Tharo obviously hurts a lot of people generally but she probably has several special Whumpees. Gwimwyl of course (a toy- she’s even self-repairing!), and a pet, and a maid, and a guard/knight/living weapon. And of course Pesar gets access to them all too, Tharo is a very generous lover! Probably all fairies but the pet might be an unlucky young human she thought was cute.
the Gwimwyl scenes all in one place with updates names and pronouns
content notice for captivity, torture, death, general violence, suicidality, and gore, this is the most violent thing I have, more violent and bloody than the Guodei stuff even, etcetera
also not super well-written and some parts feel cringy, sorry
@cepheusgalaxy with two bonus scenes!
Scene 1
A sudden noise.
A knife driving into her arm as she tried to protect Gwimwyl. Protect Gwimwyl, she had to-
A knife at her throat, a hand pulling her head up by the hair and a voice whispering into her ear, “Move and you’re dead.”
Gwimwyl, fighting with everything she had… until she saw the blade touching Ffwyn’s throat and froze.
Those were the things Ffwyn remembered.
Ffwyn screamed when they put the solid iron manacles on her bare wrists and ankles. It burned. It was the worst pain she’d ever felt, though that would soon change.
She screamed again when they put them on Gwimwyl. Gwimwyl’s mouth was contorted in pain, but she managed to look defiant.
Ffwyn and Gwimwyl were dragged by the hair to the throne room.
They were forced to their knees before Tharo.
Ffwyn had never seen her face before, and it surprised her how young she looked despite being at least as old as Ffwyn’s mother. She could have been Ffwyn’s age.
Ffwyn’s forehead was forced down against the floor.
She heard Gwimwyl continue fighting now that the knife at Ffwyn’s throat was gone, biting any flesh she could get at with her razor-sharp teeth.
Gwimwyl would do anything she could to avoid being forced to grovel like that in front of the woman who had tortured and killed her family.
Ffwyn heard a crack and felt pain spreading across her forehead that told her Gwimwyl’s head had been slammed down.
Gwimwyl hissed like an angry cat.
Ffwyn’s head was finally released. Gwimwyl’s wasn’t.
Tharo walked over and stood in front of them, looking down at them like they were something unpleasant she had stepped in.
“Ffwyn,” she signed. “I seem to recall you telling me you were afraid. Clearly, you were not afraid enough, and I won’t have to wait until you turn nineteen to break you. And I take it this is your Gwimwyl?”
Neither of them said anything, but that was enough for Tharo to know she was right.
Tharo grabbed Ffwyn’s wing. She was not gentle this time. Her nails dug into Ffwyn’s flesh, drawing blood.
She tightened her fist and twisted Ffwyn’s wing until it felt like it would tear away from her back.
Ffwyn screamed again.
Gwimwyl growled.
“If you cross me again, I will rip off both your wings,” said Tharo.
She crossed to Gwimwyl. “Let her up.”
Gwimwyl’s head was released, and she raised it, snarling, someone else’s blood dripping from her mouth.
Tharo snapped each of her fingers, one by one, bending them until they broke.
Gwimwyl whimpered. Ffwyn could see her blinking back tears.
She nearly screamed again.
She had never hated anyone more.
Tharo kicked Gwimwyl in the chest, causing her to choke and gasp. “You should have shown more deference.” Her knee connected with Gwimwyl’s jaw.
Ffwyn wanted to kill her.
This was when she began his hit list, with Tharo’s name as the first.
It took only a second’s thought to decide that the Rāmian police officer who had shot Halek and the prison guards who had hurt him all deserved a spot on that list too.
Gwimwyl’s sharp teeth had sliced open her own lip when she’d been hit. Now her mouth was stained with her own blood, not just that of her captors.
“You look so much like your brother,” signed Tharo. “Shall I tell you how much he screamed? How much fun it was to make him scream and beg for it to end? Or your parents?”
Gwimwyl paled, her bloody face nearly white with rage. And fear. Ffwyn could see the fear she tried to hide. “They’re better off dead than as your prisoners,” she said, clearly forcing the spoken words out. Then she spat pink on Tharo’s feet.
“You’ll pay for that insult,” signed Tharo. “Or rather, Ffwyn will pay for that insult.”
She hit Ffwyn in the face, over and over.
Ffwyn’s nose broke.
Blood filled her mouth.
“Stop!” yelled Gwimwyl. “Stop hurting her! Stop! Leave her alone!”
Tharo punched Ffwyn in the eye.
Then again in the mouth.
Ffwyn let her mouth open to let out the blood, and it trickled down her chin.
“Please,” whispered Gwimwyl.
Ffwyn knew how much that one word cost her.
She should have kept her mouth closed and swallowed it. Hidden it from Gwimwyl. She could take this if it meant sparing Gwimwyl.
Tharo dragged her nails down Ffwym’s face, met Gwimwyl’s eyes, and said “No.”
Blood ran into Ffwyn’s swollen eye.
“Please,” Gwimwyl said again, her voice strangled.
Tharo twisted Ffwyn’s ear, her nails breaking skin where it joined to her skull, slow enough that Ffwyn realized Tharo was using Ffwyn to make Gwimwyl beg.
She couldn’t let Tharo win. She had to keep silent. Keep her face stone. Not let Gwimwyl see the pain.
Tharo hit Ffwyn’s broken nose again.
Ffwyn couldn’t stop the whimper that escaped her.
“Please. I beg of you, Your Majesty,” said Gwimwyl, every word containing a world of pain. She bowed her head in submission. “I’ll do anything, you can do anything to me, but please stop hurting Ffwyn. M-My queen.”
Tharo hit Ffwyn once more, then finally stopped. She knew what pleading had cost Gwimwyl, too.
Ffwyn was breaking. Gwimwyl…
“Whose idea was it to blow up my fortress?” asked Tharo.
Ffwyn was all set to tell the truth. It had been Ffwynn’s idea, Ffwyn who had done the majority of the planning. It was Ffwyn’s fault.
Gwimwyl should go free.
Then Gwimwyl spoke up, spoke the one word that destroyed their lives, defiance flashing in her eyes. “Mine.”
Gwimwyl’s beautiful fire was going to get her killed.
“And how much was Ffwyn a part of it?” asked Tharo.
“She wasn’t,” said Gwimwyl. “She was trying to talk me out of it the entire time. It was all me.”
“Hmm,” said Tharo.
As they were held still, she brought a knife down and sliced deeply into first Gwimwyl’s shoulder and then Ffwyn’s. Three times each, once for every room she would have to rebuild, she said.
Gwimwyl kept her chin up the whole time, unyielding and angry.
Ffwyn’s chains were bolted to the floor.
Ffwyn watched numbly as Tharo dragged a struggling, snapping Gwimwyl by the wings to a raised dias and unchained her wrists from each other.
