Page 55 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

The guard came around behind me and encircled me with his arms. It was a pointless gesture since I could not even shift the muscles in my legs to right myself as the guard pulled me off balance.

Aegis reached down and pulled one of my feet out before me, turning it outward so that the side faced him. He held his cane by the tip and brought the rounded head down violently onto the side of my foot.

I did not scream as he broke the bones in my foot. I could not scream. I could not even flinch, even as it felt like my body might catch fire from the need to do something—anything to end it.

The next foot was worse, since I knew what was coming. The pain was enormous. It blocked out all the world around me, reducing it to nothing but the sharp torment of my shattered bones.

My eyes rolled around in my head. The desperate attempt to break free again by moving the only part of me that was unbound, must have looked like madness.

I felt hot tears roll down my cheeks as I listened to the bones crunch and grind, the wet, thwack of my flesh under his frantic, rage-fueled blows.

I was more than just in pain. Pain was all I knew. It shot up my legs, raced through my hips, and landed in my chest where the torture of my immobility was still somehow worse.

"Chain her," Aegis spat as he reached down to clean the head of his cane on a fold of his robe. It was smeared with my clotted blood, but I could not even look down to see what he'd left of my feet.

Numbness came swiftly, so that all I felt was a burning, emptiness where my feet should have been. I knew the reprieve would not last for very long—not unless he had actually beaten them so badly, he'd severed them altogether.

That thought should have scared me, but the fear of the pain returning was so great that in that moment, I would have happily accepted amputation to avoid it.

Aegis came to stand before me, once again leaning on his cane.

He looked into my eyes and tilted his head a fraction before rolling his shoulders. He shuddered a little as though the relief of tension was somehow pleasurable. Then his lips peeled back from his teeth as he opened his mouth, stretching his jaws.

His few teeth in the front were a ruined, stained brown, but he had a row of sharp steel molars running around the inside of his mouth.

I fleetingly wondered what he did with those sharp metal teeth, but then it looked like his entire face stretched, eyes squinting in a grimace that almost looked like a yawn, as his mouth gaped open even further.

And then he shuddered again and snapped his teeth shut.

My heart thundered in my chest, terror momentarily driving away the ruined state of my body.

The necromancer had changed somehow. His face had grown grotesque.

His skin seemed too loose, as though he had stretched it out of place when he opened his mouth.

Even his eyelids drooped, red, angry looking flesh exposed beneath his eyes.

His features were very, very wrong.

He shuddered once more, sniffed loudly, and then his features returned to normal.

He turned and told the guard, "Make sure you hang her up so that she carries weight on her feet. The queen has a lesson to learn, and I am going to give her some time to learn it."

He left as I stood wide-eyed, trying to decide if I had been hallucinating.

The pain had returned by the time my hands were stretched over my head and I hung from the dank ceiling of the chamber.

The guard fumbled with the chains, standing on a low stool.

When he had attached them so that I was standing fully on my feet, he shortened them—very slightly.

It would not have been noticeable to anyone but me, but the small adjustment sent a wave of relief through me as it took just enough of the pressure off my mangled feet to let me breathe again.

As the guard looked at me, I saw something like desperation in his eyes. I knew that not everyone in this fucking dungeon was here because they wanted to be. This man, at least, had some sympathy for me.

I held the notion to myself, grasping for the one small bit of hope as he left the chamber and closed the door behind him.

It told me a little about how afraid they were of me when I heard the keys rattle in the lock even as I stood chained and broken in the middle of the room.

I didn’t know how long I spent in that chamber. All I knew was pain, rage, sorrow, and pure humiliation as I once again felt urine leaking down my legs.

I spent the time, by turns in a state of half consciousness, barely aware of my surroundings as I fought wave after wave of nausea and pain. And then I would come sharply awake as anger fueled me to plot and plan what I would do when the chains were removed.

I alternated between the hope that someone—that Io—would save me, and absolute, despairing certainty that no part of me would survive what they were preparing to do.

After what could have been hours, but felt like years, I fully lost consciousness.

