It isn’t wise to give your name away freely.
My cheek still smarts from where Shaw’s bullet grazed, and while I hate him with a ferocity that steals my breath, his advice was sound. “Ridley,” I tell him, thinking of the girl who sat behind me at the Binding.
“Ridley,” Shivhai repeats, rolling the word off his tongue in a way that makes me thankful I didn’t give him my true name. He turns back to the small cart, pouring another finger of the amber liquid and downing it quickly. He plucks a small instrument between his large fingers and panic grips my throat. It isn’t a drink cart. In my haste to get free of my shackles, I didn’t notice the instruments that line its sterile shelves. Instruments that wouldn’t look out of place in the Healing Center.
The one Shivhai selects looks like a large needle, thin, but strong and dangerously pointed. I wonder at the craftsmanship, having seen nothing of its like in the Dark World. It makes Shaw’s daggers, even with their beautiful carvings, seem rudimentary. “What were you doing in the Nemoran wood, Ridley?”
It doesn’t matter who crafted the needle if Shivhai plans to gut me with it. I force my voice to be soft. Even. To keep my face mild and pleasant. I’ve been trained since birth that feelings are a shameful thing, and even though they’ve run wild since my escape, shoving them down is like slipping into a familiar skin. “I was on a journey to Nadjaa and got turned around,” it’s the only Dark World city whose name I remember clearly. “I was accosted by that horrible creature while I was trying to find my way once more.”
Shivhai tilts his head as if I’ve said something of interest. “And where are you journeying from?”
My throat is dry.He knows, he knows.
He can’t know. Unlike when I first stepped past the Boundary, my skin is now marred with bruises and cuts and covered by a thick layer of filth. Shaw’s cloak covers my Similian clothes and a layer of his blood coats the skin of my hands. If I can keep calm, there is no way for Shivhai to guess my origin.
“From my father’s farm. My brother was escorting me back to the city, but we were separated. I wish to call upon your Praeceptor’s mercy to shelter me until I can find my way back once more.”
Shivhai lets out a rough laugh that sounds again like the scraping of ancient lands. He steps toward me, his large boots pounding the dirt floor. He weaves the needle between his fingers and in a few steps, there is barely a hairsbreadth between us. I squirm backward, only to find the support pole digging into my back. “Odd, that you would leave yourbrotherto be bled out by the yamardu.”
I pale. He’s spoken to Dumi.
“That…that wasn’t my brother. That was a highwayman who kidnapped me.”
Shivhai ignores me, his greedy eyes drinking in my face. “Such a beautiful little bird,” he murmurs. His calluses scrape the underside of my jaw as he runs his fingers over my skin.
I think of Shaw’s calloused touch and the fevered ache it brought with it. There is nothing pleasant or aching now as Shivhai runs his fingers over my lips. There is only unrelenting cold. His hand travels toward my hairline, then dives into the thick strands, gripping and pulling with an icy air of ownership.
“I wonder if you’ll sing for me.” He tightens his fingers, pulling me up by my hair until tears spring to my eyes and I’m forced to stand on my tip toes.
I bite my lip to keep from crying out, willing my panic to smooth and calm as if it is rough waters and I am in the wind. “I wish to speak to the Praeceptor,” I repeat.
Shivhai runs the point of the needle across my cheek. “I will ask you again, little bird. Where do you come from? And why are you in this wood?”
The hard crack of Shivhai’s knuckles against my jaw stops the words in my throat. Stars bloom behind my eyes as I stumble sideways. With my wrists still clamped behind me, I am merely a passenger as I fall, my face catching the brunt of the impact against the compacted dirt floor.
Get up. Don’t let him see you weak.
I bend and twist my body and finally, finally, get to my feet. Before I can steady myself, Shivhai’s fist flies into my gut. The air whooshes out of me as I tumble once more, my head cracking against the ground.
“This is a new world, little bird. No one travels through the Nemoran wood anymore without the Praeceptor’s say so.”
He winds the point of the needle down the side of my neck, scratching lightly at my throat. “He’s a methodical man. He believes neat, clinical torture is the best way to get one to spill their deepest secrets.”
Shivhai presses the needle hard enough into my skin that hot blood wells at my neck. I press my eyes closed and bite my lip to keep anything more from pouring out of them. Something tells me that begging will only spur him on, quenching the thirst for pain that threads through his every move.
“The Praeceptor is an efficient man, and he always gets what he’s after. I, however, find there are moreenjoyableways to get pretty little things like you to tell me whatever I want to know.”
Shivhai removes the needle from my throat, and I greedily gasp for air. The relief is short lived, as he whips my cloak open and presses the needle to the leg of my suit. I thrash as he pokes through the material, ripping upward until the skin of my leg is exposed to the bite of the air. “He’s not here, so I suppose we’ll do this my way.”
He grins, victorious and revolting.
By the Covinus, the warlord isn’t even here. Whatever desperate hope I’ve been clinging to that the Praeceptor is more than the militia he commands, that he might save me somehow, evaporates. No one is coming to save me from the fate I’ve brought upon myself. The warlord is gone, and Shaw is dead, and there is no one else in the world who even cares where I am.
Shivhai shoves a hand through the opening he’s created in my clothes, and I recoil as his clammy skin brushes mine. His movements are unhurried and assured, as if there is no doubt in his mind that he now owns me. To him, I am exactly like the people trapped in cages. No longer a person, just a vessel to be used as he pleases.
His fingers clamp painfully on my bare hip, and he hauls me closer to him. His breath is hot as he leans over me, tearing my pants further.
“NO!” I scream frantically, searching for something, anything that I can use as a weapon. Anything to stop what’s coming. Panic descends over me, the room only visible from behind a milky film of fear.