Gwimwyl took that opportunity to punch Tharo in the stomach and try to run, but Tharo was stronger and bigger than Gwimwyl.
Two others came forward and held Gwimwyl in place, one by her torso and arms and the other by her wings, as Tharo chained each of Gwimwyl’s wrists to a separate wall and tightened the chains until Ffwyn was sure Gwimwyl’s arms would be ripped out of their sockets.
Gwimwyl’s face was white again, her eyes closed and her lips a thin line. Her wings, previously flying everywhere along with the rest of her limbs, were limp against her back.
Her escape attempt had failed, and she was resigned to her fate.
“No,” Ffwyn whispered. Gwimwyl couldn’t be hurt- She couldn’t let Tharo hurt Gwimwyl more-
“No!” she yelled.
Tharo cut Gwimwyl’s shirt off her body, not caring if she cut through skin or not.
“WYLA!” Ffwyn screamed.
From then on, all Ffwyn remembered was pain, and blood, and screams- her own; Gwimwyl never once made any noise indicating pain, her thin lips staying firmly pressed together, so Ffwyn knew Gwimwyl must have gone deep into her memory palace- and the horror of having to watch Gwimwyl tortured and not being able to stop it.
“I’ll kill you!” screamed Ffwyn, over and over, trying to get to Gwimwyl, slamming her burning wrists against the chains, as Gwimwyl’s blood- so much blood, more blood than Gwimwyl should even have in her body, because Gwimwyl kept healing only to be split open again and again- pooled on the ground and trickled towards her. “I’ll kill you all!” Tharo had stepped away after the first several blows, and someone else had taken over, and then someone else, and someone else and someone else and someone else, on and on, and Ffwyn would kill them all, everyone who had taken a whip to Gwimwyl, everyone who had so much as touched her.
An image would stay in her mind forever.
Gwimwyl, stripped to the waist, bloody all over and limp, her wounds already closing up, dangling unconscious from the chains around her wrists, her feet- knocked out from under her- barely touching the bloodied ground and no longer holding her up.
At some point Ffwyn had crumpled completely to the floor. She didn’t know when.
They may or may not have broken Gwimwyl, but they’d broken her.
Tharo- she was shorter than Fen, thinner than her mother, similar in size to Cellen but so much more terrifying- strode over to Ffwyn. She stepped very deliberately onto Ffwyn’s wing and stood there, pinning her to the floor.
“Your mother is Lyseir, correct?” She spoke out loud so Ffwyn heard her.
“Yes,” Ffwyn whispered, too devastated to lie.
“I have been convinced to let you go,” she said.
Ffwyn looked up. She hardly dared hope-
“But only you,” continued Tharo. “I have been convinced that because you are soul-bonded, it will hurt you more to be separated. It will hurt you when Gwimwyl is imprisoned and hurting and you cannot be with her. It will hurt Lyseir to watch you in pain from wounds you don’t even have and to know why and that it’s ten times worse for Gwimwyl.”
Ffwyn hated the sound of Gwimwyl’s name in Yorath’s mouth. And her mother- what did she have to do with it? Had she known Lyseir?
“I will come for her,” said Ffwyn, her voice hardly more than a whisper. It was hard to breathe with Tharo standing on her. “I swear on Brân’s name and mine that I will come for her, and you will all regret ever touching her.”
Tharo’s only response was to grind her heels into Ffwyn’s wings and press a pointed bar of iron into the small of her back, carving in her symbol.
Ffwyn whimpered. She had no screams left in her.
She was unchained.
She threw herself towards Gwimwyl. Gwimwyl, her Wyla, chained and bleeding and blessedly no longer conscious to feel the pain, Gwimwyl, who was barely alive, who needed her-
Someone grabbed her around the neck and threw her out the door.
Ffwyn screamed- it turned out she did have some left- and pounded on the door until her hands could no longer take it. Until her nails and, eventually, her fingers themselves, broke. Until her hands were bloody and burned from the iron door.
She collapsed to the ground in front of it, sobbing.
The fortress disappeared.
Ffwyn remained curled on the ground, sobbing Gwimwyl’s name.
No.
This could not be how their story ended.
No.
Ffwyn would not let this be how their story ended.
***
What Gwimwyl remembered most was Ffwyn’s wild grin when the first explosive went off. She’d whooped and jumped in the air and lifted Gwimwyl off the ground, as if she weighed nothing at all, and spun her around. She’d said that they’d won, they’d maybe even killed Tharo and won the war.
Gwimwyl let the rest fade away, with only scars to prove it had ever happened.
She held on to Ffwyn’s utter joy.
She held on to the memories of Ffwyn, before everything went wrong.
Ffwyn’s memory kept her alive for the two longest and most painful years of her life.
Scene 2
Everything burned when Gwimwyl woke up.
Ffwyn.
She bolted to her feet- or tried to. She properly understood what had happened when she tripped on the shackles around her ankles and wrenched her shoulders trying to move her arms.
They’d been caught. They’d been caught and she’d tried to fight but Ffwyn- she couldn’t let them hurt Ffwyn, so she’d let them hurt her instead.
Let them wasn’t true, not really, she hadn’t let Tharo do anything, but it had been done and if she could believe it was in service of protecting Ffwyn, then she could accept what had been done to her.
What would continue to be done to her.
Until almost the very end, she’d still thought that maybe they could get out of this, surely they would get out of this, they would never let Tharo get her hands on each other, they could keep the promise they’d made so long ago to protect one another.
But they hadn’t gotten out of it. And now she was here, in a small, dark cell, in a cell probably very much like the ones her family had died in, a cell others had probably died in, chained to the wall by her neck so she couldn’t even reach the locked door.
If she hadn’t gotten away, maybe Ffwyn had. Maybe at least Ffwyn was safe. If Ffwyn was safe then Gwimwyl could endure anything until Ffwyn came for her, because Ffwyn would come for her, they would never abandon each other no matter how bad it got.
She was so cold. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had last had food or water, before all this, certainly, and she was so cold and so hungry and so thirsty.
She could still feel the burning from the irons, but it was dulling as the skin in contact with it opened up and scarred over again and again until thick bands of numb scar tissue protected her.
It was so dark. She had no concept of how long she had been here anymore.
She dug sharp teeth into her bottom lip at one point to remind herself she was still alive, still real.
After a long time, or maybe no time at all, she started singing under his breath, just to hear something. She’d never been a good singer, that was always Ffwyn, and the dehydration made it worse, but it was something.
“Quiet,” snapped a guard outside of her (dim) field of vision.
Gwimwyl narrowed her eyes and sang louder, pushing past the discomfort of using her mouth-voice. If this was all she had, she would sing until her throat bled, and she would keep singing even then because her throat would heal itself as she went.
