Page 23 of A Bond of Fire and Roses

The whip whooshes down over the side of her face. Her head snaps to the side from the impact but she does not make a sound, not even when the tip of the tail catches her left eye and blood seeps through her swollen lids. Erax strikes her again and again, and each time the whip contacts a different part of her body. His movements are expert. Concise. This isn’t the first time Erax has used a whip. I can tell by the utter precision of his blows and the way he angles his wrist. But while Sister Gabriella had always looked disgusted when she did this to me, Erax appears to be enjoying it. There’s a manic look in his eyes that reminds me of a predator rabidly tearing into its prey. I want to stop him or join him. It scares me that I don’t know which.

I want to grab that whip from his hands and destroy it once and for all. Burn it to ash so that its existence is no longer. But I can only freeze as memories of my own torture rush to the forefront of my mind. My throat dries and the air around me grows thicker as I dig my nails into the centre of my palms, recalling the brutal way that whip had torn my body and soul to pieces. By the tenth brutal strike, Sister Gabriella finally cries out.

“Spare me, please!”

“Did you spare my wife?!” Erax snarls as he lunges at her. He drags her up to her feet by the hair and dangles her old, tiny frame off the ground above him. “I ordered you to protect your future queen at all costs!” He digs his fingers into her windpipe. “You were to keep her safe from…the fucking curse and the witch assassins they sent.”

What is he saying? I was his prisoner. His property. He said so himself. Yet, he’s talking about me as if he actually cared about how I was treated at the convent. As if I had meant more to him. What does he mean by which assassins??

“F-Forgive me, my king… I was trying… to… tame her,” Sister Gabriella chokes between strangled breaths, her features twisted in anguish. “For you, my king!”

“I did not order you to tame her.” Erax spits each word out slowly. “I ordered you to protect her. You are a traitor, Gabriella, and you know what I do with traitors in my kingdom. I feed them to my dragon.”

Despite struggling to breathe, Sister Gabriella breaks down and begins to wail. “N-No! Show me mercy, my king… Please, show me mercy!”

Erax snarls into her face, his lips peeled back in disgust. “Where was my wife’s mercy?”

For some reason, seeing her crying and begging for mercy like I did so often during my punishments, makes me feel sorry for her. It’s like I’m seeing her for the old woman she always was, one that hid behind the power of her whip. Now she looks frail dangling from the king’s grasp. Fragile, even. I want to turn away from her, but instead I take a step forward.

“Don’t,” Noble whispers in my ear. “Just watch. Have faith in your king.”

Noble hardly gives me a choice. He places his hand on my shoulder again, but his grip is a touch too firm. I stay still, my head swimming with so many thoughts and memories, and truths I never expected to hear. All this time I thought I placed in the convent as discarded property, left there for Sister Gabriella and her acolytes to torture me. To find out now that Erax hid me there to keep me safe from the witches? I thought the witches were extinct, or at least, that’s what my mother once told me. She also told me they were the original protectors of the dragons and helped breed them…why would they want me dead? What curse??

Erax looks at me for the first time since coming here, and my heart stills. The manic look that had gripped him only moments before has been replaced with a rage so boiling it sears the air around me.

“What would you have me do to them?”

My breath catches, burning in the back of my throat. He’s asking me what I want to do? He just stated there’s already protocol when it comes to traitors. My parents had sent our traitors to the Citadel for the Grand Masters to deal with. Depending on the severity of their crime, most of them were trained to work there as servants under the promise of one day earning back their freedom. Something tells me the same mercy is not given to traitors in Erax's kingdom. Not by the look in his eyes.

I glance back at the sisters sobbing on the ground behind me. One of them has fainted. In all the years they dragged me to that awful chamber, they never once showed me mercy. It was clear from the beginning they enjoyed what Sister Gabriella put me through. And yet they look traumatised by all this that I find it hard to believe they would be stupid enough to ever do it again. I also believe that if I don’t show mercy now, then I’m no better than them. You can’t fix a broken world by continuing to chip away at it.

“Let them go,” I say. “They won’t hurt anyone again. If they do, we’ll know about it, because our eyes are everywhere. Is that not right, Sister Gabriella?”

She somehow manages to nod whilst clawing at her captor’s hand.

Erax throws Sister Gabriella to the ground. As he watches her gasp for breath before him, her frail body crumbled and covered in blood, a dark smirk works its way slowly over his lips.

“You are lucky the gods blessed you with a merciful queen,” Erax says. “The same cannot be said for your king.” He steps back, his cloak billowing. “Ignisin, Cyrsí.”

A rush of hot air sweeps over me, dragging my hair over my shoulders and lifting the bottom of my dress. From the shadows a beast I’m all too familiar with slowly reveals itself. At first only its eyes are perceptible, burning like twin pools of molten lava. But then its chest begins to glow as fire builds and shines through its bristling scales. Erax looks at his dragon proudly.

“Cyrsí has been off her food lately,” he says, his smile twisting into a cruel sneer, “but something tells me that’s about to change.”

The dragon lowers its enormous head and the horns on the side of her face bristle as a loud rumble reverberates around the keep. The fire in her chest builds, glowing brighter. Her eyes never leave Sister Gabriella who is whimpering at her mercy.

Erax looks right at his dragon and nods once.

The dragon turns its attention to the other sisters. I watch in horror as she steps forward, causing the ground to tremble under her weight. I’m too stunned to move.

“But she is the enemy,” one of the acolytes cries out. I can’t see who, but it sounds like Sister Michael. “We did only what was asked of us!”

“What Sister Gabriella commanded us to do!” Now that voice I do recognise. Breea. She was the one who hauled me out of bed before dragging me to the room. “Please show mercy, my king, if not for us, then for those who were bent against our will!”

Erax doesn’t move. He watches his dragon open its mouth, revealing the searing fire that has gathered inside. I can feel its heat from where I’m standing. He gives Noble a quick, barely noticeable glance, and its then Noble tries to take me away. I still can’t seem to move my legs. I can only watch as Erax gives a final command, and his dragon releases her horrid black fire breath. Sister Breea’s wailing screams echo around me as she’s burned alive in black flames that sparkle like stars in the night sky. Nothing remains of her but a pile of ash on the ground.

Erax gives the command again, and his dragon moves on to the next victim. All the while, Sister Gabriella screams and wails as she watches them die, knowing she will come last. Noble tries again to pull me away but I shrug him off, oddly compelled to see it through.

“The king does not?—”

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