Footsteps shuffled through the dark hallway. I looked up to see a man in a fine black suit standing there, his face an impassive mask.“Remove your glamour and show your true form,” he demanded, glaring down at me through the spectacles sitting on the end of his nose.
“What bloody glamour?” I pulled my hair. Scratched my face. Dragged at my bloodstained dress. I was just me. A lady being held against her will.
The searing pain of the poisoned manacles fueled my rage.
He withdrew a ledger from beneath his arm and made a note. “What was your relationship to the victim?”
Thevictim? Robert wasn’t the bloody victim, I was! “I didn’t know the man.”
He stopped writing. “The witnesses claimed he was your fiancée.”
I glared at him.
“Why did you attack an innocent man, witch?”
“That monster tried to force himself on me,” I hissed, shoving to my feet.
The beginnings of a sneer played on the man’s thin lips. “I have two witnesses claiming otherwise.”
In that moment, I realized this was a fight I couldn’t win.
I could give this man all the proof in the world, but as long as he believed me to be a witch, it would fall on deaf ears.
I pointed at his chest, wishing Iwasa witch. That I could cast curses. “I’m glad he’s dead,” I spat. “I’m glad I killed him so he cannot prey on anyone else. I’d kill him again if I had the chance!”
The guard launched from his chair, grabbed a metal bucket, and threw a wave of water at the bars.
I screamed, falling to my knees.
Not water.Acid, melting the flesh from my bones.
Get it off.I had to get it off. The acid would eat me alive if I didn’tGET IT OFF!
“What did you do to it?” the haughty man sniffed, looking down his nose at me as if I were a worm.
“Water laced with witch hazel. Keeps the rowdy ones in line.” The guard kicked the bars. “You hear that, witch? If ye don’t shut yer gob, I’ll have ye dunked in a barrel of the shite and sealed inside.”
Witch hazel was a harmless herb. It grew aplenty near my father’s home. I’d gathered it for years, and it had never burned me like that.
What the hell was happening to me?
I stared at the black ceiling.
If I laid perfectly still, the pain was almost bearable. Something crawled along my arm. I didn’t have it in me to check what sort of creature it was.
The man and his ledger went away, leaving me with the guard and his candle. In the flickering light, I could see metal instruments hanging on the wall. Some I knew the names of: Forceps. Dagger. Sword. More chains.
Most were foreign to me. I didn’t need to know the names to understand how they were used.
Instruments of torture.
I’d barely survived the manacles and acid water. What hope did I have of surviving those?
Eventually, I dried off. My skin felt tight but there didn’t seem to be any lasting impact from the dousing.I must’ve dozed because the next thing I knew, the guard at the table had changed.
This one looked younger, with a scraggly brown beard and dark, sunken eyes. Like this line of work had sucked the life right out of him.
I managed to sit up. The shifting manacles burned anew. The man’s hand flew to the dagger on his belt.