Page 167 of Upon Buried Embers
I stay silent, and he breathes, deeply, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before opening them.
I see an internal war within them. “Come, the bath is getting cold.”
He lifts me into the tub, and before I even sit down, he’s striding away, rummaging through a chest.
I bathe silently, keeping my eye on him, but after a long while, I can’t take the silence anymore.
“Are you angry with me?”
“What?” He looks at me over his shoulder. “I’m not angry with you, Elf, I’m angry at myself for allowing you to be hurt in my own clan, once again.”
“That isn’t your fault.”
“Yes it is,” he growls, throwing more wood on the fire. “It should’ve never happened the first time, never mind the second.”
I keep the other times to myself.
“I’m going out of my mind. I can’t figure out who’s fucking doing it. I want to shake you for not telling me, and I’m trying to let you do it on your own, but I’m running out of patience.”
Silence follows, and then he takes a deep breath.
“Why did you plead when you saw the hot blade like that? It was more than fear, it was like a memory.”
“Master is cruel,” I whisper, and his eyes sharpen. “I saw him use a hot poker once on another girl, I think I was eleven. Heheld her down and shoved it through her eyes.” Bile rises in my throat at the memory. “Afterward he would taunt me with it at times, then tell me I’d be next, used in the underground with his friends.”
“Were you…” he breathes slowly, eyes closing for a moment, seeming to get himself under control. “Did they rape you?”
“No, they didn’t, but others were in the underground. I would hear them scream as they got passed around. I had nightmares for months after I first heard it.” I look away. “I was the one who they could beat whenever they wanted.” I look down at the wrist that was recently broken. “I’ve never really scarred. Only when I was terribly injured did it leave a mark. Even broken bones.” My thumb smooths over my wrist. “My wrist wasn’t the first bone to be broken,” I huff, but when I look over at Rohan, he’s vibrating with anger, a piece of wood held tight in both hands.
“Master liked to starve me. Manipulate and humiliate me to get food or even a sip of water. Hurt me for days over something so minor. So he didn’t rape me, or let others do so, but sometimes he…” I look away, feeling shame.
“He what?” he asks, pure threat in his tone but it isn’t for me.
I blow out a quivering breath. “He would make me touch him, them, for food. I would kneel at their feet and wait, doing whatever they asked or get a beating. That was his favorite, you know? To beat me.”
The wood in Rohan’s hands snaps in two, and I stare at it, my mind elsewhere.
“They would ask me trick questions so I would get it wrong, no matter what I answered. Nothing like a smack to the face to start their night. Or do more than was paid for. They all liked how my body would break. Or if I displeased someone by not making them… That would get me barn time.”
“What the fuck is barn time?” he asks quietly. Deadly.
His chest is heaving with his anger, his eyes alight with fury.
“I would be tied up to a hook by my wrists, and left there for days. I would be beaten, mocked, shouted at and smacked about. My bones would break and I would scream as I was laughed at. Sometimes, on quiet days, the rats would come and nibble at my feet, thinking I was dead.” I look away. “I’m small, an easy target. Quiet. It’s so easy for them to get to me, hurt me.”
“Just because you are those things does not mean you’re weak,” he spits, standing to come closer to the tub and kneeling before it. “Strength comes in different forms.”
“I didn’t fight back. I just let them do it. Iamweak,” I say, shame evident in my tone as I curl in on myself. “I did whatever they asked of me, too afraid to speak up, too afraid to do… anything!” My own chest is heaving now. “I am a disgrace, I let them turn me into nothing. I don’t even fully know who I am. I’m just a stupid, little weak elf. A nobody.”
“You’re not no one, you’re mine!” he fumes, face inches from mine now as he grabs my chin. “And youarealive. It takes strength to wake up every day after surviving that. It takes strength to be beaten and abused and still wake up every, single, day. And most of all, Little Whisperer, it takes strength to still show kindness to a world when it has shown you none.”
Tears gather in my eyes at his words, and my own claw out of me. “But I wanted to die.”
He tenses, but his reply is softer now.
“But you didn’t.” His words hit me right in the chest. “You woke up every day,” he repeats, and I swallow over the lump in my throat as he holds it gently in his grasp, running his thumb over the scarring there. “Just one thing.”
His words are full of an emotion I’ve never heard from him before, and his whole body is coiled tight, like it will snap in a moment and I wonder why.