The guard came in and slammed her head against the wall, and there was nothing more.
She had told herself at first that it was good to be scared, because it meant she understood what lay in her future, and scared meant prepared.
She wasn’t sure she was even scared anymore. There was just… nothing.
She was beginning to question if she was still alive, if this was real.
When Tharo finally came, after what could have been days or weeks or only hours, it turned out that ‘scared’ did not in fact mean ‘prepared.’ How could it? All she knew of Tharo was violence- her blood family’s death, Ffwyn’s whimper and battered face, pain striking-
Her mind veered away from that. She knew what Tharo had done to her, but she couldn’t think about that. Not yet. If she thought about that she would stop functioning in Tharo’s presence, and she couldn’t afford that.
She struggled to her feet when she heard the footsteps coming towards her cell. Tharo was much taller than her, nearly as tall as Ffwyn, but Gwimwyl would still meet her on her feet.
“Where’s Ffwyn?” Gwimwyl demanded as soon as Tharo was in front of her.
Tharo frowned and held her fire- blazing so bright to Gwimwyl’s now dark-accustomed eyes, not at all gentle like Ffwyn’s- higher. “Kneel before your High Queen.”
“Where’s Ffwyn?” Gwimwyl repeated frantically. Ffwyn was alive, she could tell that much, but the iron dulled her sensitivity to the soul-bond and alive told her almost nothing.
Tharo pushed her flaming hand against Gwimwyl’s bare chest, and Gwimwyl screamed.
She couldn’t think she couldn’t breathe she could smell her own burning flesh there was nothing nothing nothing except the blazing pain on her chest-
Tharo kicked Gwimwyl’s knees out from under her, and Gwimwyl hit the ground and curled up over her knees and around the burning splotch of agony.
“That’s better,” said Tharo, who at some point must have taken her hand off of Gwimwyl but it still hurt it hurt it hurt and she wanted to go home-
She gritted her teeth. It’s just a body and it will heal. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a body and it will heal soon. “Where. Is. Ffwyn.”
“Manners, my Gwimwyl,” Tharo said.
Bile rose in her throat. My Gwimwyl. She did not belong to Tharo.
“Where is Ffwyn. Please.” She needed to know where Ffwyn was. She needed to know if Ffwyn was safe.
“In a cell far away from yours, shivering in the dark just like you, and you will feel every ounce of each other’s pain but will never, ever see each other again, unless I decide to make you watch when I kill her.”
Gwimwyl wasn’t sure what her visible reaction to that was, but Tharo laughed at it.
No no no no no. Ffwyn couldn’t be here, Ffwyn had to be safe, Ffwyn wouldn’t survive this, Gwimwyl’s magic through the soul-bond only gave her slightly faster and better healing than typical-
Tharo kicked the burn on Gwimwyl’s chest, and Gwimwyl just barely swallowed a second scream. “I let her go. I will hurt you and she will scream and Lyseir will know exactly what she has brought down on her family and all of you will be helpless to change any of this. And you still will never see her or any of your family or the light of the sun ever again.”
Ffwyn was safe. Ffwyn was safe and that was all that mattered. Ffwyn would come for her soon, and she could hold on until then. She could endure for Ffwyn.
“Look at that,” said Tharo, sounding mildly interested, forcing open Gwimwyl’s curled form with her boot. “Halfway healed already. Let’s see how far we can push that, shall we, my Gwimwyl?”
Gwimwyl bit Tharo’s leg.
Scene 3
She was weakening.
This would be her only chance.
She’d behaved well for over a month, if she was counting correctly. If she behaved well, they fed her more (or starved her less), which meant she was stronger (not quite so weak), which meant she had a better shot at killing Tharo.
She hadn’t been strong enough last time. She had known she would fail if she tried, so she had made one of the hardest decisions of her life and she hadn’t resisted. Good behaviour. The first several times Tharo had come, Gwimwyl had met her standing up with her feet planted in the middle of her cell, refusing to kneel of her own volition and making Tharo fight to force her down, refusing to speak out loud and let Tharo win (except the very first time to demand to know Ffwyn’s fate). Last time, she’d forced herself to kneel as soon as she’d heard Tharo coming, and she had made herself speak. The first several times, she’d fought to protect herself. Last time, she’d been limp and compliant, and it had very nearly killed her to do that. It had meant food wasn’t withheld from her as a punishment. She had even gotten two small meals one day as a reward.
It had to be worth it.
She was stronger now.
She couldn’t take it a single time more.
She was on her knees again as Tharo entered her cell, but her toes were pressed against the floor, ready to spring up as soon as she had the chance.
She might not be able to escape, but she would kill Tharo, even if she were executed for it. They’d probably have to cut off her head to kill her, which meant they’d have to take off the collar, which might even give her an opening to run.
“My Gwimwyl,” said Tharo.
Gwimwyl’s stomach turned. “My queen,” she whispered, her voice raspy. She swallowed down bile.
It had to be worth it. Calling Tharo that, forcing herself to speak out loud because her wrists were chained and she couldn’t sign instead of staying silent…
It was a performance. She just had to think of it like she was acting out a play with Aeri and Ffwyn and Cellen like when they’d been younger.
Ffwyn and Aeri and Cellen…
She wrenched her thoughts back. She couldn’t afford to get distracted.
A performance.
“It’s good to see you’ve learned.”
Gwimwyl bowed her head, running her tongue lightly over her sharp teeth.
It would taste of blood and skin, but she’d tasted blood before. She’d tasted other people’s blood before, Tharo’s blood, even.
She would enjoy tasting Tharo’s lifeblood.
She let her arms go limp behind her.
As soon as Tharo got close enough to touch her, she would make her move.
There would be tendons. She didn’t know if her teeth could cut through them.
Tharo didn’t come close enough yet. She walked around Gwimwyl, stopping behind him.
She stepped closer.
Soon.
This was a bad position for it, but soon.
Tharo unlocked the manacle around Gwimwyl’s left wrist and eased it off.
Oh, this was good. This was better than she’d anticipated. She would have to move fast, while her hands were still free.
She let her hands drop to her sides.
Soon.
Tharo yanked down on the iron zipper at the back of her shirt. It let the shirt come on and off without unchaining her neck, and it burned a line into Gwimwyl’s skin.
Cold air hit her bare back, and she shivered involuntarily.
Tharo came back around in front of her, peeling off the shirt as she went.
The shirt was off.
She had to move now, before Tharo put the cuff back on her wrist.
Now.
She sprang up, opening her mouth wide and wrapping her hands around Tharo’s neck.
Her teeth were just touching Tharo’s throat when she slammed to a halt against her collar.
Fuck.
She had made sure to give herself enough space in the chain to reach her target, but Tharo must have shortened the chain while behind her.
