The Infernal King | 1 ✓

CHAPTER VIII | AT THIS UNGODLY HOUR

       AT A VERY ungodly hour, with exhaustion weighing her eyelids down, Maarit was awoken for the second day in a row by knocking on her front door. Upon opening her eyes, she noted that she had broken into a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Hearing the loud knocks disturbing the tranquility of the night frightened her immensely.

In a torpid daze, she sat up in her bed. Her eyes gleamed with fright, nearly breaking through the darkness. As she threw her legs over the side of the bed and stepped onto the cold floor, her knees nearly gave out. Her heart had jumped from her chest to her throat. A sickening thought suddenly crossed her mind—that she would be mercilessly tortured and executed, just as the servant boy with the midnight skin had been.

The door continued to rattle with each insistent knock. Every night, Maarit locked the front door with a series of enchantments that only a witch or warlock would be able to surpass.

She was safe.

She had to be safe.

Then, she heard the clicking of a lock and her door was thrown open.

Maarit nearly screamed—her immediate response was to throw an attack spell at the intruder. She knew for certain that it was not Keion or Helios, for they would not have been able to get past her enchantments. The Valence brothers were the only two that were welcome in her house.

The precise moment the person at the door been thrown backwards from the force of Maarit's spell, two more came running at her. She had no time to react a second time; through the obscurity, the two figures threw her to the ground. Her head hit the hard stone floor, giving her transient vertigo. She writhed violently, kicking and punching anything within reach.

Her left arm was held down by a man with an iron grip and something was latched onto her wrist. She did not know what, but she did not want it to be there.

Over and over again, Maarit attempted to use a spell—any spell. She threw curse upon curse after them, but nothing was happening. When, at last, she came to the conclusion that something they had done to her was prohibiting her from using her powers, she put another tool to use—her voice.

With everything that she could muster—every fibre in her being, every vein beneath her skin, every bone in her body—she screamed. Amidst the moving shadows that blurred together as a result of her dizzy delirium, she silently pleaded for someone to find her before she died at the hands of these strangers. Her voice broke through the fog that rolled over the village of Fribois. The shrill, ear-splitting sound pierced the surroundings and everything they encompassed—the air, the cold, the darkness and the fog.

Her vocal chords were on fire and her entire throat was raw.

Still, she continued to shriek in the hope of being heard by anyone—until she could no longer.

As though her voice itself had been stolen from her, her screams were silenced immediately. She could still breathe, but could not force a single sound to escape her lips. If she had been able to make a noise, her body would have betrayed her by whimpering.

Exhaustion suddenly numbed her thrashing limbs. Maarit did not want to give up, but she physically could not move. She knew instantly that some form of sorcery was being used on her.

She felt herself being lifted from the ground. Her head was still fuzzy where it had struck the floor. A small amount of blood dripping from the cut at the back of her head stained the stone floor.

Her heart rate had slowed due to whatever magic that had been performed on her, but her mind still worked just as frantically. Through heavy-lidded eyes, Maarit could just barely make out a lanky male figure as she held the front door open. As she was dragged along by two men, Maarit desperately wanted to ask where they were taking her; but she still could not find her voice.