ATARAXIA • BELLAMY BLAKE

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Trigger warning: This chapter contains some descriptions of torture and abuse.

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I'd somehow managed to not fall asleep after everything last night. It had been hard to fight the tea's effects whenever it tried to lull me to sleep, but I'd powered through. I know that retaliation is due for trying to deceive him.

But despite being awake, I sit with my eyes closed. I've been doing this for about half an hour, ever since I felt him starting to sleep a bit lighter. My hope is that he'll leave me be if he thinks I'm still asleep. Am I aware of the fact that this is the exact stunt I'd pulled last night? That to avoid punishment I'm once again doing the thing that I'm being punished for? Absolutely. I never said I was rational.

But it's too late to change course anyway, because I hear him get up before coming to that realization. There's no backing out now. For many long minutes, maybe as much as an hour, it works. I hear him walk about the cave and do whatever it is that he does when he's not busy with me, and I stay alert.

My body tenses when I feel him step closer to my side of the cave. Then there's quiet. But I hear his breathing. Just like always, it's loud and it's heavy. He's watching me.

I try my best to keep calm. The second I let him get to me, my body is going to start twitching the way it always does when it knows it's supposed to keep still. My eyelids will start to involuntarily flutter, and he'll know. Again.

But I don't get enough time for things to get to that point before I feel his hand wrap around my foot and drag me across the floor. My eyes shoot open to see him looking furious.

I abruptly halt mid-air when my restraints keep him from dragging me any further, and fall back from the pull of resistance. He steps closer and pulls me up by my arms, fingers digging into the bruised skin, to sit me straighter. Then he gets out his small blade and starts his prayer.

I'm watching him wide-eyed. He's in such a rush. So full of anger. I can see the veins in his neck sticking out, looking like they're about ready to explode.

It's so early. Usually the birds have stopped their morning song when the Grounder starts my day, but he's rushing through it. Like he can't get to it fast enough.

Today he only lists one name after the prayer, and I know it's a horrible sign. Whoever that person is, they must have been very important to him.

The first cut is on my chest. My top barely covers anything, but he pulls it down further nonetheless to have more access.

I try my best not to scream. Not to give him the satisfaction. But there's no trace of tea in my system. My eyes water. Then they start to spill over. And I can't hold it in anymore.

I scream. So loud it rips through my own ears, but no pain matches what he causes me. He does this thing where he's not only cutting through my skin, but he pauses and wiggles the knife to dig it in a little further to make things even more unbearable for me.

I start to writhe to make it harder for him, but he punches my gut, and then my face until I stop. But the screaming continues. As does the torture.

His one hand is on my leg to hold me still while the other draws a long, excruciating cut all the way from my chest down to the opposite hip.