Page 89 of Her Ivory Flame

Pain tore through her and she tried to scream in agony. She remembered this pain, every time Mavros carved into her this is what it felt like and her vision started to blur.

He went halfway down her back before he stopped, a small relief until he started down the other side.

Her body flailed trying to get away but she couldn’t and she tried to breathe through the torture. She had survived this once, she could survive it again.

Just as he stopped again along the middle of her back, she heard the tent nearby rustle with another set of footsteps.

“Shit.” one of them said before she heard the familiar sound of a knife stab into someone's skull, the man that had been cutting her falling to the ground next to her.

“I said no one was to touch her.” the older man growled.

“Sorry sir.” The one at her feet pleaded and she heard the sound again, a thump to the ground following.

Her head was released and heard the man take off at a run, disappearing into the crowd of tents and shadows.

She didn’t move, her hands still on her lower back and she could feel the blood pooling on her spine. The iron was keeping her from healing, just like in Mavros’s prison.

“Fuck.” She heard the man sigh and felt his hand on her arm. “Let's get you in here and clean up, can’t let you get an infection.”

She rose to her feet, her legs shaking and blood poured down her back as she walked. Tears threatened her eyes but she wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of seeing her break.

She had succeeded all those months with Mavros, she wouldn't break now.

She shuffled into his tent and laid down on her stomach against the blanket covered floor. Bottles clanked around and soon she felt something cold poor onto her back.

It stung and she knew it was alcohol being poured onto her to sterilize it. Then she felt the padding of a towel and she gritted her teeth to fight the pain.

“That should do for now.” he sighed again. “You will heal slowly, but by morning it should be closed enough to not bleed all over while we are walking.”

The sound of his feet walking away made her breathe out the breath she had been holding, and when she knew he had laid back down, she silently cried.

It wasn’t the pain that was upsetting her, but the fact she had once again been carved up and defenseless. Her mind drifted to Kaden again, wondering if he was in fact dying or still alive.

She tried to find that thread she once felt, but nothing was there just like before. The small pulse of her power was there, but she couldn’t grab it due to the iron’s block that surrounded it.

She tried to remember the feeling of Kaden around her, that feeling of safety to try and calm her shaking body. She was cold, her blood soaked back making it extra hard to keep any kind of warm around her.

The pain ached throughout her body and soon she faded into sleep with tear-stained cheeks.

He would come for her, she had to believe it.

Chapter 33

He didn’t come for her.

She had been walking for hours now, two men manhandling her through the trees to keep her on her feet. The nausea from the contact subsided a while ago, puking a few times at the start but she figured she had nothing left to empty out of her stomach.

She was in worse pain than the night before, the skin on her back barely healed enough to not rip back open. Her head throbbed from lack of sleep and fighting the pain. Lack of water probably didn’t help and knew she wasn’t going to last very long at this point.

They had come to the edge of the woods, a large meadow with mountains on the horizon. She knew those black mountains and realized who these men were working for.

“Let’s get across this meadow quickly, we are too exposed.” The older man shouted, the obvious leader of the few dozen men traveling with them.

The men shoved her forward, her arms in pain from their tight grip and she tripped over her own feet. They had at least moved her hands to her front, helping her balance better as they walked.

She was numb, her mind trying not to think of where she was going. The mountains lead to Mavros’s land, ones she had escaped from years ago and now she would be going back to.

Maybe she had made a mistake trying to save her friends, but at the time she thought it was the right call. None of them had come for her, which meant they didn’t care or that Kaden had died.