Page 15 of Claimed By Shadow and Blood
I didn’t know how many times they did it. Time turned liquid like the water. I floated somewhere between pain and nothing, and they didn’t ask me anything. It was just a constant cycle of shoving me under that filthy water until I thought I’d drown, then ripping me back out, letting me breathe for a too-short moment, and shoving me back down. I clawed my hands bloody as I raked them across the rough stone. Each time they brought me back up, I sucked in agonizing breaths and choked on the water until they forced me under again.
Finally, they lifted me from the tub and flung me away. My butt hit the floor hard, and cold air whooshed around my body. Pain exploded everywhere: my lungs, my butt, and my head. I dropped to one side, the stone scratching my arm. I barely had the strength left to hack up the foul water.
I choked and gasped for breath, vomiting again as the guards picked me up by the arms once more. At a steady pace, they carried me between them out of the room. My feet dragged on the rough rocks, and the sharp points scraped the tops. As much as it stung, each time I tried to lift them, they hit the floor once again.
Fear burned within me as raw as my throat and lungs. Where were they taking me?
Other pairs of guards were escorting prisoners through the hall, their strides unrelenting and their boots scuffing upon the stone.
Two of them held a woman with tangled blonde hair by the elbows, her knees scraping the ground as she sobbed.
Another man with purple hair tried to walk between his guards, but he stumbled, and one of the guards backhanded him. Blood exploded from the man’s mouth and sprayed a dark wall. A third prisoner wore black, shroud-like attire that covered him from head to toe. He left behind a blood trail that seeped into the porous rock.
A loud scuffing in the hallway to my right drew my attention. A high-pitched male voice said, “I can’t keep doing this. It’s too much. I don’t deserve this. She’s had enough.”
My head threatened to implode. I had to remember that they weren’t torturing only me. I looked up as two guards pulled the man down a cross path. The prisoner’s long gray shirt hung in tatters from the neck, and his arms were bare and bruised. His haunting, sunken blue eyes had large bags beneath them.
Several long, bleeding gouges marked the skin of his shoulders. It looked as if needles and tubes had been shoved under his skin and then ripped away. Silver streaked his filthy chestnut brown hair, which had large, matted clumps that didn’t hide bald patches forming at the sides. “I can’t keep doing this.” His voice trembled, and his heels left a trail of blood that glistened in the torchlight. “I won’t.”
“It isn’t like you have a choice,” said the guard on his left.
The guard on his right shook him as they continued through the main hall. “You’ll stay here till you die or you cease to be useful. And if you cease to be useful, you’ll die too. So enjoy breathing while you can.”
I twisted my head to try to see him better. Something about him held my attention. His soft pleas faded as the guards dragged him out of sight.
The guards holding me pulled me into another long, dark hall. The oppressive scents of blood and rot choked me, growing stronger with each step. Fewer torches sputtered in their dark oily holders, and the pools of orange-gold light were separatedby rivers of darkness. Screams and pleas for mercy echoed around us like a storm. My own throat was raw from screaming, and every inch of my body ached.
I tried to keep track of our turns in case I ever got free, but they began to blur in my mind.
Finally, we entered a dark, low-ceilinged room with only a single sputtering torch on the far wall. Aside from the heavy metal door that slid on creaking hinges, the only thing in the room was a dark hole in the floor. The smell of mildew, sulfur, and rot worsened and stung the inside of my nose.
“Enjoy your accommodations. They aren’t quite as nice as the guest hall of the Shadow Palace, but you’ll make do.” Thigh Guy chuckled.
Of course, he’d be enjoying this.
They dragged me to the edge of the hole and heaved me forward. Icy panic clawed through my veins as I reached for the edge and tried to gain traction. But they laughed louder and shoved me into that stinking dark hole as if I were nothing more than a bag of trash.
I swallowed a scream, not wanting to give them even more satisfaction, and plummeted through the darkness until I struck stone. The impact drove what little breath I had left from my lungs. I lay there, bleeding and aching, unable to stand. Pain spiraled outward from my shoulder and hip where I'd struck the unforgiving ground.
Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the distant circle of dim light above. The metal door clanged shut, and heavy footsteps retreated.
Thanks to my wolf, my eyes adjusted swiftly. I made out the shadowy contours of my prison. It was at least a twelve-foot drop from the jagged opening above me, and that appeared to be the only entrance or exit. The rest was a pit.
Water trickled down the stone wall on the far side and collected in murky puddles. A pile of what might once have been hay sat in one corner near some bones. Skulls, ribs, and thigh bones stood out from the rest, and my stomach roiled once more.
These had to be fae bones.
My blood turned colder than the air. They could abandon me here, and no one would ever know where I was.
Something skittered across my hand. I jerked away, biting back another scream as a beetle the size of my thumb disappeared into a crack in the floor.
My wolf whined, pressing against the edges of my consciousness. I drew on her for strength, but despair clutched my heart, and I couldn’t stop my tears from falling.
Was this what Fate had in mind for me all along? To fall in love when I’d known it was a mistake, and then get framed for murder and left to rot away in a filthy hole, far from everyone I loved? My wolf nudged me, and I offered what comfort I could, but it was next to nothing. The shadows deepened as I became more aware of the cold and the aches in my flesh and bones.
I pulled my knees to my chest, ignoring the sharp pain that radiated through my body. "If this was your plan," I whispered hoarsely to Fate, "it's a cruel one." After the slaughter of my family pack, I should’ve known she despised me. Tonight was just the icing on the cake.
I reached for my pack links and found nothing but one very faint warm spot. Fate, I missed Ember, but I was so glad she wasn’t living in this hell with me right now.