Tharo’s hand wrapped around Gwimwyl’s wrist, burning.
Gwimwyl gritted her teeth. She might not be able to rip out Tharo’s throat, but she could still strangle her. She could still kill her.
Tharo’s other hand drove a knife into Gwimwyl’s side.
Gwimwyl stumbled back, gasping, instinctually letting go to press against her wound.
“You’re a bad liar, Gwimwyl,” said Tharo. She threw another knife, lodging it just above Gwimwyl’s knee.
No, no, no, no…
Gwimwyl fell.
Tharo had known it was coming.
All of her planning, all of her preparation, all of her faking, her compliance, had all been for nothing.
It had all been for nothing.
“I know you.”
“You don’t know me,” gasped Gwimwyl. You’ll never know me.
“I know you wouldn’t suddenly give up completely like you did last time without an ulterior motive,” said Tharo. “I know you’re the type I have to break slowly. For several months you fought against me at every single moment. You refused to kneel or speak. You bit and struggled and scratched and spat. You knocked my tools out of my hands. Nothing motivated you to even stay still- not food, not water, not even an offer to let you bathe and clean your own filth off of you or the promise that I would go easier on you. Then suddenly you’re on your knees before you even see me and you’re calling me ‘my queen’ in the most strained voice I’ve ever heard and you’re not only not fighting, but are actively doing what I tell you to and deliberately making it easier for me to hurt you? That wasn’t like you. I knew you were planning something. I guessed it was to kill me, because naturally that’s what you desperately want to do.”
Gwimwyl gasped in air again. The blades in her body kept her from healing (if she didn’t heal, she’d get infected. Would the infection kill her? She doubted it).
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist if I freed your hands,” said Tharo. “So. Now that you have that out of your system.”
Gwimwyl shuddered.
No, no, no…
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go…
Tharo plucked the knife out of Gwimwyl’s abdomen.
Blood spilled across Gwimwyl’s bare blue skin.
Tharo grabbed Gwimwyl’s wrist, overpowering her resistance easily, and put her foot on it, forcing Gwimwyl’s hand flat against the floor.
Gwimwyl yanked at her arm, tears starting to run down her face, but she was too weak.
There was sudden, terrible pain at her right pinky knuckle.
Her hand got sticky.
When Tharo stepped off her wrist, she saw that her pinky finger was gone.
“You… cut off my finger,” she gasped.
“It won’t grow back,” said Tharo. “Your father had the same magic as you. I know what heals and what doesn’t. Your grip strength will be much weaker now, and soon even weaker without your thumbs. Not strong enough to strangle someone. Your teeth won’t grow back either.”
Gwimwyl brought her hand into her chest. It was covered in blood, but the knuckle was already healing over.
Her only chance, her last chance, had failed.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Tharo, her pale eyes flicking over Gwimwyl’s bare torso, “that you have too many scars. We could do with a fresh canvas.”
It took a minute for her meaning to sink in.
“No,” whispered Gwimwyl. “No, please, no…” Sobs clogged her throat. “I don’t know if it grows back…” She did- it did- but this was her last ditch attempt at protecting herself even a little bit. “It might kill me,” she signed, her hands clumsy from disuse and injury.
“It does. You’ll survive.”
“Please,” whispered Gwimwyl. “Please, not that, anything else but that, please…”
Scene 4
Gwimwyl paced.
And paced.
And paced.
The irons chafed against her skin.
Most days were boring. Really, really boring.
Boring was better than agonizing, though.
The pain from the iron had become something she could ignore, since the skin under it was just scar tissue by now and she’d gotten used to it. It had been agony for the first months, but it had faded. Eventually.
What hadn’t faded was the pain of a newer wound, a small iron ball sewn in under her skin in her thigh. The skin had healed over it, but it festered and burned inside her as her magic kept trying to heal her and the iron kept poisoning her. Tharo wanted Gwimwyl to beg her to cut her open and take it out. She hadn’t, not yet, though she’d tried to rip it out several times with her nails.
She had exhausted her Memory Palace.
She missed Ffwyn, and Lyseir and Byro and Ash, and Gwendolyn, and Aeri and Cellen. Ffwyn especially. And being imprisoned like this, as her family must have been, brought back the pain of losing them as if it had happened yesterday.
Tharo liked to taunt her about her family.
It made Gwimwyl burn with the want to kill her. She had tried, once, early on when she’d still had some strength left- Tharo, counting on the collar around Gwimwyl’s neck and the shackles on her ankles to keep her restrained, had unchained her wrists from each other to strip her of her shirt and Gwimwyl had gone for her neck with her hands and with her teeth.
It had been a trap.
The collar had stopped her with her teeth a millimetre from Tharo’s skin, and her hands hadn’t been strong enough to crush Tharo’s windpipe fast enough.
Part of the punishment for that had been the removal of her pinky finger and thumbs with an iron blade, destroying her grip strength.
She was too broken and too weak now.
She could still remember their bodies perfectly, if she wanted to- and sometimes when she didn’t want to. Every detail was burned into her brain, and that meant she could perfectly remember the differences in what they had looked like then and what they had looked like the last time she saw them alive. She remembered the missing pieces and the wounds.
She could only be thankful that they were at peace now, and couldn’t be made to suffer any longer.
She wasn’t thankful that they’d been taken away from her and tortured in the first place.
They had been taken from her, and she’d been able to do nothing, locked in the safe room, crying silently.
When her thoughts got dark, she imagined Tharo suffering in the same ways she had made others suffer for years.
She imagined Tharo cowering alone in the dark, chains holding her to the wall, iron around her wrists and neck and wings and ankles, bleeding and begging for her life.
She imagined doing to Tharo what Tharo had done to her so many times. She imagined what she would say.
And she imagined killing her.
She would never actually do most of those things. She would never make someone hurt like that, never imprison someone like that.
She wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, though, if she got the chance. Stab her through the chest. Cut off her head to make sure she would stay dead.
She was hungry. She was always hungry. Pesar didn’t feed her enough- every few days if she was lucky, far less often than that if she wasn’t. If she caused trouble, she would be left without food for weeks, to the point where even her durable fairy body and her magic couldn’t keep her from passing out. She was barely strong enough to walk.
Gwimwyl paced.
It was really the only thing to do, and it at least prevented her leg muscles from atrophying, even as it aggravated the iron ball. She would need them to stay functional, if she was ever to escape.
So she paced, and she remembered, and she planned.
Scene 5
Gwimwyl pressed herself into the corner of her cell, tucking her limbs into her body as close as she could. Her bony knees pressed into her chin. Her thin arms were squished behind her. Her wings were held down with the band around her chest anyway, but the exposed parts flattened completely against her back.