When I woke, it was to an entirely new horror; total darkness and hands pressing me down onto a hard surface. I felt a warm, wet cloth run down my cheek and over my neck.

"Who are you? What are you doing?" I asked. I was shocked to find that I could speak.

A thin, raspy male voice answered. "I am Mordred, my dear. I am going to take good care of you. Do not fear." His attempt at soothing was anything but.

"What are you doing?" I demanded as my numb body was pushed this way and that. Had they rescued me? Were these healers striving to repair the damage that had been done?

"Shh," the man's voice said. I felt the cloth run down my cheek. "We are making you whole again. We are fixing what some careless man has torn asunder. And we are binding you to your new husband, so that you can serve him as a wife should."

"No," I groaned and then again, "No—"

"Shh." the man said.

I felt my legs being pushed apart, and terror crawled up my throat. Nausea and shame roiled through me. I surged upward, trying to fight back against the intrusion.

My arms jerked painfully at my sides, and I was pulled back down. I rapped the back of my head on what felt like a wooden table.

The cool, smooth surface under my back told me I was naked, though when I tried to look down, there was only darkness.

Not darkness. I was blind. I could see nothing, but I was sure the others could.

I struggled to blink, trying to return my vision. The effort made me realize my eyes were closed. I could not open them. I fought to reach my hands up, but realized again that I was chained down.

Not blind though—only bound by shadow magic so that I could not open my eyes.

The smell of their dark magic was strong—metallic, acrid, and thick. It burned the inside of my nose with an almost cold sensation that left me on the verge of sneezing.

I felt cold hands on my knees, pressing my legs down, and the feeling of something metallic sliding between them.

I bucked and jerked, struggling to close my legs.

"What are you doing?" I cried, desperation and anger making my voice hoarse. "Stop it," I commanded. It came out as a humiliating sob. "Please stop," I begged, my voice breaking so that it ended in a shattered whisper.

"Sh," Mordred's voice crooned in my ear. "It will all be over soon. You will not even remember what has been done. Your mind will be at peace soon."

That cloth ran back down my brow and across my neck as I felt a fullness inside me, cold metal pressing into me.

Pressure, harsh and unrelenting unfurled in me, and my body jerked.

There were too many hands on me to move.

They held my legs, my arms, even my midsection as I tried to arch off the table.

I was jostled by the rough movement of the metal inside me and the hands that fumbled between my legs.

I could not stand it. It was too much. The intrusion was too much. I choked as vomit filled my mouth.

A hand turned my face to the side so that it poured out in a hot acidic stream that ran down my cheek.

I wanted to die—wanted it to just end. I would take the unknown afterlife—or even the burning fires of Chronus, over this helpless humiliation—over what they might be doing inside of me.

I lay there, waiting for death, welcoming it, holding my breath in hopes that my tortured body might just fade away.

But then in the midst of it all, I saw an image of his face—that smile—the one that had fire behind it. The eyes, so endless that they reminded me of the night sky.

I let myself drift into a darkness made up of that depthless sky instead of the nothingness behind my eyelids. I ran headlong into that void filled with the memory of his voice.

I thought about your eyes—like swirling bits of fog trapped behind glass.

I think you are capable of anything, Sera.

You were born to fly.

I can sleep when you are with me.

You will not stand alone, Sera

You would not need to ask. Sera. Sera. Sera.

Eventually his voice died away, and that endless field of burning stars began to fade back to the nothingness of my closed eyes.

I began to feel pain where there had been only pressure before.

They were doing something to my abdomen and both of my arms, and it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

It began as sharp pokes and cuts, and then transitioned to full-blown agony.

I screamed as pain tore through me. They were ripping me apart—digging deeply into my chest and my stomach.

I threatened them, screaming the words I would make true as soon as I was free. When that did nothing, I begged them in a harsh, choking voice, “Stop. Please stop. I’ll do anything. I’ll give you anything. Just please, stop.”

"Shut her up."

"I am trying!" Mordred hissed, in an altogether different voice. "She keeps unraveling it, and I have to do the spell again and again! I could not even keep her eyes closed," he hissed. "I had to stitch them shut so that she did not look at me with those cold, empty things."