Icy water sloshes over my head and chest, jolting me from a fitful sleep. My shoulders ache, sagging between the chains where I managed to doze off for maybe thirty minutes at a time. Ignoring the scowling men in front of me, my bleary gaze lands on thewaterwielder’s tent. Eight different guards are stationed outside the beige canvas, but the flaps remain closed.
The beating begins anew. Different men taking out different grievances. Maybe I killed someone they loved—father, brother, friend. Wife.
I keep my attention fixed on the tent.
I don’t falter, not even when my own blood blurs my vision.
Not even when I can barely keep my head upright.
I keep staring at the tent, as though I might catch a glimpse of the unconscious woman through the canvas. It’s been over a day. How much valerian root did she take?
A new warrior saunters up to the platform. I bare my teeth at him—he’s blocking my view. The man arcs his hand, and a stream of water rises up from a large trough behind the platform. He twists it in the air, a hundred ribbons as thin as strands of hair shimmering like diamonds in the sunlight.
I’d have called it beautiful, if not for the dread pooling in my gut.
The warrior wears a cold smirk as he summons the water to my skin, painting every bare inch like a glimmering second skin.
And then he freezes it.
I screamed.
I screamed until my voice was hoarse, until the laughing of the warriors drowned out the pained sound.
I screamed until my ragged voice scraped my throat raw.
Agony. It was utter agony when the warrior molded water into tiny, razor-sharp needles and forced them beneath my fingernails.
The same needles jabbed into my neck and down my back in a mockery of the truthwielding that failed me.
The same needles inched toward my eyes before the general called him off. The waterwielder smirks at me, his cold smile promising more pain.
I promise him death.
The sun dips behind the trees, and still, the waterwielder hasn’t stirred. The other woman emerged a few times to speak quietly with Sorka or accept trays of food.
Worry floods my lungs.
I hate myself for it.
I’m already awake the next morning so I can glare at the smirking warrior when he tosses a bucket of ice-cold water over me anyway.
“Eager for more?” the bearded man sneers. “Arbinji bastard.”
I’d respond, but my jaw aches too much.
In my periphery, the warriors form a line near the platform, the promise of violence etched across their faces. My muscles tighten with anticipation. The first man swaggers toward me, dagger glinting in the sunlight. “I bet he likes it,” he says to the bearded man with a dark chuckle. “Bet it makes him hard.”
I spit in his face.
He wipes it from his cheek, anger contorting his expression.
Slowly, he carves a clean line into my chest with the dagger. I grit my teeth against the pain, breathing sharply through my nose. The dagger gleams in his hand, bright with my blood, as he carves another thick line into my chest. This time, I can’t cage my stuttered inhale at the searing pain. When he carves a third line, I clamp my jaw shut, refusing to give him the satisfaction of another sound.
The day drags on in a blur of pain and blood, warrior after warrior after warrior exacting their retribution.
Still no movement in the tent. What if she never wakes? What if she’s already dead and the woman thinks her asleep—
A pained cry claws from my throat as much as I try to contain it.