She might have accepted what Tharo was going to do to her and prepared herself for it, but that didn’t mean she would make it easy.
Still a fighter. Tharo had muttered that last time. Gwimwyl held those words close and took them for her own.
Still a fighter.
“Do you know why I hurt you, my Gwimwyl?” asked Tharo.
“Because I tried to kill you twice and blew up three rooms and you like it when I scream and you especially like it if you can make me beg,” said Gwimwyl, her voice quiet and raspy from disuse and dehydration. She had learned to speak despite the discomfort it caused her.
She had learned a lot of uncomfortable things.
“Do you know why I enjoy hurting you specifically?”
Gwimwyl shook her head. Because she healed fast?
Anything to keep her talking and delay the pain.
“Because through hurting you I hurt Lyseir,” said Tharo. “You burn. Far away, safe at home, Ffwyn screams. Lyseir is powerless to do anything about it. You, as a person, are insignificant. You don’t matter. I’d have killed you within days if not for your connection to Lyseir. Your Ffwyn wouldn’t have been allowed to go home if she were anyone else’s daughter or were you not soul-bonded. Your crimes merit execution, but I let you live for this.”
“Why Lyseir?”
Keep her talking.
Tharo rested the flat of her knife- not iron this time, thank Brân- against Gwimwyl’s cheek. “If someone caused the death of your child, wouldn’t you do anything you could to make that person responsible hurt?”
She sliced down.
Gwimwyl didn’t scream. She never screamed at the first cut. Tharo knew this.
Every time, they played the game of finding out at what point Gwimwyl would scream this time, at what point her survival mechanism of going limp and hiding inside herself would kick in, if and when she would start begging, at what point she would stop begging to preserve her little remaining strength and give up completely, at what point she would pass out from the pain and the constant use of her magic. The game of finding out how many times her body could be destroyed and she would still come back from it.
It was a game for Tharo, at least. For Gwimwyl, it was a repetition of the most traumatic things to ever happen to her, an exercise in self-control, a discovery of what exactly her magic could do and what her body and mind could take. A discovery of at what point she would try- fail- to kill herself this time.
She hated her magic. She hated how it kept her alive. She hated how it healed her so fast, over and over, and gave Tharo more opportunity and time to inflict pain.
She wanted to die. She wanted it to end.
The second cut came. Precise, measured, planned, removing skin from her face while preserving the wasting-away muscle beneath it. “Right now, Ffwyn will feel her face stinging. She’ll know what’s coming next. She’ll know or guess that you’re being skinned again. She’ll cry and scream and curse her inability to do anything to save you. Lyseir will hold her and think of me and know what I’m doing to you and why.”
Gwimwyl still didn’t scream, but she was breathing fast now, too fast, her chained hands shaking violently behind her.
She pushed her face into her knees, slicing herself on the knife against her cheek as she moved. The small, bleeding, skinless portion stung when it touched her grimy leg.
It was already healing over.
This would be the second time her skin would have to completely regenerate. The second time Tharo skinned her alive.
Maybe it meant the iron would come out. She grabbed for even the smallest bit of hope now, things like maybe she’ll forget or maybe it will only be blunt.
Tharo twisted her hand in Gwimwyl’s hair and pulled her head up, horribly and deceptively gently. “Hiding already? We’ve barely gotten started.”
A broken sob came from Gwimwyl’s chest.
Tharo sat down in front of her, crossing her legs, a cruel grin on her face. She spread out her tools between them.
Scene 6
“You’re new.”
Gwimwyl startled at the voice. It wasn’t one she knew. It wasn’t one of the ones from her own mind that kept her company.
“But I can tell you’re not actually new, just new to that cell.”
Gwimwyl opened her mouth, but nothing came out the first time except a cough.
“Who?” She managed, the second time she tried. Her voice sounded wrong without her teeth.
“Fysen. I’m they. In the cell next to you, on the other side of the wall.”
“Gwimwyl. She,” said Gwimwyl.
Whoever Fysen was, they’d been given more water more recently than her.
“Why’d they move you?” they asked.
“Escaped,” said Gwimwyl, her throat hurting. “Caught.”
“Oh,” said Fysen. “I’ve only been here about a month. You?”
“Don’t know,” said Gwimwyl. Her voice was a whisper. “Year? Two? Long.”
“You sound even younger than me.”
“Was eighteen.” How old was she now? Still eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty? Older?
She didn’t even have her reflection to go by. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in a blade once, and she looked older, but was she still physically aging? And how much older? Was it just what she’d been through since she’d last seen her reflection that made her look like that?
“I’m twenty-six,” said Fysen. “A little older than you.”
“I haven’t really talked in a long time.” Gwimwyl finally managed a full sentence.
“I haven’t talked to anyone except myself since I got here,” said Fysen.
“She tortures me a lot,” said Gwimwyl. “I don’t know if she’ll do the same to you.” She breathed heavily for a minute. “When she comes for me, don’t try to stop it. Just… let it happen, whatever you hear.”
“You want me to just let you die?”
“I wish,” said Gwimwyl. “My magic will heal me. I won’t die. I can’t seem to die.”
“You want me to just listen to your screams and do nothing?”
“Yes. It’s better that way.”
“She only did it to me once,” said Fysen. “And… probably not as bad as you, if you can survive anything…” That sounded like it was hard for them to say.
“I have a soul-bonded and Tharo wants to punish our mother,” said Gwilym. “She’s hers by blood, and I heal fast and survive to be hurt again.”
“That sucks.” Fysen sounded tired.
“Yeah.”
Scene 7
She’d given up. She didn’t even bother moving, not to the corner and certainly not to stand, when she heard her cell open. She stayed curled up on the floor, her knees tucked into her chest and her eyes closed.
“My Gwimwyl.”
Gwimwyl flinched and opened her eyes.
“Nothing to say?” asked Tharo.
Gwimwyl sighed. “Just get it over with,” she croaked.
“If this is another trick, I will skin you again,” said Tharo. “Maybe I’ll salt it this time.”
Gwimwyl shook her head.
“Good.” Tharo nudged her with her foot. She was wearing boots today. Boots with iron spurs on the toes. “Staying there, are you?”
Gwimwyl nodded.
Tharo drove her foot into Gwimwyl’s hollow stomach.
Gwimwyl gave no reaction to the pain spreading across her abdomen.
A little later, Tharo said, “It’s not as interesting when you’re like this.”
Gwimwyl narrowed her bruised eyes. “Good.”
“If I slit your throat, would you heal?”
Gwilym shrugged. Probably. But maybe not. Maybe she would die and finally this would end. “Why don’t you try?”
Tharo grabbed her above her collar and hauled her up.
Gwimwyl coughed faintly, unable to breathe. Her legs dangled limply below her.
