Page 110 of Golden Queen
He looked into my eyes and tilted his head a fraction before rolling his shoulders. He shuddered a little as though the relief of tension was somehow pleasurable. Then his lips peeled back from his teeth as he opened his mouth, stretching his jaws.
His few teeth in the front were a ruined, stained brown, but he had a row of sharp steel molars running around the inside of his mouth. I fleetingly wondered what he did with those sharp metal teeth, but then it looked like his entire face stretched, eyes squinting in a grimace that almost looked like a yawn, as his mouth gaped open even further.
And then he shuddered again and snapped his teeth shut.
My heart thundered in my chest, terror momentarily driving away the ruined state of my body. The necromancer had changed somehow. His face had grown grotesque. His skin seemed too loose, as though he had stretched it out of place when he opened his mouth. Even his eyelids drooped, red, angry looking flesh exposed beneath his eyes.
His features were very, very wrong.
He shuddered once more, sniffed loudly, and then his features returned to normal.
He turned and told the guard, "Make sure you hang her up so that she carries weight on her feet. The queen has a lesson to learn, and I am going to give her some time to learn it."
He left as I stood wide-eyed, trying to decide if I had been hallucinating.
The pain had returned by the time my hands were stretched over my head and I hung from the dank ceiling of the chamber.
The guard fumbled with the chains, standing on a low stool. When he had attached them so that I was standing fully on my feet, he shortened them—very slightly. It would not have been noticeable to anyone but me, but the small adjustment sent a wave of relief through me as it took just enough of the pressure off my mangled feet to let me breathe again.
As the guard looked at me, I saw something like desperation in his eyes. I knew that not everyone in this fucking dungeon was here because they wanted to be. This man, at least, had some sympathy for me.
I held the notion to myself, grasping for the one small bit of hope as he left the chamber and closed the door behind him.
It told me a little about how afraid they were of me when I heard the keys rattle in the lock even as I stood chained and broken in the middle of the room.
I didn’t know how long I spent in that chamber. All I knew was pain, rage, sorrow, and pure humiliation as I once again felt urine leaking down my legs.
I spent the time, by turns in a state of half consciousness, barely aware of my surroundings as I fought wave after wave of nausea and pain. And then I would come sharply awake as anger fueled me to plot and plan what I would do when the chains were removed.
I alternated between the hope that someone—that Io—would save me, and absolute, despairing certainty that no part of me would survive what they were preparing to do.
After what could have been hours, but felt like years, I fully lost consciousness.
When I woke, it was to an entirely new horror; total darkness and hands pressing me down onto a hard surface. I felt a warm, wet cloth run down my cheek and over my neck.
"Who are you? What are you doing?" I asked. I was shocked to find that I could speak.
A thin, raspy male voice answered. "I am Mordred, my dear. I am going to take good care of you. Do not fear." His attempt at soothing was anything but.
"What are you doing?" I demanded as my numb body was pushed this way and that. Had they rescued me? Were these healers striving to repair the damage that had been done?
"Shh," the man's voice said. I felt the cloth run down my cheek. "We are making you whole again. We are fixing what some careless man has torn asunder. And we are binding you to your new husband, so that you can serve him as a wife should."
"No," I groaned and then again, "No—"
"Shh." the man said.
I felt my legs being pushed apart, and terror crawled up my throat. Nausea and shame roiled through me. I surged upward, trying to fight back against the intrusion.
My arms jerked painfully at my sides, and I was pulled back down. I rapped the back of my head on what felt like a wooden table.
The cool, smooth surface under my back told me I was naked, though when I tried to look down, there was only darkness.
Not darkness. I was blind. I could see nothing, but I was sure the others could.
I struggled to blink, trying to return my vision. The effort made me realize my eyes were closed. I could not open them. I fought to reach my hands up, but realized again that I was chained down.
Not blind though—only bound by shadow magic so that I could not open my eyes.
