Valkyrie of Desire

43. Prisoner

Wed one to love forever

With two souls bound together

All roads may lead to a cliff

Confess or the end is death

—Goldstone Tenthorduke

The chain is thick enough to serve a boat anchor, but its weight is not why Hildr grimaces as she drags her shackled left ankle around her cell.

Predawn air blows through a barred window, stirring straw that covers cobblestones. It flutters the hem of her over-sized tunic. Thick gray wool, the clothing doubles as a prison uniform and a blanket, while the hay is both floor and bed.

Last night, Squadboss Halper had the grace to apologize for the chain. Once a minor mystic item enhanced to float on water, it had lost its place of power connection and degraded into a cursed item.

The shackle and lock are mundane. Her skin chaffs under its steel, but her lifeforce is not drained by it. The cursed chain does this. Even with the shackle as a barrier, the chain feeds on her like a sleep-thieving nightmare.

Heavy boot steps; Hildr halts, ear cocked at the door, and the steps pass by. Guards have been patrolling all night, never giving her more than minutes to attempt a stealthy escape.

She shakes her shackled ankle, wincing as the metal rubs her raw. The spirit siphoning is slow, as long as the actual cursed chain links do not touch her skin.

It is a cruel but clever use of a cursed item. The draining makes Hildr tired but not sleepy. It weakens her muscles while making her antsy. A few weeks of this would break the will of most without quite making them into a wraith. Hildr can last longer thanks to the remaining trickle of her demigoddess's power and the magic baby in her belly. Even while feeding some lifeforce to the fledgling djinn at home in her butt, she could last the rest of her pregnancy.

Of course, her baby boy would be harmed by long-term exposure. Would he be born with a torn spirit, halfway to becoming a wraith?

Hildr reaches between her legs and relaxes, catching her emerald-heart diamond as it falls from her vagina. It glows with the power of all its charges, fully recovered from the titaness wraith's draining yesterday. This treasure is her escape, the key that the city guardsmen missed when they stripped her under Missionary Herluma's direction.

Rumors of fire spurting from her womb and fears of other Red-aligned magic had made them rush their search; it also inspired the draining chain that binds her. She smirks. They use the cursed item well. How many other failing mystic treasures have been kept instead of buried?

Over the night, she tested the chain's appetite, pinching her nipples to trigger flames from her vagina. A curse from the void versus a malediction from her womb. Some warmth and flickering, but no sizzling and barely any skin bronzing. The effect is more like clicking a lantern's spark knob than a furnace's bellowing roar.

The Pales and their allies in the city have thought through all the parts of her containment. The bars on her window are thick, and her door is reinforced with iron. Even if she tapped her green-glowing gem for its brief triple-strength enhancement, this cell would hold her. Not that she could confirm this with the draining chain on. Any charge she used would be muted or canceled.

Hildr tosses her gem and catches it. Repeating this, she paces her room with clinks and rattles.

Sentencing will be in a week, but a special punishment begins at dawn. The city guardsman and part-time Pale who backhanded her last night will return to duty.