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My breathing picks up, clouding the glass as I try to anchor myself in the here and now. But when that same sadistic smile twists his lips, I am thrown back into one of my worst moments, a nightmare made real.

“Mewl for me pet, let me hear that sweet sound of pain.”

When I refuse to let the scream lodged in my throat escape, he becomes wild, all sanity leaving his eye as he watches me.

He leans down and puts his face in my long tangled hair, his rancid breath smelling like blood and beer wafting over me as he whispers in my ear.

I try to strain against the bonds even though I know it is no use.

I am tied spread eagle to a stone table in the dungeon, my punishment for making eye contact with him.

For the defiance, he says he saw there. Ivar laughed as I was dragged from the hall in the middle of the feast, my legs trailing behind my body, hitting every stone on the way out, making my eyes water even as I kept the noises inside.

Dreven lifted me by my hair and threw me down here, following after me before I could so much as try to scramble away.

Fatigue, pain, and starvation making me weak, so I couldn’t even fight him off.

Not that my fifteen year old body would be able to.

He’s double my height and has stones of muscle earned from wars on him.

I was quickly bound and tied to what he calls his lover, the stone table, the position mortifying and offering me no semblance of decency.

Left like an animal, only shame and dirt from not being allowed to wash in two months coating my skin.

He uses my hair as a handle, pulling me to him.

I swear if I survive tonight, I am cutting it all off.

Never will it be used against me again, it’s a weakness I can’t afford.

“I was hoping you wouldn't.” He stands up, towering over me before turning to his table of toys.

“What shall we play with today?” he yells, the insanity clear to hear as he talks to the toys.

I focus on the light flicking from the torches dotted around the room, it bounces off the stone ceiling, the shadows twinning and twisting like a brutal dance.

A tear drops from my eye, but I refuse to let any more fall.

My body is shaking and my chest is tight as I try to breathe through the panic.

Maybe he will finally kill me, maybe my body will finally give in.

The thought doesn’t make me sad, in fact, it’s a relief. At least I would finally have peace.

“Ahhhhh!” He holds up the rusty metal clamp in the light, showing it to me even as my eyes strain to focus on the dancing of the flames, trying to transport myself anywhere else. “I stole this from Kellam, let’s see if it will make my pretty pet mewl for me.”

I don’t close my eyes, knowing it won’t help with nothing to focus on except the pain, but my body braces as I strain to keep my eyes locked on the shadows above me, twirling faster now, as if to match my racing heart.

Maybe I have finally gone mad, because all I want is to float up from my broken and used body, no, not my body –– theirs –– and join the shadows beckoning me.

I will twist high above where they can’t reach me, where my body doesn’t exist and dance to the music of the fire.

Agony, pure unfiltered agony, rips through my right developing breast as he clamps it on my nipple, which is puckered from the cold to my horror.

I bite my tongue to keep my scream in as I float away.

I don’t know how long I have been laying here, time slipping together as my mind blurs the pain and torture Dreven is painting across my skin like a canvas.

I stopped being ashamed after the fourth toy he used, now I am angry and tired.

So tired. It’s like watching it happening to someone else, as if my body is numb, my soul trying to slip away even as he keeps it trapped here in a cage of horror.

When he stops at the bottom of the stone table and grips my weak thighs, I know that the worst horror is coming.

The room comes back with a pop as my eyes clear, and my ears stop ringing just in time for him to slip up my body, preparing himself to defile me in the most cruel and ruinous way.

Please, please let me float away again. Let me dance in the flames, my soul twisting in the shadows above, so that I do not feel it when he pushes into my unprepared and unwilling body. So that I don’t have to experience the horror of being reduced to nothing but a toy.

I yank myself back to the present and rest my head on the glass, breathing through the memory.

My body twinges in pain, as if remembering has made it rush back through me.

It’s the first flashback I have had in a while, but it’s like the floodgates have opened.

All the horrors of my past are clambering to shine in the light, to subject me to their shame and cruelty.

Is it not enough that I lived through it?

Now I have to remember it? It’s like it knows the happiness I have been feeling, the love surrounding me, and it’s determined to tinge it with darkness.

To return me to the pain and flames of my former life, as if my contentment has called it from the bleakness.

“Princess?” my father asks from behind me, sounding confused. A tear slips from my eye as the man in the cells face blurs with my memories. Changing, morphing through the years of suffering spent at his hands.

“I’m broken,” I whisper, it slips out before I can help it.

“What? No, you are not,” he cries, his hand coming to land on my shoulder.

I don’t know what makes me do it, apart from that I need someone right now.

I need to feel safe, I need comfort and light to fight my way through the darkness.

I fling myself in his arms and sob, the tears ripping out of me unwillingly.

“Princess, god, I am so sorry. It’s okay... You’re okay, you’re safe. I’ve got you, princess,” he murmurs, his strong arms surrounding me, reminding me of when I was a child and found safety in his hugs.

We fall to the floor, me curled into him, my heart punching through my chest and sob after sob ripping through my shaking body.

He holds me, his words mixing together. Reassurance after reassurance as he tries to hold me together.

I can tell he doesn’t understand, in the way that someone who hasn’t experienced pain and suffering can’t, but he offers me everything.

He holds me as only a father can until my sobs slow, my breath hiccupping with the remaining pain.

I raise my head from his wet shoulder and gaze at his face. He looks defeated and so heartbroken, the lines on his face deeper and his frown fierce. He cups my face, his hands transferring his warmth to me, until I realise I’m ice cold.

“I’ve got you, my little girl. I’m right here, even if you hate me. Even if you’re angry at me, I will be here for you, always, to dry your tears, and hold you when you hurt. I’m here, my princess.”

We stay like that for a while, both of us lost in our own thoughts as I try to put myself back to together again in my father’s arms.