Page 6 of Cages and Crowns
The Caged
Present Day
I’m cold, but that seems to be the norm these days. My wrists and ankles are protesting against the metal tightly clamped around them, I’d think they’d be used to it by now. He left the balcony doors open when he was done with me, leaving my naked body shackled to the bed, my limbs pulled in different directions leaving me fully exposed.
It’s always the same.
The same ending. The same position. The same dread that fills my body and infiltratesmy bones.
It’s been three monthsat least. I only know that because I have been counting the days that I remember. There are 72 scratches on the back of the nightstand. 72 days I have remembered to count.
How many days have I forgotten?
I know that I was unable to mark the days I spent in the dungeon, which is why I am estimating three months, but something is telling me it’s been longer. Nothing feels right, as if I am living someone else’s life, but maybe this is what trauma feels like.
Maybe this is what it feels like to truly be helpless.
The icy spring air flows throughout the room, causing me to tense. That only makes the shackles dig deeper into my skin, burrowing into my flesh. I wince silently. I learned quickly how to hide my pain. Not because I had to appear strong, but because no one cared about the pain I was in. The only person interested in how I feel is Tobias, but that is only because heenjoysthe sight of my pain. My screams for help, every flinch and wince as he slices me until I am nearly unrecognizable, only to pump me full of drugs and do whatever it is that makes me heal almost instantaneously as if nothing has even happened.
My brain doesn’t heal as fast though, my mind slow to recover. The days blur together and I often find myself questioning what truly happened. Did any of it actually happen? Am I insane? Are these moments of pain and terror just dreams like the one I had about Chatis?
When will I wake up?
I can’t fight the full body tremors wreaking havoc through my body as I shiver, the chains rattling from the movement. The shaking always comes, it's a sign that the hemlock is wearing off. A sign that my body is craving it, something I can’t even fight. He’s made me addicted to it, the numbing haze that overtakes my senses, making me forget.
Tobias has been using poppy root less and less lately with the hemlock. He wants me to remember. He wants me to remember how he touches me, how he uses me, what the pain feels like. He wants me to remember every single secondof my miserable life. He wants to break me, but I won’t let him. Ican’tlet him.
But if I do, if I succumb to the depression eating away at my mind, who will I become? Will I become a husk he can control even more than he already is? Is living this life, like this, even worth it anymore?
Davel is standing by the door, his hand resting on the pommel of his golden sword. He’s my least favorite of my rotating jailers. He stares at me, intently. He watches Tobias touch me, hurt me,rapeme. And then, when Tobias leaves, he stands as close to the bed as he can while he touches himself, finding pleasure in my pain, in my blood. It doesn’t help that Tobias keeps me tied up like a dead deer, for all who walks in to see. Naked, chained to the bed. Not a single part of my body is hidden.
I guess Ishouldbe grateful I’m not dead. That I am not lying in an unmarked grave like I am sure Theo and Donovan are. Like I know everyone in Chatis is.
Graves I’ll never get to visit.
The day Tobias brought me home, I could barely even think. I could barely even breathe. The smoke was so thick, I was choking with each breath. My bare feet were getting sliced up from the rubble and shattered stained glass. The leftover bones were burned and reduced to ash. It smelled awful—like sulfur and charred meat.
He paraded me around, holding me close to him with a metal collar he has kept around my throat since. I had no words for what I saw, for what was left of my home. He read off the list of casualties as if he was reciting a task list. Chatis was small, but the death count totaled to 481 people. Nearly 500 people were murdered simple because I pissed off Tobias.
My father. My friends. My people.
All dead.
I’ll never forget that it was my fault. I will never get their faces, their names out of my head. For ten years I dreamt of glass and bone, but it wasn’t a dream, it was a premonition.
One I could have stopped.
I haven’t had a single dream since that night. I don’t know if it’s the steady stream of drugs Tobias has been pumping into me, or if I just have no more visions to see. I have tried nearly every day to reach out to Enzo, but the connection is gone. I feel nothing. Part of me is convinced he never existed. That I imagined him to get away from the horrors I’m experiencing.
Another part of me believes that it was the glass dagger, the one I am convinced he left for me in the woods, that fueled our connection. When Tobias broke it, it shattered everything. That is what I keep telling myself, because if that is true, then I am not crazy. I am not growing mad. I am merely a person who can see the future, uncontrollably, and that I have someone out there who I can connect to.
Or maybe Iaminsane.
I take a slow deep breath as another breeze filters through the open doors, causing my nipples to harden and goosebumps to spread along my bare skin. Even back in the dead of winter he tried to freeze me, and he almost succeeded. Laris was on duty, and if he hadn’t thrown a blanket over me, I would have died from frostbite.
I almost wish I had.
I haven’t seen Tano in weeks and Laris will barely look at me. For three months he has been averting his eyes, only speaking when needed. He’s the weak link. I plotted for days on how to exploit that, but I eventually gave up. Any hope I have of getting out of here is gone. No one is coming to save me. No one should.