“Bring me Lady Pesar,” said Tharo to the servant who always waited just outside Gwimwyl’s cell.
Gwimwyl coughed weakly again.
“Still nothing?” said Tharo. “Well, maybe we can get some information out of you.”
The servant returned with Pesar.
Gwilym choked. Ffwyn’s eyes. Pesar had Ffwyn’s eyes.
“You wanted me, darling?” said Pesar, barely glancing at Gwimwyl.
“I need your help getting information out of our special guest,” said Tharo.
“Ah. Well, put her down. I’ll need to sit.”
“Of course.”
Gwimwyl crashed to the ground, hearing and feeling at least one bone snap. “I won’t tell you anything,” she croaked.
“Oh, you won’t have to,” said Pesar, curling a hand behind her head.
The leaves rustled.
Gwimwyl pushed them aside to find a child. Ze was very young, maybe eight or nine. There was an open slash across hir face.
When ze saw her, ze whimpered and curled hir arms around hirself.
“Are you okay?” asked Gwimwyl, signing and speaking at once.
Ze didn’t blink.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.” Gwimwyl sat down on the ground in front of hir, putting her hands in her lap.
She frowned. Each of her hands had five fingers… there was something not right about that.
Her right hand should only have three, and her left four, because-
She shook her head. What was she thinking? “I’m Gwimwyl. I’m called she.”
“I’m Caerwyn,” signed the child. “I’m called ze.”
Caerwyn. So similar to Ffwyn’s full name.
“What happened?” asked Gwimwyl.
“My family…” Tears ran down Caerwyn’s grimy face. “The queen took them.”
“Oh.” Just like her. “Is that what happened to your face?”
Caerwyn nodded. “They told me to run. I l-left them.”
“Do you have anywhere to go?”
Caerwyn shook hir head.
“Do you want to come with me? I know people who can look after you, like they looked after me.”
Gwimwyl-!
Gwimwyl shook her head to rid herself of the ringing in her ears and held out a hand to Caerwyn.
Her wrist was free. That wasn’t…
Of course her wrist was free. It always had been.
Gwimwyl, it’s Fysen-!
Fysen? He didn’t know an Fysen…
Except- “I’m Fysen. I’m they.” “You’re new.”
Gwimwyl, it’s a trap, don’t tell them anything-
Fysen’s voice cut off.
She remembered Fysen now.
She remembered everything now.
She stood up. “What’s happening?” She signed. “What’s going on?”
“Can you take me to Lyseir?” said Caerwyn desperately. “Please?”
“I never mentioned Lyseir.”
“You did. You said Lyseir would take care of me like she took care of you.”
No, no, no, no, no
“You’re not real. None of this is real.”
Gwimwyl gasped in air.
Pesar was cradling her head. Tharo was gone. Her hands were bound and she was missing a pinky and both thumbs.
Tharo stepped back into the cell. “Alive, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“They pulled her out before I got anything important,” said Pesar. “Do you want me to try again?”
“Go.”
Gwimwyl gritted her teeth and slammed her already-fractured-but-healing wrist hard against the shackles and snapped it, yanking her arm up with enough force to move the iron down to skin that hadn’t been numbed by scarring. The pain would have to be enough to keep her knowing the truth, because she had to protect her family.
Scene 8
“You’ve gotten boring,” said Tharo, standing over her. “So passive.”
Gwimwyl clenched her hands around each other, trying to stifle the violent shaking. “I thought you wanted me broken. Here I am. Broken.”
Tharo frowned. “I thought so too. I wanted to break you, but you’re a lot less fun broken.”
And that lit a spark in Gwimwyl’s chest. A tiny, fragile, flickering spark, but more than she’d had in a long time.
The thought of being used for Tharo’s amusement…
“Are you going to kill me?” Gwimwyl challenged. It would be over, finally, and she knew she would never be released, she would never escape, Ffwyn would never come, so death was the only freedom she could hope for.
“No. My enjoyment is secondary to Lyseir’s suffering.” She stared at Gwimwyl, and a small smile slowly crept across her face. She retrieved a key and bent down to meet Gwimwyl’s eyes.
Gwimwyl snapped out of her body.
She was just an observer. It wasn’t her, chained and trapped in a cell, about to have unspeakable harm done to her yet again. It was just a body. It wasn’t really her.
Tharo unlocked the shackles.
Gwimwyl watched herself shrink. Tense. Freeze.
“You can move,” said Tharo, her voice distant to Gwimwyl.
It was a trick. It had to be.
Gwimwyl’s body nonetheless brought its shaking, skeletal arms around to cradle itself from the front. More of a range of motion than she’d had in years.
Her body wept. No tears came, because it had been days- days?- since she’d had any liquid, but it was obvious from the way her body shuddered and the gasping sobs.
“This should make it more interesting,” said Tharo. “You can fight me better with more freedom of movement.”
Gwimwyl’s arms tightened around her heaving chest.
Tharo narrowed her eyes. “I’ll even open the cell door,” she said slowly. “Go ahead. Run. We’ll see how far you can get. I’ll give you a head start. Maybe you’ll get out.”
Gwimwyl looked at the open cell door. Her unbound limbs. The collar laying open on the floor.
The possibility of escape.
Except, not really.
Except, they both knew that Gwimwyl’s body would give out and she would collapse before her cell was even out of sight. She was starved, dehydrated, sleep deprived. Her muscles had atrophied. She might not even make it out of the cell.
Except, it was just for Tharo’s entertainment.
She wouldn’t play Tharo’s games. She was not a game or a toy. This was her last scrap of control, and she had to hold onto it by any means necessary.
“No.”
Scene 9
“You ready?” Aeri touched her hand. “You’re shaking.”
“As ready as I can be,” said Ffwyn. “She’s here. I know she’s here.”
“I don’t know how I’ll react when I see her,” said Aeri. “You… You know she won’t look the same. She won’t be the same.”
“I know,” said Ffwyn, very quietly. Her fault. That was her fault. Whatever damage Gwimwyl has sustained was entirely Ffwyn’s fault. “Let’s go.”
The door was difficult to open, but not impossible- not with Aeri’s runes.
Pesar is somewhat cordial towards them.
Aeri fights Pesar. Ffwyn tries to find Gwimwyl and struggles, but eventually gets to her.
Ffwyn kills a guard. This is the first time she’s ever killed anyone and she has an internal crisis that she forces to the side for Gwimwyl’s sake.
Ffwyn frees Gwimwyl by melting through the bars and breaking open the links of her chains by twisting a sword’s blade inside the link.
Ffwyn holds Gwimwyl + wraps her in her jacket.
“You came”
“I knew you’d come”
“Why didn’t you come sooner?”
Gwimwyl says they have to free the other prisoners (including Fysen, whom she sees for the first time).
