Fuck her promises. The vows Ardaton’s citizens made weren’t worth anything. Their city functioned identically to Ilasall.
Disregarding my wriggling, she grabbed my upper arm, her grip like iron, and injected the drug into my bicep. “This way, at least you won’t feel a thing when she comes in.”
It was the opposite of what I wanted. But nobody cared about that. How I wished to feeleverythinguntil I was dead.
Yes, we were captured, but the war wasn’t over. War that ripped your humanity out of you. War that dangled the bait of liberty in front of you.
But I was ready to pay the price of freedom. Even if it meant I was going to rot in Ardaton’s prison.
“I’ll see you soon,” the girl said. Her round face doubled, and her following whispers became as distorted as Zion’s howls rolling from the speakers.
“N— Arhg— No,” I slurred as my neck gave out, and my chin dropped forward.
Nothingness devoured me, one piece at a time, until I floated in a space with no sound and no air, flowing with the current of nothingness.
My hand twitchedas I tried to slap the annoying fly buzzing in my ear.
No—ears. Plural. The insect was burrowing into both of my eardrums.
As I swallowed the dryness gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, my throat convulsed from the soreness. Yet I peeled my eyes open, wincing from the assault of bright illumination and?—
A shove returned my head to my chest. “Stay still.”
My vision swam from the sudden movement. But it didn’t stop the realization from dawning: the voice had been foreign. The gentleness in it didn’t belong to either of the two tormentors assigned to Zion and me.
Curious, I strained to glance over my shoulder, but a firm push nudged me back.
I thanked the chains holding me upright as I would’ve barreled straight into the floor if not for them. My limbs had gone completely numb from staying in the same position for too long.
“I’m almost done,” someone behind me said as they pushed my head down. “If you don’t move, I won’t have to tell them you’re awake.”
Deciphering their words took significant effort. The fog clouding my mind slowed my comprehension.
But whoever was in the room with me took my lack of a response as a sign of compliance.
As the buzzing restarted, sharp bites began to dance on my nape. They moved in a line, a curve, then went back and repeated the process anew.
The low, continuous hum lit a path in the labyrinth of my memory, leading me to the center, where the answer awaited.
A tattoo needle was running across the back of my neck.
The pricking sensation reminded me of how only a select few bore tattoos in the cities, their ink identical—rows of numbers, a mark of the offenders—prisoners. Which we were now. Convicts graced with the judgment of rotting in Ardaton’s cells.
But I’d survived worse. Much, much worse. So as the black fluid seeped into my skin, I repeated my mantra:I will not crumble. I will not give up. I will persevere.
They could slice me open, cover me in scars, throw me into a den of hungry beasts, but I would still walk with my chin raised high. They could dole out their blows in heavy doses, but Iwouldabsorb. All of it. Their looks. Their words. Their groping. My body and I were two separate beings. The former could be traded, sacrificed, but the latter was mine.
Mine togive.
Not to be taken away by anyone. Them, especially.
I was going to enjoy watching them fail to break me, time and time again.
81
GEDEON
As the thick doors slammed shut behind us, I followed Ezra down the hallways of Ardaton’s prison.
