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The pain started small, a dull throb at the back of my jaw, the kind of ache you can tuck away and ignore if you’re used to worse. And I am used to worse. Pain here has its own hierarchy, and this was so low on the ladder it barely registered. But by the second week, it sharpened. Every movement of my mouth sent a jolt through my skull, white-hot and unrelenting, carving itself into the back of my head.

I didn’t tell Master Nathan. Complaining only leads to worse things, his punishments always heavier than the pain itself. I thought I could outlast it, thought the tooth might just fall out on its own. But last night, when he threw me a bowl of oatmeal, the mushy weight of it pressed against the raw nerve, and I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t even try.

He noticed. Of course, he noticed.

“Open your mouth,”

he barked, his voice already sharp with irritation.

I hesitated for half a second, and his hand shot out, grabbing my jaw, forcing it open. His nails dug into my cheeks as his eyes narrowed, scanning the swollen, angry wound at the back of my mouth.

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“Christ,”

he muttered, shoving me back with a force that felt like a warning. “You’ve got a fucking tooth infection.”

Before I could process his words, he was gone, his footsteps echoing unevenly down the hall. When he came back, he wasn’t empty-handed. He carried a pair of pliers, rusted and grimy, the kind you’d find at the bottom of a toolbox, sticky with oil and neglect.

“Sit,” he said.

I sat.

There was no pretense of care, no antiseptic, no rag to bite down on. Just him, the pliers, and the sharp smell of whiskey on his breath. His fingers twisted into my hair, jerking my head back until I was staring at the ceiling.

“Open,”

he ordered.

I obeyed, my mouth falling open, the air slicing into the raw ache of my gums. The pliers clinked against my teeth, loud and jarring, as he forced them inside.

“Which one is it?”

he asked, his tone flat, bored, like he was picking out a nail to pull from a wall.

I tried to answer, but the metal pressed against my tongue, muffling the words into a useless grunt. He sighed, annoyed, and jabbed the pliers at my molars.

“This one?”

he said, the scraping sound of metal against enamel making my whole body flinch.

I couldn’t help it—the pain shot through me, a sharp, searing thing—and he grinned. “Got it.”

The next few moments blurred into noise and agony. The pliers clicked shut around the tooth, the squeal of metal against bone reverberating through my skull. His grip tightened in my hair, pulling my head back further as he yanked.

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The pain was immediate, blinding, a white-hot explosion that ripped through my jaw. It felt like he was trying to unhinge my skull, nerves screaming as the tooth refused to give. My muffled

scream caught in the metal, my body jerking against his hold, but he didn’t stop.

When it finally tore free, the sound was wet and sickening, a nauseating mix of tearing flesh and cracking bone. Blood filled my mouth instantly, warm and metallic, spilling over my lips and dripping down my chin.

Nathan held the tooth up to the light, grinning like a hunter admiring his kill. The root dangled jagged and streaked with gore, a cruel monument to my suffering.

“Look at that,”

he said, shoving it in front of my face. “No wonder it hurt, huh?”

I couldn’t answer. I was too busy choking on blood, my body trembling, the pain radiating through me in waves. He let go of my head, and I collapsed forward, spitting onto the floor. The thick, viscous mix of blood and saliva pooled beneath me, dark and sticky.

“Stop being dramatic,”

he said, tossing the tooth onto the counter like it was trash. The dull clink of it landing sent a shiver through me. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My mouth was too full of blood, the empty space where my tooth had been throbbing in time with my pulse. I spat again, the puddle on the floor growing larger, the metallic tang thick in the air.

Nathan didn’t care. He was already in the fridge, rummaging for a beer, the bottles clinking together like this was just another night.

I stayed on the floor like that for twenty minutes, the room spinning, blood dripping steadily from my mouth. When I finally dared to touch the hollow space, my fingers came away slick and

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red. I stared at them, the sticky warmth staining my skin, and thought, This is it. This is what’s left of me.

I closed my eyes, trying to anchor myself in the dark behind my lids, but the pain roared on, unrelenting. I counted my breaths—one, two, three, four—but the ache drowned out everything else. It would still be there tomorrow, long after the blood stopped flowing. Long after he moved on to the next thing to take.

YEAR SIX