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Reaching for the handle, I quickly push it open before I change my mind.

The smell hits me first. It might have been less than a day, but that many bodies and blood…

yeah. It punches me square in the face and I have to quickly swallow.

It doesn’t smell like fucking daisies out in the Wastes, but I will never get used to the smell of rotting corpses.

Anyone that says they can is a psychopath.

Not wanting to look weak in front of the Berserkers, I hold my chin up and step into the room. The lights are burning in each corner, illuminating the horrifying sight as I stop just inside the door and stare. My gaze swings from side to side, taking it all in.

There is so much blood.

I can almost feel the pain in the room, and every time my eyes land on glassy dead eyes in one of the slaves’ skulls I cringe.

There has to be twenty of them in here, all women ranging in age from young children to adults.

Every single one dead, naked, and covered in blood.

They weren’t killed quickly, they suffered, and now I know why Ivar would have brought me here.

He would have made me walk around each body, telling me what they did to her as he forced me to kneel and watch, and after?

He would have done those things to me, not killed me of course, but everything else.

It’s the exact same thing he did the last time I was in the castle with him, before I won my freedom.

I hear someone gagging, and I glance over my shoulder to see Evan. He’s as pale as a ghost and looking like he might faint, yet his eyes can’t seem to move from the bodies. “What the fuck?” he yells and turns away, gagging again.

“Ivar,” I whisper, looking back over the room. “Once he realised that whatever he did to my body wouldn’t break me anymore, he got good at using others. He liked to play with his slaves, he liked to hurt them,” I admit, my words sending me tumbling back into my own memories.

“This can all stop, pet, you just need to scream for me,” Ivar taunts and laughs.

I clamp my lips shut, my eyes locked on the girl hanging from the ceiling.

Her hands are shackled together and tied to the chain dangling from above, her feet dusting the floor slightly.

Her head is lowered, her long brown hair covering her face and the blood I know that’s there.

We have been here for three hours. Ivar killed the first girl in the first hour.

Her name was Kit. I don’t know this slave’s name, she is new .

“Scream for me,” he whispers gravely in my ear.

My head is locked into a wheelchair one of the warriors found on a raid.

It has a clamp, which goes around my head so I can’t move, preventing me from looking away from the horrors before me.

My hands are nailed to the chair arms, my blood running down the side.

My ankles are bound by barbed wire, meaning every time I move it tightens and cuts into my skin more.

My pain here isn’t the main focus, no, that was an afterthought.

Today is all about my mind. Again and again he keeps trying to break me, it has become a game now.

One I will win, but today…today is testing that resolve.

“No?” Ivar sighs, standing back up from where he was crouching next to me.

He wanders back over to the girl, turning sideways so he can see me as he grabs her hair and yanks her head back.

Her eyes are dazed and set in pain, and blood is smeared across her cheeks and lips.

Her eyes lock on me. “What shall I do to you?” he murmurs, and the girl starts to struggle.

Wincing, I try to look away, but I can’t.

Ivar leans over, letting go of the girl’s hair, and rips away her tattered bloodstained shirt. My breathing picks up as her breasts are exposed to the cold air. No, no, no, please not again. She starts to sob then, her whole body shaking.

“Please! Please, leave me alone!” she begs.

“What do you think, pet? It’s your choice,” he calls, mocking laughter leaving his lips as she struggles.

“Fuck you!” she cries desperately, and I freeze. Oh, shit.

I know before he moves it’s going to be bad, but even I’m shocked when he darts forward and bites her nipple.

My eyes fly wide as she screams and he jerks back, ripping her nipple away with him before spitting it out on to the floor.

Her screaming cuts off as she slumps forward, blood pouring down her chest.

“Still no scream? Guess I need to get creative, pet.” He laughs, blood flying from his ruby red lips.

Sands below, please no.

“Soulmate?” Dray calls, and I shake away the memories, all of them fighting for the spotlight in my mind from merely being in this room, but I won’t let them. I lived them once, I won’t do it again. He’s dead, but it doesn’t mean his ghost and haunting memories can’t hurt me if I let them.

“We need to bury them, there is space on the cliff edge out back.” My voice is surprisingly even despite the pain still lingering in my mind.

“I will grab some more men,” the big man informs me, and I nod, stepping farther into the room.

My eyes catch on the little girl in the corner.

Her light red hair is stained with blood, and although I can’t see any wounds, that only makes it worse.

A noise catches my attention, and I watch the Berserker drop to his knees next to a pretty blonde-haired woman who is lying on her back with a stab wound above her heart.

He grabs her and pulls her to his chest, whispering to her as he rocks her dead body.

I look away then, offering him the privacy he deserves as I move through the room, stepping over bodies.

I memorize each face and burn it into my mind.

They are my burden to carry and I will do so each and every day.

By the time I have circled the room, men are gathered at the doorway.

“One body each, cover them and carry them to the cliff. We need shovels. We’re going to bury them and give them the respect they deserve!

” I yell. They move into the room then and Dray stops next to me.

I grab the little girl, holding her to my chest, her body cold and stiff, but I concentrate on Dray as he grabs a woman and holds her to his chest like a doll.

Swallowing hard at the questions in his eyes, I turn away, needing to get away from this room.

I barely stop myself from running, and with each step away, I feel a weight lifting.

I wish I could burn that room to the fucking ground, but I will settle for their peace in death.

The rest of the Berserkers see us as we go and they follow after us.

The trek out to the cliff is hard, but each pull and pain in my muscles just reminds me I am alive.

I lay her little body gently on the ground and look over at the crosses already buried here—our graveyard. “Let’s get digging!” I shout.

Two hours later, all the bodies are buried, and we had a moment of silence for their deaths. With it, I vowed that they would be the last to suffer in this castle. The walls are filled with echoes of screams and ghosts, and we can never change that, but maybe we can add some good memories here too.

We file back into the castle and the drinking starts early.

I notice Ivar’s body is gone—good. I slip from the room with Dray on my heels.

I might be queen, but I’m used to being by myself and right now I need some space.

I feel like I’m about to explode with everything that has happened these last few days.

I need a moment to just stop, to think. I freeze in the hallway, unsure where to go.

I have no bedroom here, no escape. Most rooms hold pain and suffering for me, so where do I go?

I spot Evan heading downstairs and he stops at the top. “ I’m going to sleep in the cells, at least they’re familiar. I’ll see you in the morning,” he tells me and I nod, understanding that. “Oh, and Worth? Glad you didn’t die,” he shouts, before he turns and leaves Dray and me alone.

Me too. As hard and painful as my life has been, for once I realise I’m glad to be alive.

I never feared death before I met my guys, never even thought about it, but facing down Ivar, I had a niggling thought in the back of my mind.

If I died, it would hurt them. I have people who care about me now, people who depend on me, and that is weighing me down.

Each word or action I take has to be thought through before I make it. For tonight, I just need to be me.

The Champion.

Not a Berserker Queen, not a slave or a drunk. The Champion. And tonight, I will have the Seeker I always wanted.