A tiny shaft of light pierced the darkness, a razor thin streak slicing through the endless inky black. It had been both life line and constant tormentor, the only reminder that there was life beyond the iron bars of her cell. Where once silence had been her companion, a blessed escape from the chaos of her Kingdom, it was now as painful as the tools that bit into her flesh. Death filled the air, the acrid scent of blood and stifling odour of waste and decay were suffocating. This was a place that time had not touched, where a minute felt like a lifetime and the days were measured only by that thin line of light. Yet the endless hours of hunger and thirst, of silence interrupted only the scream and moans of other prisoners had been but a sweet caress compared to the pain that awaited her beyond the enchanted iron bars.
In the darkness the iron had not moved, the silence was not broken and yet there, now, stood the Tyrant King and his Executioner, their faces masked in shadow but leering at her nonetheless. She knew what would come next, she could already feel her heart beat quicken, her breath escape her lips in panicked gasps. They loomed closer from the black, their hooves silent upon the stained cobblestones, like phantoms of pain designed for her. She can see the knife, feel the cold kiss of the metal table beneath her, the bite of shackles at her ankles. She knows where it goes, watches it with wide eyes. And then it’s not the Tyrant King plunging that knife up, up, up. It’s not his executioner either. No it’s Skender, his throat open and gushing red just like the day he died. “Please,” she whispers, her voice broken and empty and so, so unlike her. She would accept death as his hands, accept anything at his hands. But his face is twisted into that same sneer that marred Adrian’s the night he took away her Mate. Icy cold claws at her skin before the pain blooms, red spilling out across the shadowed stones as she screams in silence.
Castalla awakens suddenly, a scream on her lips and the taste of blood in her mouth. The shadows press in tight, shielding her surroundings despite her enhanced sight. For a moment the nightmare seems real and she trashes amidst the shackling sheets, pure terror scrawled across her face. Chest heaving, heart pounding an unsteady rhythm she staggered from the bed to the window, throwing open the curtains and bathing in the pale like of the crescent moon. She breathed deeply as the pain and panic slowly subsided. ”He is dead, you got out. He is dead, you got out.” She repeated it under her breath several times before the silence of her room became too much to bear. At least on the outskirts of the city there was no one to hear her scream, no one to wonder why she spent so many sleepless nights running or training her in her little garden. But the loneliness could be suffocating sometimes.
The tavern was a bad idea, drinking was a bad idea. Yet Castalla found herself there nonetheless. But she needed the noise and the crowds. Anything was better than the silence and darkness of her townhouse which, on nights like these, reminded her too much of a dungeon cell. The crowds partied on, unaware of the demons within the Wolf’s heart as she sat at the bar with an empty gaze, considering whether or not to buy that drink.
Rated mature for mentions of blood, torture and possibly alcohol. Open to any!
