Page 46 of Stalking Wendy Darling

“Strip her,” the woman—Gabriella—ordered with a cool detachment that had allowed her to torture people for what I suspected were long, long years. “Give me a proper look at her.”

I could have run my mouth, but I waited, watching with shrewd eyes as the giant leapt at her command. He had no power here. He was muscle and threat rolled into one huge package and very little else. If he had thoughts of his own, he didn’t let them show as he grabbed my arm and dragged me closer, my feet scraping the cold floor. My last remaining shoe was still in the cage used to transport me. They’d ignored my screeched protests when they hauled me in.

I didn’t let my chin drop an inch as he tore clothes off me none too gently. My shirt ripped at the seam. I pressed my lips into a flat line and endured his rough handling, sensing Gabrielle’s eyes on me the whole time.

When she murmured, “Interesting,” I turned my gaze to her and held her stare, refusing to look away.Take a long look, you psycho. See your murder in my eyes.“Very interesting. Been stripped many times before, have you?”

“A few,” I replied coolly, giving nothing away. My heart hammered a furious rhythm against my chest but I was determined to keep that mask in place. Yet when the giant reached for my underwear, my hand shot out of its own accord. I snapped his wrist.

“Ah,” I said when he ripped his arm away, hissing through gritted teeth. “That was an accident.”

“I’m sure,” Gabrielle agreed, a light I didn’t like at all entering her eyes. “Scrub her clean.”

She never gave the giant a name, I noticed. Was that intentional, so I couldn’t learn it, or did she just not give a shit? I was betting on the latter.

The giant didn’t argue, but his face was pinched with annoyance or pain, or a nice mix of both. He grabbed a bowl he’d carted into the room and dunked a brush into it. Not a sponge or a lovely soft cloth. I gritted my teeth when the giant began ripping off the top ten layers of my skin, but I stood there and kept eye contact with Gabrielle the whole time.

I knew her game. This was supposed to shred me of my dignity, to humiliate me. She’d be disappointed. I was too stubborn to let her win, so I kept my head up, my back straight, and didn’t let a single wince cross my face. It was a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. She’d be drawn in by the opportunity to break me like a horse to her will, and during one of her little sadistic visits, I’d get the chance to murder her.

So I stood there and endured the burning in my skin, the pulling on my scalp, the fingernails the giant gouged across my body when he thought he could get away with it. His other hand dangled limply, a tad bit broken.

“Good,” Gabrielle decreed like some fucked up god when the giant stepped back, cradling his hand to his chest. She watched me as closely as I watched her, the two of us circling each other without a single physical step. “How well can you handle pain, girl?”

I widened my eyes. “Oh, not at all.”

She tilted her head, the tight bun of her dark hair not budging even a millimetre. Maybe that was why she was so evil; her hair was tied up too tight. “Get the prong,” she ordered the giant, not a hint of emotion in her cool voice. But I knew she was angry; I sensed it. She didn’t like being challenged, even if she’d probably enjoy making me pay for the insolence.

Or maybe it was me standing here looking her in the eye she didn’t like. I imagined most people sold to this place screamed and cried and pleaded with her to free them.

“You’ve got very fair hands,” I told her sweetly. “I understand why you don’t get them dirty.”

There was no flash of anger in response, only a tiny, barely-there smile. I was done measuring her, and now I was ready to play.

“Blood wouldn’t look pretty on you,” I continued, locking my body so I didn’t flinch when a cord dragged against the floor, attached to the metal stick the giant held. Oh, I’d seen one of these before. I used one once, on a farmer who called my sister a filthy word. My body broke out in shivers of warning, my mind screaming, bleating in primal terror. “It just wouldn’t suit you,” I went on, because talking was my lifeline right now. “Me? Blood lookssogood on me. But it’d just wash you out, Gabrielle.”

She lifted her chin a fraction, her only reaction, but I catalogued it like a victory. She didn’t expect me to know her name.

“Who told you my name?” she asked in that composed, even voice that was nothing but frozen rivers and fresh snow and a creeping void of warmth.

I wasn’t about to rat out my neighbour, so I smiled, watching the giant approach from the corner of my eye. “My captain,” I answered.

The smile stayed on my face—until the prong jabbed into my naked side and a charge that summoned unbearable, screaming pain burned every word from my tongue.

By the time they were finished, I was curled into a ball on the ground, dressed in something lilac and frilly, and Gabrielle was wearing a pleased smile. Every manic laugh I wanted to let out, every threat, every glimmer of madness, I kept locked in a vault deep inside so she’d think I was ruined by pain.

When the door slammed shut behind them, a bowl of something porridge-adjacent left for me on the floor, I hauledmy screaming, pulsing body up and propped myself against the wall.

“Step one,” I whispered to myself, breathing carefully, shallowly, “done.”

I just needed to keep enduring until they took me to the Collector. And then I could kill every last one of them.

I’d start with Gabrielle.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

WENDY

The pain never really faded. It dullened from sharp, eviscerating agony to a fire that made my eyes stab with tears and my ribs strain to allow a breath into my lungs, but it never left. I couldn’t track the days. I could have been here weeks. If I’d been smart I would have carved marks into the wall to track the sun’s passage across the sky, but I was consumed with rage and pain and plans, and I didn’t have space in my mind for worrying about the calendar.

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