The whip swung, and the thwack that sounded when it met my sister’s bare back ricocheted through my entire being, as if I myself had received the hit.
Eleanor didn’t make a sound while he repeated the movement, and I sank to my knees, digging my fingers into the damp earth in search of strength among the dirt.
Everything in me reduced to the whistle of leather through the air and the resounding smack onto skin. I counted every one. My eyes were thick with tears but didn’t leave hers. The pain seeping through her determination pierced my heart like a blade to the chest. Her body flinched with every hit, but she didn’t cry out, taking each hit with strength and dignity.
All this time, I had been wrong. So, so wrong. Eleanor was incredibly strong, and I’d doomed us by not being honest with her, by concealing the truth.
They paused after ten.
Only shuffling among the king’s men was heard before he spoke. “Well, Adelia?”
Never breaking eye contact with me, Eleanor shook her head, her mouth open in panted breaths. I fluttered my eyes closed for a moment, unable to take the crushing weight in my chest.
“No.”
My defiance resonated around us, stronger than I expected with the storm rolling through my body. When my eyes opened again, Eleanor smiled despite the agony she must have been feeling.
Terym made a noise of impatience. “Again!” he demanded, and the general obeyed.
The whip sailed through the air again.
Again, I counted.
This time, Eleanor sagged farther and farther with each hit, her arms straining when she failed to hold her own body weight. Blood seeped into her dress, staining the once-orange fabric.
Each strike was an arrow to my heart, piercing it until I was sure it, too, bled onto my clothes, staining the ground beneath us with more death.
Because my sister’s pain waskillingme.
Her head bowed after the tenth strike, her dark curls tangled in front of her face.
After a moment, her eyes caught mine through the veil of her hair, and the determination still shining there ripped a sob from my chest. My head fell forward, my tears endless.
Make it stop.
I couldn’t endure another round of her torture.
“Again,” the king demanded, and my head snapped up. Before Lenek could raise the whip, another man spoke, stepping forward from the crowd.
“My king, she’s had enough.” Pierce’s voice was loud, and several men shuffled on their feet again, their gazes to the ground.
The king tsked. “You disappoint me, Pierce, I thought you were stronger than this.”
“She’s just a child,” he stated, and the agony that flashed on Eleanor’s face at his words was stronger than anything the whipping had elicited.
“Very well. It seems pain isn’t enough, perhaps my dearwifeneeds more of an incentive.”
Lenek pulled a knife, wrenching my sister’s head back, and placed the blade to her throat.
Chapter 36
“Release him,” Terym demanded.
A single drop of blood appeared at the point of the blade at my sister’s throat, rolling down her neck and into her dress. A dress already ruined by the torment on her back.
My pulse was loud in my ears, but her eyes demanded I stay the course. Demanded I continue to deny the king. Terym wasn’t bluffing, he’d do it. Everything he had shown me thus far proved that.
I couldn’t do it.
