Freedom's Price

Something Wicked

WAKE UP. 

Cold chains rub at my wrists. Skin sore, blistered; knees, rubbed red and bloody, but these are the least of my worries.

THERE.

The need. Straight from fingertips, crashing;  a wild-storm engulfing forests and entire cultures and I scream as it crosses the atlas of my body, but no sound emerges.

Have I lost my hearing? 

Where am I?

There's nothing but stone and metal figures of two soldiers emblazoned with a symbol I don't know, the stench of copper thick when I lurch forward, trapped. I lay, chest heaving and body weak on the ground until the feeling passes and my muscles can relax again.

What is it? What's happening to me?

I try to ask, but I can't speak. I can hardly breathe, my throat so violently dry.

My head pounds, beating like drums.

The soldiers simply watch.

A door opens. Two women enter; one firm and stiff, raven-haired with blades of hair across her pale face. 

The pattern across her armour; I've seen it before, but I can't think...

She unsheathes her sword with a shimmering slice and places it beneath my chin, guides me to my knees. 'Explain yourself!' A Heavy Nevarran accent spills through thin, stern lips, and I notice the scar that runs across her cheek.

I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes; it can't, my throat is thick, knives slicing down each side and all I want to ask for is water, please, but she sneers and presses the tip of the blade further into my throat. I feel it prick my skin, the warm spill of blood dribbling down.

Seeming to take my non-answer as a sign of defiance, she pulls her blade back. 'The Divine is dead. The conclave... destroyed. Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now.'

I gasp and flinch, a dry cough heaving blood up and splattering across the stone. 'I– can't,' I manage, and hope it's enough.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Is what I want to scream. Whatever you think I did, you're wrong!

But, as ever, I am silent, and weak.

Kitsuma. Kitsuma is probably dead. And here I am, staring at my pooling blood at the edge of a sword for a cause I do not recognise and... the Divine?

Dead?

I failed you, Kit.

Stefan and Darcy were right about me. 

Tears fall from my face and mingle with crimson blood.

'Cassandra,' a soft voice murmurs behind; the rogue with eyes of cold forest mornings and hair the fire that scorches it. 

THERE.

Shit, shit, not again. I can't take it–

I yelp out, screaming as it tears through me. Not pain, exactly. But want. Desperate, and unending. 'Help- me!' I cry.

As the pain settles, Cassandra – the woman before me, I assume, commands her soldiers. 'Lift her.'

'No,' I try, but it's barely a noise. Lips crack as I'm wretched to my feet and the chains around my ankles are loosened. I could run.

But I can't.

I flop pitifully into the arms of my captors and try to stay awake. Cassandra pulls open the door to my prison, blinding white light searing through my eyes as the world opens up; a blanket of snow across a mountain and– there.