"I don’t know what to do,” Claudia said, the admission coming slowly and painfully. Her first words to anyone but the two guards currently helping man the scanty defences. Her eyes were almost painfully dry, she could taste the smell of smoke at the back of her throat. Claudia war more personally than some of the women here and had seen death more personally than she should have but this was something else. She’d bay for blood when it was all over, the fear coursing through her feeding a need for vengeance that had been birthed so many years ago during her brother’s death at the hands of their uncle. “All I know how to do is stay calm.”










