Chapter 21

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After cut number twenty or so, Clarke had lost count, but Emerson hadn't stopped cutting into her skin over and over again.

Clarke refused to scream or beg for the Maunon to stop, but she couldn't help but let out pained whimpers whenever Emerson dug in extra deep while carving into her pale skin. Skin that was now red and bloodstained, just like the front of her shirt as well as her pants.

Emerson had meticulously given her long, deep cuts on all of her exposed skin, which included both of her arms, her chest, her sides, and her stomach. He had avoided her neck and face, as he had promised, but he had also given her several cuts on her thighs, cutting all the way through her pants rather than bothering to remove any fabric first.

It seemed like he had purposefully tried to cover as much of her body as possible without hitting the same spot more than once.

He had, however, cut her right on top of her burn, splitting open the blisters that had formed, almost making Clarke pass out from the pain.

Clarke tried to make eye contact with several of her own treacherous people, including Pike, in hopes of wordlessly convincing any of them to stop the torture, but while some of them had maintained eye contact with her without showing any emotion, the few that seemed disturbed by what was happening just looked down at their own shoes rather than intervening.

Clarke made eye contact with Emerson a few times, but there was nothing but rage and a maniacal sort of craze in his eyes. And his face just looked determined. He wasn't going to stop, even if she did give in and begged. The evil smirk that appeared on his face every time the sharp blade broke her skin told Clarke all she needed to know there.

Now, Clarke could feel herself getting woozy. It was getting difficult to keep her head up and to stand upright holding her own weight. And if Emerson had noticed this, he certainly didn't let it show , nor did he care. But Nia must have also noticed, because her shrill voice sounded over the open field, "Em pleni, Maunon. That was a great first session, you got fifty-five cuts in, but we would not want her to lose consciousness, would we? We want her to feel every single one of them, so let's take a break."

Emerson lifts the knife to Clarke's stomach once more, but after a looking at Nia he decides better of it and drops his arm, taking a step back with a sharp nod of his head.

Clarke would have breathed a sigh of relief if it weren't for the fact that she knew another three hundredsomething cuts were coming her way sometime soon.

The same two guards that had brought her out of her prison tent released her hands, which were still tied together, but in front of her now. The simple movement of lowering her arms after being up for so long made her ribs and shoulder throb in pain and pulled on the skin of the fresh cuts, most of which were still actively bleeding.

Next, her feet are untied before her neck collar is detached from the pole. She roughly gets pulled back into her tent where her collar gets reattached to the short chain after she is pushed to the ground with a sadistic laugh from the female guard.

It doesn't take long for Clarke to start shivering violently once she is alone in her tent again. Out there, the adrenaline had made her forget about the biting cold, but now that the adrenaline had worn off and she was back in her tent without her cloak, and her shirt ripped and wet with blood, she could feel it full force.

Clarke curls up in a small ball, trying to maintain the last of her body heat, but to no avail. She can feel the cold slowly seeping into the deepest parts of her until even her bones are cold all the while the cuts and the burn on her body feel like they are on fire.

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