Aeri arrives.
Ffwyn, Gwimwyl with her, melts the bars and Aeri breaks the chains and they send them to where they agreed with Gwimwyl.
Gwimwyl makes a short speech (“We’re hungry. We’re tired. We’re sick and injured. We’re traumatized and scared. But we are also ANGRY, and there are hundreds of us and a few dozen of them.”) and rallies the freed prisoners and slaves.
They take over the prison, killing most of the guards and torturers.
Ffwyn takes Gwimwyl home, promising to send a contingent of trained resistance fighters from the Sanctuary to help turn the prison into a resistance base. Aeri stays behind until they arrive and does her best to give the torture survivors medical care with what her mother and brother have taught her (both of whom will arrive with the contingent from the Sanctuary).
Anyone else would be dead from kidney failure by now. Tharo had told her that.
Not Gwimwyl. Never her. She couldn’t seem to die.
They were called stress positions. She knew that because Tharo had told her.
Twisted up, in this iron cage suspended from the ceiling, built to her exact measurements to keep her in an impossible position because if she couldn’t hold it she’d hit the iron with her whole body.
Every time she fell asleep, pain woke her up immediately. Every time she contemplated relaxing her muscles to ease just the slightest bit of the tension. Every time…
She drifted off again, and let out a pained gasp as she woke up to the burning.
She’d been in here so long. Hadn’t slept in so long. Hadn’t moved in so long.
She heard footsteps coming down the hall, and went limp.
It burned, burned, burned, but when they came she pretended she didn’t care. She wouldn’t give Tharo what she wanted, which seemed to be fight. This was the only resistance she had left. Just like she did her best to ignore the iron balls buried under her skin, because if she begged for them to be cut out they would know she cared, and she just couldn’t even bring himself to beg anymore.
Not my body. Not my body. Not my body. Not me. Not me. Not me…
“Wyla.”
The voice was a whisper, and so unbelievable Gwimwyl first thought she’d hallucinated it, as had happened before.
“Gwimwyl!”
Louder, this time, and Gwimwyl dared to look.
Ffwyn.
Ffwyn was here.
Ffwyn was here.
Here under her own power, it seemed.
Blood splattered on her chest. Hands wrapped around the bars, melting through the lock.
“Ffwyn,” said Gwimwyl weakly, almost inaudibly.
Ffwyn pushed into the cell, molten metal dropping to the ground.
And then she was lifting Gwimwyl out of the cage, and wrapping her naked, freezing body in a large sweater and jacket, and breaking the chain of her collar, and stroking her knotted hair and telling Gwimwyl that she was here, she was here, she would never leave her alone again…
“You came,” Gwimwyl said. After so long, she had given up hope.
“Of course.”
Gwimwyl smiled faintly. “I knew you’d come.”
“Always.” Ffwyn traced gentle fingers over Gwimwyl’s skin and kissed her forehead. “I will always come for you, my darling Wyla.”
My darling Wyla. My Gwimwyl.
Gentle fingers stroking her.
Gwimwyl burst into shaking, dry sobs.
“I’ve got you,” said Ffwyn.
“Wh- Why didn’t you come sooner?” Gwimwyl bawled, clinging weakly to Ffwyn.
“I tried,” said Ffwyn. “Me and Aeri, we tried, we tried and tried and tried… I’m so, so sorry that it took us so long to find you.”
Scene 10
Lyseir had brought her headphones from the world above.
They were nice. Calming. They kept the outside sound out and gave her consistent background noise.
Gwimwyl tried to focus on the botany book. She tried to feel the joy she used to feel in learning about plants.
She couldn’t.
She tried to stop the shaking of her hands. Her body was under her control, and it would obey her will-
She couldn’t.
Her throat ached, and her eyes stung, and she tasted salty tears.
She was crying. Again. She’d been crying a lot since she’d gotten hydrated enough to do so.
She let her head thunk down onto the open book resting on her knees.
She was free. She was safe. Why was it still so damn hard?
A shadow fell over her.
Her body tensed.
She forced herself to look up, slowly, because she knew this wasn’t Tharo and was probably somebody she’d known before.
She didn’t know how to interact with them anymore.
Aeri. It was Aeri, sitting down in front of her.
“How are you?” she signed.
“Still not well,” Gwimwyl said.
Aeri looked at her expectantly.
Right. That was another thing. Many people in the Sanctuary were accommodating of the fact that she spoke far more than she signed now, but Aeri, like Byro, like many fairies, was deaf.
She’d gotten into the habit of speaking out loud with Fysen, their heads against their shared cell wall.
“Sorry,” she signed. “Still not well.”
“That’s okay. It hasn’t been long. Are you hiding out here?”
Was she?
Well… yes.
Gwimwyl nodded. “I don’t want them to know there’s something wrong with me,” she signed. “I can’t control my body. I can’t control my emotions. I freak out when people touch me. My first instinct is to speak out loud and my signs are clumsy. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act after so long isolated.”
Isolated, but for Fysen. Fysen had saved her from even longer in isolation.
“Nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with you,” signed Aeri. “A lot of people don’t know how to behave around you, I think, but most people see you as a hero for surviving.”
“I wish I hadn’t,” Gwimwyl whispered, knowing Aeri couldn’t hear her. “I’m not a hero,” she signed. “I’m just me.”
Aeri smiled at her. “You’re Gwimwyl. And you’re one of my best friends in the world. Mind if I sit with you?”
Gwimwyl nodded. “You can stay.”
Aeri didn’t try to engage her in more conversation except for the occasional question about botany. She sat quietly near Gwimwyl and played crosses with herself on the forest floor.
It was nice.
She loved Ffwyn, but Ffwyn was sometimes a little too much. Too intense, too protective, and too focused on the events that had nearly destroyed Gwimwyl.
Aeri was peaceful, and never talked about what had happened to her unless she brought it up herself, and never treated her like a victim.
Aeri could stay.
Scene 11
“It’s good that it happened to me,” said Gwimwyl.
“What?” said Ffwyn. “No, Gwimwyl, don’t say that. It was awful and horrifically cruel and you didn’t deserve it and it shouldn’t have happened.”
“I can survive the impossible,” said Gwimwyl. “You, you would have died so fast, in hours or even minutes, because you have a normal body and it would have given out a hundred times over. So it’s good she picked me. My magic meant I could survive. You or anyone else couldn’t. You would have died. So it’s good that it was me.”
She delivered this all in a flat, empty voice.
“Gwimwyl.” Ffwyn put a hand gently on Gwimwyl’s arm. “Wyla. It wasn’t. Sometimes things happen and they’re… they’re not for any grand reason. They’re just because someone wanted to inflict pain and had the power to do so.”
