Unbroken

Thirty-Seven

Skye

Present

Running wasn’t the best idea.

I’m in a world of fucking pain.

I sort of did this to myself.

They throw me back in the shower, and this time one of them is in there, holding me against the wall as they spray me head to toe, rinsing off the blood from the cuts their beating gave me.

I scream angrily, tears pricking my eyes from the pain of it. The man’s gathered my hair in a tight bun, pulling so hard, I’m on my tiptoes.

“This one is disobedient,” the one cleaning me says, his cloak drenched. “She may not deserve to be taken to the pits.”

“It’s what the Merchant wants,” the other one says, still heaving for breath from chasing me. I smirk at the sound of pain in his tone. I kicked his balls so hard when he had launched himself at me, tackling me to the ground like I was a fucking football player. My head still feels jolted from that assault.

The man washing me drags his nails over my skin, scratching me deeply. I wince at the sting, biting my lips hard to stop the whimpers from slipping out. “Then I’ll mar this whore, make her so scarred, no one will want her. Then they’ll know to throw her in the Chamber.”

“She’s already covered in scars,” muses the other, sounding equally as pissed. “She is nothing compared to the others.”

“You hear that?” the man asks me as he roughly lathers the bar of soap across my skin. “You’reunworthy.”

Despite the pain and how fucked I really am, I let out a fake laugh, choosing to undermine their spooky words with a simple, “Okay.”

What-the-fuck-ever.

My fleeing wasn’t totally pointless. I managed to reach the end of a corridor and to a set of stairs. I’d been tackled when I climbed them, but I saw the light streaming on the level above.Sunlight. There were windows on the next floor up. The ground level. And these cloaked pricks weren’t guarding every corner I ran past, either. Their attention seemed buried in the cages and the “pits.”

After I am washed (though it was more like being submerged in cold water until I was moments away from hypothermia), I am steered out of the stall, shivering, teeth chattering. They roughly dry me with a towel and throw a piece of fabric at my face. The white mask comes close to me, inches from my face. “Get dressed,whore.”

The mesh fabric is flimsy and tiny. The cloaked prick keeps calling me a whore because he expects me to be one, I realize as I slip my wet feet into the garment. My entire body is visible behind the mesh, and it barely covers my ass.

My face is hot with rage and—I’m so devastated right now, I don’t even feel fear.

“Quicker,” he orders.

“I’m wet,” I hiss back. “It’s hard to put on—” My head snaps from his sudden slap.

“Shut up, whore, and do as you’re told.”

I clench my teeth, unable to hold back from whispering, “Fuck you.”

It does not go unheard, and the next slap is mixed with a hair pulling.

We plod out of the room, his hand in my hair instead of my arm because he’s had enough of my shit. He steers me down the corridor, to the sound of the brawling and the pained grunts. My stomach should whoosh, I should want to vomit—

But nothing.

I am just a bag of rage and damage.

The dark corridor we turn into is short, and there are two women dressed like me in a line, feet from the elongated shaped entrance. They’re not shaking, they’re not crying—

And he’s right. I’m nothing compared to them. Their hair is dry and combed. They’re clean, unmarred, and they stand there calmly, waiting.

What the fuck are they waiting for?