A heavy, quivering breath leaves me slowly as I beg oblivion to once again find me. Better yet, maybe I should be pleading with death. The sands know I’ll be meeting that reaper soon enough. I wince as I suck in too deep of a breath and my raw back protests.
“Thirty lashes, and she doesn’t so much as cry out in pain. And yet here we find her, alone…leaking,” a warm, rumbling voice declares.
I jerk in surprise and immediately force my body to go still as torment lights up my back. Scorpius steps into my line of sight and slowly crouches down until we’re almost eye to eye.
“Did they break you, Slave?” he asks, his black eyes trailing from my face to my back.
I huff out an unamused breath and notice Skull and Bones standing further back. Bones leans against a wall, one leg bent casually as he runs his gaze over me, but there’s nothing casual about the anger I see steeping in his soot-stained eyes. The reaction surprises me. It’s almost as though he disagrees with what’s been done to me, but that can’t be right.
“Give me until just after sunrise, and I’ll teach you a lesson in breaking,” I grumble to Scorpius, pretending a small tinge of defeat doesn’t ring in my words.
Morose or not, I’ve clearly learned nothing on the merits of keeping my mouth shut. Then again, it wasn’t my mouth that landed me here with a whip-torn back, so I guess as long as there’s nothing within reach to throw at anyone, I’m probably safe.
A wide grin stretches across Scorpius’s lips at my threat. He’s still glamoured to look skeletal, but even magic can’t hide what that smile does for his face. It’s exquisite.
That’s probably just the pain talking though.
“Awww, look at the little dagger thinking she can take on a sword,” Scorpius teases as he rises and moves to stand next to Bones.
Stupidly, I turn my head to try to follow his sudden movement away from me, which forces me to groan an apology to my back and shoulders. The grin immediately leaves Scorpius’s face, and it’s as though an unwelcome cloud has stretched in front of the sun just when I was basking in its deliciously warm rays.
“If memory serves me correctly, I’ve already conquered your sword,” I remind him, and I’m treated to another soul-thawing smile.
“Handled, not conquered,” he counters, and if my body wasn’t already on fire from my wounds, the flames would probably be crawling up my neck right now at the unmistakable challenge I see banked in the skeleton’s eyes.
“Is a healer not going to attend to you?” Skull asks, the question a welcome interruption to the stare off I was just having.
I have no idea how to unfurl the heat that is coiling low in my belly now. Skull’s gaze moves around the healing chamber, confused by the obvious fact that there’s no one here aside from me and them, but I already knew that. I debate asking them to move me closer to the window where the moon and the powers of the night can help alleviate some of my suffering, but I know I can’t let that happen no matter how tempting it may be. I close my eyes as an aching wave moves through me. I try to breathe shallowly until it passes, but the state I know the masters left me in isn’t going to offer much reprieve from the pain.
It’s going to be a long night.
“They’ll wait until morning,” I finally answer when the anguish isn’t squeezing so tightly and I can get more than a pitiful moan out. “Tonight I’ve been tasked with fighting off shock and infection. They’re creative with their punishments at this ludere,” I joke, noticing the small tremor that’s already started to ripple in some of the muscles of my arms and thighs. The battle with shock I’m about to wage tonight is no doubt going to feel more like a war.
“Bones can help you with that,” Scorpius declares, and like a good little Scorpion, Bones pushes off the wall and strides toward me.
“Don’t heal me,” I frantically stammer, trying and failing to move away from him.
Pain blazes through me, and I press my forehead to the canvas of the cot underneath me as black spots dance in my vision, and suffering goes toe to toe with every nerve ending in my body. A miserable mewl spills out of me as I try to float above the agony long enough to keep Bones away from me. “If you heal me, they’ll whip me again twice as hard for not enduring the full extent of mycorrection,” I grit out before I finally give in and get pulled under by the pool of searing torment that’s lapping at me.
Despite my efforts to keep them locked up, fresh tears march down my cheeks. A strange tension begins to build in the room, and I close my eyes, all at once overwhelmed and completely drained.
“He won’t heal you, he’ll just take the edge off,” Skull offers hesitantly. I can’t see him, but I can feel the way his hands flutter in front of him, like he’s desperate for something to do. “We won’t do anything that could hurt you even more,” he reassures.
It hurts too much to open my eyes, but it sounds as though he’s speaking through gritted teeth, like I’m not the only one in pain in this chamber tonight. My mind winds curiosity around all kinds of possibilities of why Skull could also be injured, but something warm drips over my mangled back, and all I can suddenly focus on is the ripple of relief that it instantly creates.
I whimper, worried that whatever it is Bones’s doing is only going to cause me more pain when the masters discover it, but he shushes me gently and pushes hair away from my face as he continues to drip something incredible across my tattered back.
“I’ve got you, Auset,” he soothes, and a spark of warmth ignites deep in my belly at the sound of my name on his lips.
More numbing drizzles work to chase away my pain, and as the agony starts to recede, the fog in my mind begins to clear. All the warm and fuzzy feelings from the unexpected smiles and kindness are chased away by a broom bristled with reality.
Why are they here?
Why would the Order of Scorpions want to help an insignificant blade slave like me?
I don’t know if Bones feels when I suddenly tense, but the atmosphere in the chamber immediately changes.
“What’s going on?” I demand, my voice slightly stronger, my body instantaneously feeling the effects of whatever Bones is doing to my back.
