The Rider's Truth.

Queen's scrawl.

Unedited. 

Chapter Eleven - Queen's scrawl. 

It always felt like a stranger was greeting me in the morning.

The young woman who stared back tiredly in the mirror just didn't seem like me. Thin, papery skin that was stretched taunt with bruises that were still stained and sun starved. I had gotten into a routine of tracing the marks I could reach, measuring how fast they were fading and trying to remember how I had got them.

Every time, I showered and felt the water sluice down my body, I thought of the first time I had seen the cells. They had used water to wake me up and I had jerked awake, grumpy and stiff; I had thought Jamie had done it as a joke only it wasn't the bedroom walls that I saw. It was rough, dark stone with shadows clinging to where the torchlight couldn't reach.

The first time I felt pain in the darkness I had cried. Like all the others stuck in that hell-hole. Broken and bruised, I thought of those who would come and rescue me. Back then, there was nothing worse than the sear of pain along my ribs, or the blood coating my tongue. No worse feeling than the sound of people screaming and bony hands grasping at my desperately as I was hauled passed the cattle-pen cells.

But the pain always grew worse. The darkness began to speak in turn of Nethore's absence and its poison leached out through the feeble jaw of a skull. It grew harsher internally, manifesting in darkened thoughts and bruises along my consciousness. Even now where I could see the dawn every morning, my mind still cowered in that dark corner just waiting until my body followed aswell.

I had suffered yet another night of broken sleep and I could see it in the heavy bags under my eyes. Chopped, white-blond hair that I just could not be bothered with hung limply to the nape of my neck, slicked back with water so I wouldn't have to deal with it yet.

I had made myself keep up the end of Abner's deal, losing myself in an old passion. Before I had drawn inspiration from the beautiful things that were so easy to find in Valaxia. Now, I drew the curl of a demon's claw or the faces peering down from the viewing area of the pit.  How I remembered the seven whipping posts to look like. 

Drawing them made me feel better, but it made me see them again. Made me feel the fear on my tongue and remember how my bare heels had dug into the ground. The word 'no' repeated on a loop, even when my wrists were shackled and my body subjected to the whim of whoever was on duty that day. 

So, I kept drawing, but kept them secret from everybody.

Some nights, Nethore woke when my nightmares began. He was beginning to see and to understand what had happened and his anger only deepened my guilt. I needed to be stronger.

For the both of us.

I was slowly mastering a way to stop them from reaching him and to stifle the bond when I woke shaking and sweating. I didn't scream when I woke up, my body locked in terror and my jaw wired shut instead.

Other nights when sleep eluded me, I ended up walking to the school to sit in the cold hallways and listen to the aching sounds of the violin. It was beautiful and haunting in equal measure. I felt like Zephyr knew I was there, but he said nothing about it to me.

Sentinel Caoimhe began training with me, and she didn't lie when she said she would not go easy on me. There was no maliciousness to her strikes like there had been with the demons, but I could tell that she was a woman who was used to fighting for her life. She moved quickly and every move was smart.

She trained early with me so I wouldn't have to be watched by the other and never commented on the dark circles under my eyes, or the boniness to my body. She came in like a hurricane, her hair wild from literally rolling out of the bed and took a swig of what I suspected was whiskey before grunting a 'good morning' at me.