High School Diaries (A Throne of Glass Fanfiction)

Chapter 52

Which one would you chose?^^^

*Trigger warning: Violence, implied non-consent*

Everything around her was on fire.

She was standing in a clearing, forest all around her. The mighty trees were little more than charred husks, ash thick as snow raining down. Embers drifted on the wind like fireflies while she scanned all around her, no way out of the fire. So much flame, the heat smothering, the air itself singing her lungs.

You did this you did this you did this.

The crack of dying trees groaned the words, cried them. The world was bathed in fire. Fire, not darkness. Motion between the trees snared her attention.

A faceless silhouette emerged from the fire, hands fumbling in agony as that person looked around, trying to escape the simmering hearth around him. The edges of the familiar blonde hair were coated in smoke, his eyes frantic with mindless fear. The turquoise eyes met hers, mirror to her own.

The lips parted, forming the familiar calling of her name. She reached a hand toward him, invisible and inconsequential, trying to reach him when the fire behind him consumed and the name of her cousin remained a burn in her throat,

The scene repeated, this time it was Rowan. Then Evangeline. Elide. Lysandra. Dorian. Chaol. Sam. Kaltain.

Such horrible, relentless screams. As if the heart of the world were being shredded.

Then it all went black. No fire. Everything around her consumed with darkness, heavy footsteps scraping against the floor, growing louder. She tried to turn, realizing her hands were tied above her, body outstretched like a fish.

The footsteps grew closer, whistling audible now.

She knew that whistle, that taunting melody that somehow haunted her in her every nightmare. The footsteps came to halt behind her, the brandishing sound sending shivers down her spine, leaving a trail of goosebumps all over her bloody body.

"Hello, Aelin. You still won't confess you killed Sam?"

The shake of her head was involuntary, and the words 'I didn't do it', barely left her mouth when the whip came down on her back.

***

She woke up and realized not all of that was a dream.

The whip came down on her again, the distant sounds of carnal pleasure of a woman echoing with Aelin's own sounds of agony. The person standing behind her was not the officer, but the ugly sneer on a handsome face, bathing in the happiness when whimpers of pain left her mouth, such a juxtaposition to the other woman here.

"I thought it would take a little more to break you. A whip? That is all it takes to tame the most famous assassin of Erilea? I have to say I am utterly disappointed."

She just spat out some blood on the floor, hands and body limp on being hung by chains for so long. There were piles of boxes surrounding her and she would think they were in a godown if not for the soft swaying of the floor she was standing on.

Cairn's lip curled when she looked up at him with an infuriating smirk of hers, whip raised again when there was the sound of a door being thrown open, followed by a slow drag of feet. Cairn left her, going beyond the maze of the boxes when Aelin opened her swollen eye, turning to look at the people hanging next to her.

Gavriel and Connall were both unconscious, heads hanging low with the weight of gravity, exhaustion or guilt, she didn't know. The spot where the syringe pierced their necks were barely visible but the beating they took bloomed on their skins with spots of red to purplish blue.