Gwimwyl’s face crumpled. “It has to have been!” she snapped, her voice breaking. “It has to have been for something! I can’t- if it was for nothing, no reason at all, I can’t- It has to have been good that it was me or-”
“Oh, Wyla.” Ffwyn brushed Gwimwyl’s messy hair aside. “I see. You have to rationalize it, don’t you? It has to make sense somehow.”
“It has to have meant something,” Gwimwyl said.
Scene 12
‘I love you’ ‘I’ll never let you go’ ‘I’m yours’ ‘You’re beautiful’
Gwimwyl didn’t know how to express to Ffwyn that sometimes the things she said with such love reminded him of Tharo.
That ‘I’m yours’ was too much like ‘you’re mine.’
That ‘I’ll never let you go’ made her feel trapped again and reminded her of Tharp telling her she would never be free.
That ‘you’re beautiful,’ in reference to the results of years of imprisonment and repeated torture was just… maybe not the best choice of words. She knew Ffwyn was trying to make her feel good about her body, even damaged as it was, and maybe Ffwyn really did still think she was beautiful, but she could only feel like when Tharo had talked about cutting her up like it was art.
That sometimes even the kindest touch felt like a blow, even from Ffwyn, for whom their soul-bond usually overrode her new repulsion to touch.
That sometimes Ffwyn’s gentle hand in Gwimwyl’s hair felt like Tharo’s.
So she kissed Ffwyn back and tried to pretend everything was as it had been when they were eighteen, because maybe if she buried herself in Ffwyn she could ignore the pain.
Content notice for imprisonment, burns and otherwise physical violence
Everything burned when Gwimwyl woke up.
Ffwyn.
She bolted to her feet- or tried to. She properly understood what had happened when she tripped on the shackles around her ankles and wrenched her shoulders trying to move her arms.
They’d been caught. They’d been caught and she’d tried to fight but Ffwyn- she couldn’t let them hurt Ffwyn, so she’d let them hurt her instead.
Let them wasn’t true, not really, she hadn’t let Tharo do anything, but it had been done and if she could believe it was in service of protecting Ffwyn, then she could accept what had been done to her.
What would continue to be done to her.
Until almost the very end, she’d still thought that maybe they could get out of this, surely they would get out of this, they would never let Tharo get her hands on each other, they could keep the promise they’d made so long ago to protect one another.
But they hadn’t gotten out of it. And now she was here, in a small, dark cell, in a cell probably very much like the ones her family had died in, chained to the wall by her neck so she couldn’t even reach the locked door.
If she hadn’t gotten away, maybe Ffwyn had. Maybe at least Ffwyn was safe. If Ffwyn was safe then Gwimwyl could endure anything until Ffwyn came for her, because Ffwyn would come for her, they would never abandon each other no matter how bad it got.
She was so cold. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had last had food or water, before all this, certainly, and she was so cold and so hungry and so thirsty.
She could still feel the burning from the irons, but it was dulling as the skin in contact with it opened up and scarred over again and again until thick bands of numb scar tissue protected her.
It was so dark. She had no concept of how long she had been here anymore.
She dug sharp teeth into her bottom lip at one point to remind herself she was still alive, still real.
After a long time, or maybe no time at all, she started singing under her breath, just to hear something. She’d never been a good singer, that was always Ffwyn, and the dehydration made it worse, but it was something.
“Quiet,” snapped a guard outside of her (dim) field of vision.
Gwimwyl narrowed her eyes and sang louder, pushing past the discomfort of using her mouth-voice. If this was all she had, she would sing until her throat bled, and she would keep singing even then because her throat would heal itself as she went.
The guard came in and slammed her head against the wall, and there was nothing more.
She had told herself at first that it was good to be scared, because it meant she understood what lay in her future, and scared meant prepared.
She wasn’t sure she was even scared anymore. There was just… nothing.
She was beginning to question if she was still alive, if this was real.
When Tharo finally came, after what could have been days or only hours, it turned out that ‘scared’ did not in fact mean ‘prepared.’ How could it? All she knew of Tharo was violence- her blood family’s death, Ffwyn’s whimper and battered face, pain striking-
Her mind veered away from that. She knew what Tharo had done to her, but she couldn’t think about that. Not yet. If she thought about that she would stop functioning in Tharo’s presence, and she couldn’t afford that.
She struggled to her feet when she heard the footsteps coming towards her cell. Tharo was much taller than her, nearly as tall as Ffwyn, but Gwimwyl would still meet her on her feet.
“Where’s Ffwyn?” Gwimwyl demanded as soon as Tharo was in front of her.
Tharo frowned and held her fire- blazing so bright to Gwimwyl’s now dark-accustomed eyes, not at all gentle like Ffwyn’s- higher. “Kneel before your High Queen.”
“Where’s Ffwyn?” Gwimwyl repeated. Ffwyn was alive, she could tell that much, but the iron dulled her sensitivity to the soul-bond and alive told her almost nothing.
Tharo pushed her flaming hand against Gwimwyl’s bare chest, and Gwimwyl screamed.
She couldn’t think she couldn’t breathe she could smell her own burning flesh there was nothing nothing nothing except the blazing pain on her chest-
Tharo kicked Gwimwyl’s knees out from under her, and Gwimwyl hit the ground and curled up over her knees and around the burning splotch of agony.
“That’s better,” said Tharo, who at some point must have taken her hand off of Gwimwyl but it still hurt it hurt it hurt and she wanted to go home-
She gritted her teeth. It’s just a body and it will heal. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a body and it will heal soon. “Where. Is. Ffwyn.”
“Manners, my Gwimwyl,” Tharo said.
Bile rose in her throat. My Gwimwyl. She did not belong to Tharo.
“Where is Ffwyn. Please.” She needed to know where Ffwyn was. She needed to know if Ffwyn was safe.
“In a cell far away from yours, shivering in the dark just like you, and you will feel every ounce of each other’s pain but will never see each other again.”
Gwimwyl wasn’t sure what her visible reaction to that was, but Tharo laughed at it.
No no no no no. Ffwyn couldn’t be here, Ffwyn had to be safe, Ffwyn wouldn’t survive this, Gwimwyl’s magic through the soul-bond only gave her slightly faster and better healing than typical-
Tharo kicked the burn on Gwimwyl’s chest, and Gwimwyl just barely swallowed a second scream. “I let her go. I will hurt you and she will scream and Lyseir will know exactly what she has brought down on her family and all of you will be helpless to change any of this. And you still will never see her or any of your family or the light of the sun ever again.”
Ffwyn was safe. Ffwyn was safe and that was all that mattered. Ffwyn would come for her soon, and she could hold on until then. She could endure for Ffwyn.
“Look at that,” said Tharo, sounding mildly interested, forcing open Gwimwyl’s curled form with her boot. “Halfway healed already.”
