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Across from us, Agatha sits in her chair, watching while sipping her drink. Her leg bounces casually, and she sighs with impatience.

I slip away to the dark, placid sea and the paper boat. To Titus.

And then it’s over.

Remus pushes away, leaving behind the sting of his assault between my thighs, and I’m returned to my cell, where the gag is finally removed.

Once inside, the guards secure my ankles to a thick chain, and pressure rises up into my sinuses when they hoist me upside down. Wriggling and kicking sends a searing pain across my skin, where the shackles rub against the bones. I want to scream, but my head feels as if it might explode.

“It allows the sperm to travel to your womb,” Agatha says from the doorway, and the chasing sound of her chuckle brings tears to my eyes.

It isn’t long before Titus finds me again, his warm, golden eyes like sunlight in this dark place. And soon, I drift away with him.

I can’t say how long they leave me to hang, only that my head is throbbing with an excruciating ache by the time the guards lower me back to the floor.

Only hours seem to pass before the door opens again, and my body turns weak with dread.

It’s the same routine over and over, twice a day judging by the shifts between sunlight and darkness, when I pass by the windows each time I’m dragged from my cell, always gagged to keep me silent on my way to Remus. Afterward, I’m trussed upside down, and each time, I find it easier than the last to slip into that space between consciousness and death, where I smile across from Titus, as he rows the boat toward some unknown direction. Just him, me, and the open sea.

I’m calm here, where the world can’t touch me.

* * *

Every second in this place chips away at my desire to live. Drains my will like a slow-drip sieve. The darkness. The silence. The isolation. I can feel it clawing over my skull, dragging me into the recesses. A vast emptiness, where nothing exists but the endless stretch of night.

“She won’t eat. She’s refusing.” Voices rouse me from the black void, and a weak sob breaks inside my chest.

My mother used to tell me that God only gave me what I could handle. Perhaps He’s forgotten about me. Abandoned me in this place, because with each rise and fall of the sun, I find my will to fight them waning.

Lying on my side, I scratch at the jagged concrete, my fingers raw and burning at this point, bleeding as they glide over the wet trail left behind.

“Make her eat.” The sound of Remus’s voice shoots a swell of panic through me, and I curl into myself, like an animal trying to make myself smaller so he can’t see me.

At the click of the door, I scramble toward the corner of the room. One of the guards catches me by my foot, and I kick out at him, the cracking sound on impact telling me I hit well.

“Ah, fuck!” He releases me, and I claw for escape.

I still have some fight left in me, after all.

A streak of white hot pain skates up my belly, when someone yanks me backward. I’m flipped onto my back with two guards at either side of me. Pain ripples across my wrists, the moment they pin me beneath their knees. Fingers dig into my jaw, and I let out a scream, while they pry my mouth open. Cold broth splashes across my face and fills my mouth, before they slam my lips together. I cough through my nose, the burn of fluids shooting up into my sinuses, and I swallow back what’s pooled at the back of my throat.

Gasping and choking, I turn my head to the side, and rough hands hold my chin steady again. Mouth wrenched open a second time, I suck in a breath, before more fluids are dumped into my mouth. They do this over and over, until there’s nothing left in the bowl, and when they’re finished, they release my arms.

Face wet with broth, I turn over onto my side, coughing and gasping.

When the door finally clicks shut again, I break.

* * *

An icy chill moves through me as I stand, naked, in my cell, arms failing to cover all my private parts. I stare off at the flickering lightbulb above me, where a moth flutters around it. Part of me wonders if the insect will escape this place. Another part of me knows it won’t, and that’s the tragedy of it all. That flicker of light is it’s last. The false hope.

Even that’s been stripped from me. As if I’m seeing through the windows of an empty shell.

My soul has been eaten away, leaving only the greasy smudges of their gorging across my flesh.

A hard-bristled brush rakes over my skin, and the scent of lye fills my nose. Agatha whacks the blunt end of the handle against my knuckles, and I cry out as the sharp pain vibrates across my bones. She jabs the brush between my thighs, scrubbing at the sensitive flesh there. “Jesus Christ, you smell like horse piss,” she says, swiping a fallen hair from her face. “Should’ve had the guards wash you.”

Behind her, two guards stand by, one of whom smiles as he watches on. “I’m happy to take over, if you’d like, ma’am.”