing a hand out to steady herself, but there was nothing to hold. She stumbled to the ground, gagging on the scent of hay and horse and the blacksmith’s forge…
Saga curled into a ball, her fingers clasped over her ears. “Please,” she begged.
“Please,” she’d begged that day as the tall, black-clad forms had closed in on her in the stables. “Let me pass.”
But they’d blocked her path, coarse male laughter sending a violent shiver through her. Trapped. No exit. Surrounded. The leader stepped forward, a ruthless man Saga had deftly avoided at all costs. But there was no avoiding him now, not backed into the blacksmith’s corner of the stables…
He was tall and broad, with a ragged beard braided in the Urkan style, and his dark eyes grazed from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. Magnus Heart Eater had smiled as he crowded his much larger frame against Saga’s. But as her back had hit the timber walls of the stables, true panic had filled her.
She’d flinched as Magnus’s calloused fingers dragged along her cheek. “Do you know how many men I lost to your vile father?” His hand had tightened into a bruising grip around her jaw, wrenching it up. “Look at me when I speak to you!” he shouted. “Halfdan lost three brothers. Frode, his own twin.” He spat, and she recoiled as it landed on her cheek.
Magnus had brought his face down to hers, so close she could feel his hot breath on her skin—could smell the ale he’d been drinking. “You should be dead,” he whispered. “You deserve to be dead, like your family. You should have been strung on a pillar next to them.”
She’d felt the telltale prickle of tears, and squeezed her eyes shut to ward them off. Saga hadn’t cried since the day they’d butchered her family, and she’d vowed never to cry again. But Magnus’s grip had tightened. “Look at me, you worthless pet!” Saga forced her eyes open, staring at his cold gaze. “Pet,” Magnus repeated, an ugly smile spreading wide. “You are a pet. But it seems you’ve forgotten. Prancing around the castle. Riding with the princess. Wearing the finery of nobles. You look at us all as though you think you’re better?—”
“I don’t?—”
“Quiet!” he barked, so loud it vibrated through her bones. “You will listen until I’ve spoken my piece! You’ve forgotten your place.”
The men behind him grunted in agreement.
“We cannot ruin your virtue without raising the king’s ire,” grunted Magnus. “But there are other ways to remind you, Volsik.You’re property. Owned. Nothing but a worthless pet.”
Magnus had turned and nodded at the men over his shoulder. Wordlessly, they closed in on her. Saga opened her mouth to scream, but a hand was clamped over it.
The rest was a blur. She was dragged toward the forge fire, her stomach pressed flat over a worktable. The scent of hot iron met her nose. And then Magnus approached, the brand used to mark horses held in his hand. Saga was reduced to a screaming, bucking, fighting thing, overwhelmed by pure terror.
But it was all for naught. Her palms were shoved to the table, the red-hot brand pressed into the back of her hand. Pain screamed through her, unlike anything she’d ever felt. It became her world, this blistering hot agony. Sparks showered through her vision, the scent of burned flesh filling her senses. And then, they repeated it on the other hand.
The pain never ended, not even after the men left her collapsed over the blacksmith’s table. It burned, and devoured and consumed the frail barriers she’d managed to construct over the past twelve years. Saga was left empty, boneless and trembling.
And then she’d done the most unforgivable thing of all.
Saga had cried.
Liquid heat slid down her cheeks, mingling with the sharp cold of the rain. Saga reached up only to recall she wore gloves. Tugging them off, the smooth tips of her fingers skimmed along her cheeks, feeling the tears she hadn’t allowed to fall for five long years.
But now, she found herself as defenseless as that day. Broken and shaking and shrouded in darkness. The tears came with a vengeance, and Saga relented. Sheletherself cry—for what they’d done to her that day and for the slowwithdrawal from life which had followed. Magnus might have branded her a pet, but Saga had been the one to cage herself away.
She cried for the girl she’d been before that day—for the thin flame of hope she’d sheltered inside herself. Back then, there had been happiness. There had been hope that she could make a life for herself amid the wreckage of her past.
Instead, she’d only joined that wreckage. A broken, bitter thing, locking herself in the dark until she could wither away.
