Valerius steps close enough to me that I can smell the cold scent of his lineage. His face is fierce with a dangerous fire in his eyes.
"Tell me, what did you poison him with?!" he demands, his voice low and dangerous, carrying easily over the courtyard.
I try to speak, but the pain and exhaustion catch in my throat. I push the words out anyway, my voice breathy and pained. "I didn't do anything to him."
My simple truth shatters his control. Valerius loses his temper again. The air crackles with his rage, making the flames of the torches around the pole dance wildly. In a blink, his hand shoots out, tearing away the collar of my torn dress.
He grips my neck, using the pole as leverage, the force of the impact nearly breaking my teeth. His long, sharp nails dig into my flesh, the points cold as slivers of ice against my skin.
He lowers his face, his expression pure, feral loathing. "You filth! Dare say you did nothing! He is lying there half dead, and the only person who was with him was you that night! Now, witch, tell me what you did it!"
The pain is instant and blinding, but it clears my mind. I look into his furious eyes, and I know the truth. It doesn't matter if I name Thaurion, or if I swear on my mother's grave. They have their conviction. I am already condemned.
A strange, twisted pleasure replaces the fear. If this is where I die, I won't go begging. I won't give him the satisfaction of breaking me. A slow, terrifying expression crosses my face, an ugly grin that feels wider and more brittle than any moment of crying.
I force the syllables through the closing vise of his hand, tasting the salt of my own blood. "You filthy blood sucker disgust me…"
His eyes widen in disbelief and fury. With a sickening shudder that runs down his arm, Valerius tightens his grip. The pressure is absolute. I feel the fine bones of my throat beginning to crack, and I know he is going to tear my life out of my body right now and end it.
The agonizing pain is absolute, a white-hot spike where Valerius's nails pierce my flesh. My breathing is constricted, reduced to shallow, painful gasps, yet the desperate, hateful adrenaline is a fire in my blood. I can still talk.
"Go ahead, kill me," I manage to rasp out, the words squeezed past the crushing vice on my throat. "That's what you beasts are best at."
Lady Isolde, the cruelest of them all, meets my gaze. Her composed mask shatters, and her eyes flash a horrifying, murderous bloody red. I see it, the unbridled fury in her gaze, but I genuinely don't care. I am already dead and her hatred means nothing.
"I did nothing to any of you!" I force out, ignoring the pain and the black spots dancing at the edge of my vision. "I wasn't even involved in the war! But yet I was dragged from my home for what?"
As I speak, a low, ominous sound begins, and the air around us shudders. A current of cold, violent wind stirs, whipping past my face and pulling at my chained hair. It's not magic, not mine, my power is still sealed, but the sheer force of it is undeniable.
I seize the moment, driven by the injustice. "To pay for my estranged father's arrogance?" My voice is a strained shout now. "What did it have to do with me, a bastard child?"
The wind becomes a gale, tearing across the courtyard. Dust and pebbles sting my skin, and the flames of the torches stir into frantic, desperate ribbons of light, threatening to turn into a raging fire.
My accusation is absolute. I stare into the furious eyes of Valerius, ignoring the pressure that threatens to snap my neck. "For years you tortured me, tormented me, for what sin?" I demand, the question an echo of every injustice, as the world around us screams.
The agony in my throat is a searing, tearing fire, but a terrible, magnificent clarity washes over me. The pain breaks the last remaining tether to my fear.
I suddenly laugh. It starts as a rattling cough in my constricted lungs, but quickly swells into a horrifying, manic sound, raw and utterly unhinged. I am looking death in the face, and I find it hilarious.
"Your Lord deserved it!" I cackle, the sound barely human. "This was his karma!"
My insult is the final spark. Lady Isolde is no longer composed. Her fingers, which were curled into sharp, predatory claws, snap forward. She doesn't need to move. She just pulls the power of the destruction toward me.
She manipulates the flames on the torches closest to me, and they obey instantly, surging forward with a monstrous roar. They are no longer simple flames.They become a firestorm, bursting forth in a contained, vengeful pillar.
The wind, already screaming around the courtyard, becomes even more violent. Above us, the sky is collapsing into itself, ominous dark clouds gathering in impossible speed, blocking the moon and drowning us in shadows.
The heat hits me with concussive force. My thin clothes ignite, and I am instantly burning and consumed by the flames. The pain is beyond description, a thousand knives of fire digging into every nerve. But the laughter doesn't stop. It's a battle cry from the pyre.
"I will return!" I scream into the inferno, my voice somehow cutting through the roar of the fire and wind. "I will return and kill all of you!"
There is only the pain, blinding and absolute. The heat dissolves into crushing pressure. The sound of the wind is replaced by a high-pitched ringing. The feeling of the chains vanishes. Everything goes dark.
Then, with a desperate, shocking gasp, I suddenly open my eyes.
My lungs seize, sucking air in as if I've been drowning for a year. There is no raging flames.
My breath is coming fast and ragged, every inhale a painful, tearing effort. I am alive.