Goes…
Black.
Chapter 16
Idream of the room with the steps.
In the dream, I fall up, down, and sideways, one set of stairs sucking me into its pull after another. I fall and fall, never landing, just going around and around and around.
My eyes flutter open. Just for a second. I go around and around and around.
My head throbs, a violent drumbeat inside my skull. Still—around and around and around.
I try to touch my head, try to rub away the ache, but my hands won’t move. Something stretches my arms wide, pins them in place. My feet, too. And still, I go around and around and around.
My eyes fly open. The world whirls, a nauseating kaleidoscope that refuses to stay still.
Pain bites into my wrists and ankles. I tug, but I can’t move. I’m…fastened to something, spreadeagled, my arms and legs tied.
Only the world isn’t spinning.Iam. Because I’m lashed to a frame of some type. A…wheel? Around it goes, taking me with it, spin after spin after spin.
Ishanna help me.
I try to fixate on something, anything, but I can’t focus longenough to make sense of this whirlpool of color. Gravity yanks at me from every direction as I cycle from right-side-up to upside-down and back again. My stomach heaves, but thankfully, I have nothing to throw up.
Laughter bombards me, cruel and delighted.
Everything jerks to a stop suddenly. My head cycles through a few more disoriented revolutions, my eyes jittering back and forth before finally stabilizing.
I can make out trees. A dusky sky, just past sunset. And the toad-creatures from the hedge maze, only now there are four instead of two. Their beady orange eyes drink me in, the glee there only fueling the churn in my stomach.
One rests his hand on some kind of lever that sprouts from the ground. “Wakey wake,” he says, his gloating so thick it oozes over my skin. “Pretties can’t sleep when they’re on the wheel.”
My pendant has somehow ended up in my mouth, and I spit it out, the cool metal thunking against my chest. “Get me off this thing,” I gasp. “Take me down right now.”
The toad-creature laughs. “No, no. Pretties don’t get taken down. They get played with. They getenjoyed.”
A bolt of pure terror punches into me. I thrash, funneling every ounce of strength into fighting my restraints, but it’s no use. The ropes circle my wrists so tightly that trying to escape only makes my hands go numb. “Untie me,” I shout, my voice breaking. “I let you live. In the maze. You begged me to spare you, and I did.”
The creature grins, his smile twisted by those grimy tusks. “Yes. That was nice. Maybe it’s a nice pretty. Not so nasty after all.”
A scream rushes up my throat. I manage to trap it behind my teeth, reshaping it into words. “I gave you mercy. Now you have to grant me the same.”
He gives me ayou-ought-to-know-betterlook. “Prettiesgivemercy. Not get it.”
More laughter erupts from the thing’s friends, but I barely hear it. Icy terror blasts through me, so powerful my vision goes dark.
I spared him. I obeyed Ishanna, let him keep his wretched life.
Andthisis what happens?
This has to be a dream. A nightmare. I can’t possibly die like this, inthis awful maze. I can’t end up tortured to death, or raped, or whatever these horrendous things plan to do to me, simply because I refused to take a life.
Oh, goddess. Please, no.
The toad-things start talking—discussing how best to “enjoy” me, I think—but I can’t follow what’s happening, can only fight for breath while my lungs seize and my pulse roars in my ears. I buck and jerk again, but that only cinches the ropes tighter.
The creatures’ discussion escalates to a squabble. One insists on cutting my clothes off while the other three argue for some kind of game.
