High Pointe

High Pointe - Episode 7

Sophia

I was in the middle of practicing my favorite routine when I finally heard it. Keys jangled on the other side of the door and the hinges creaked as it swung open.

I ignored him and continued to dance, the sweeping motions and familiar movements keeping me calm. This was something I knew how to do. This was what I was built for. And this was why I had been taken.

If he wanted a performance, I would give the performance of a lifetime.

Humming along to the music in my head, feeling far less afraid than when I'd woken, I spared a single wistful thought to my missing flats. The floor was slippery, after all, and buying comfortable split sole dance shoes on a regular basis was not cheap.

I performed a tour jeté, which brought me face to face with the figure standing in the shadows of the doorway. It was impossible to make out identifying features, but I could tell that he was taller than me, and stronger.

I danced on without hesitation, pushing myself to perform at my absolute best. Long, luxurious curves to my arms, my legs moving through quick and fluttering fouettés over and over again. I had better endurance than most dancers due to my obsessive repetition, and I made use of that now.

I could feel his eyes on me as I shifted my weight, raised my arms, and switched to pirouettes. Using him as my anchor point, I stared him down, daring him to come closer as I spun. Daring him to try anything at all.

He stayed in his shadows, arms crossed, simply watching.

After the third rotation I felt myself faltering and I moved on. The routine called for five turns, but without my flats and without anything to eat in who knew how long, I wouldn't risk it.

If this man knew anything about this routine I reasoned that my missed steps would upset him. I expected him to react in some way, to show something of why he'd brought me here. He remained stoic, though, and I danced on.

I counted the steps in my head, the memory of the music reaching a crescendo, and I knew there was no telling what he would do to me once this first dance was done. Determined to put my plan in action I faced him once more and pushed all my power into a grand jeté. My left arm lifted in front of me, my right arm and leg lifted behind, and I flew through the air.

The chain that I had managed to avoid getting tangled in until now trailed behind me, pulling me short of the mark. I came down on my right foot, but the landing was far from perfect. I wobbled and then caved, crying out as I tumbled towards the floor.

And, just as I'd expected, my captor rushed forward to cushion my fall. Strong hands wrapped around my shoulders, cold fingers gripping tight. I sagged into him, letting him think that he had caught me.

Letting him think that I was his.

For one brief heartbeat I wondered if I had it in me to do what I was planning. Then I caught sight of the open doorway behind him and a peek of light at the top of a long set of stairs and I knew I had no other choice. I had to try.

Grasping an excess portion of the chain with my left hand, I used my right to steady myself against his shoulder. He wore a tight black shirt, his muscles rippling beneath it, and it terrified me to think that this man was the one I would have to fight against to regain my freedom.

He was strong, steady, and detail oriented. I only had one advantage against him and it only had one chance of working. If I failed, I was certain I would never catch him off guard ever again.

With steady feet and an unsteady heartbeat I ducked under his left arm and looped behind him, wrapping that length of chain around his neck. Pulling tight on either side, I began to strangle him with the very chain he'd used to keep me locked up.

He let out a choked sound of surprise, and then a series of sounds that were just choking gasps for air. I let out a furious cry, viscous and triumphant, already wondering where he must have put his keys and praying that one of them would be the one to unlock me from this cuff once he was dead.

Little good it would do to kill my captor only to starve to death chained in his basement watching him slowly decompose.

He wasn't letting me escape without a fight, though. He struggled against me, trying to wedge his fingers between the chain and his neck. My grip was too tight to allow that, I strained my biceps and forearms harder, determined to keep him where I wanted him.

Slowly his hands gave up their scrambling attempts to free him, slowly dropping away. His shoulders sank, his will to fight diminishing with each strangled breath.

And then, before I even knew what was happening, he reached up and grasped my wrists tighter than I thought possible and ducked his head, dropping to his knees and rolling his shoulders as he threw all of his weight forward and down.

In the face of his incredible strength I went flying. It was nothing for him to launch me over his back and let me land with a breathless gasp at his feet. The air was knocked from my lungs, my chest burning as I looked up into the illuminated face of the man who had taken me.

Victor Cantrell stared back, and he was beyond furious.

I sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of him hovering over me with his brows furrowed and his lips pressed into a thin line. His hands still gripped my wrists, pressing them into the floor on either side of my head and making it impossible to move away.

"I warned you this training regiment would come at a great cost," he said, his voice low and gravelly. "That price has just gone up."

My heart raced as he scowled down at me, his face only a few inches from my own. I turned my head to escape the sight of his fury and I bit my lip as I watched our reflection in the mirror, trying to sort through the tangle of fear and need that filled me. A need so deeply ingrained that despite being chained, terrified, and locked away in an unfamiliar location for several hours, I found that I was more upset over displeasing a revered ballet master than I was about how he still had me held beneath his considerable weight.

A voice in the back of my mind screamed that I needed to fix my mistakes and prove to him that I was worth taking under his wing. Another part of me was more focused on his words, the way he seemed to think we'd spoken before. That I'd agreed to pay some unholy price for the chance to train under him.

"Have you changed your mind, then?" He asked, and I turned to look back up at him, completely lost beneath his appraising expression and judgemental tone. "I understand if you wish to remain an amateur. Few can handle the brutality of my methods, after all."

"No," I insisted, the word amateur burning through every part of me and overriding my common sense. "I can handle it. I just don't remember agreeing to being chained up and locked away. In fact, I don't recall asking you to train me at all."

"One does not ask to be selected for this program, Sophia," he told me. "I chose you for this, little gem. Once we have begun I will not stop until you are perfect or broken beyond repair. Do you understand?"