Young Writers Society

Rana hated her own weakness. She hated the way her breath caught when Synakrein stepped too close. She hated the way she flinched when he touched her. And most of all, she hated the way she trembled as she followed him down the hallway.

Her stomach sank as he turned down the hallway from the day before. She stopped at the end of the hallway, wondering if they’d left the gate unlocked. Would she be able to outrun the guards behind her and make it to her freedom? Could she steal a horse and make it home?

You’re being stupid, she reminded herself. What if she did manage to make her escape? It was a week’s journey, without food, having to pass through the forests of Swaltou by herself. There was no way she’d manage to hold her own if she had a run-in with bandits.

The guards put their hands on her shoulders, firmly pushing her down the hall after the prince. She swallowed hard and resentfully stepped forward, shrugging their hands off her shoulders petulantly. She forced herself to square her shoulders and step into the torture chamber with her head held high.

“We’re back!” Synakrein announced happily.

The man looked up in terror. His words were heavily accented when he spoke. “Please, no.”

“It’s much too late for begging now,” Synakrein said. “You should have thought about your actions before you stole from me. I must make an example of you, so that no one else follows in your foolish choices.”

“My family… they hungry,” the man said. It was clear he didn’t know much Algnesian. Algnesian was the trade language, but many peasants and serfs only knew the tribal languages of their regions. He broke into Gnamreyian to beg.

Rana felt sick to her stomach. She saw the scabbed over cut that Synakrein made the day before and shuddered. She rubbed her own wrists subconsciously, unable to tear her eyes from the man’s pale frame. He was emaciated, his ribs prominent on his thin torso. His arms were spindly and weak, his eyes desperate.

“Come now, Rana. Join me.”

Rana shook her head weakly, still staring at the poor man strapped to the table. His brown eyes turned towards her, filled with hurt and pleading for help. His thin brown hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. If he was healthy she might have guessed him to be in his early thirties. As it was, she thought he looked near to death, without Synakrein’s assistance.

“Come on,” Synakrein said patronizingly. He grabbed Rana and pulled her around the side of the table, then turned towards his weapons table to the right. “You can pick one.”

Rana glanced towards the knives and felt her stomach lurch. She turned back towards the man helplessly, wondering if she could help him escape. What if she cut his binds? Could the two of them make it past the guards?

On impulse she reached down and took the man’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly. She doubted it was possible. The man looked so weak she doubted he could stand on his own, much less run. Besides, the guards were blocking the door — and she knew Synakrein would grab her before she could clear the table. She locked eyes with the man, wishing there was something she could do to help him.

“Oh, his hand?” Synakrein said, turning to look at them. He forced a knife into her free hand. “Excellent idea. Start there. I’m told it hurts terribly if you make tiny cuts between the fingers.”

Rana turned loose of the man’s hand, looking down at the knife in horror. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” Synakrein wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close as she attempted to back away. He forced her to turn back towards the table, wrapping his own hand around the hand that held the knife.

“No,” Rana said, shaking her head desperately. “Please.”

“Come on,” Synakrein said mockingly. “You can do it.”

“I don’t want to,” she said.

“Sure you do.”

Without waiting for a response, Synakrein moved their hands towards the man’s forearm. He made a single clean slice across his arm with the tip of the knife Rana held, then let go. Rana dropped the knife, staring at the wound even as the blade clattered to the floor loudly.

Tears sprung to her own eyes and she backed away in horror as she watched crimson blood spilling from the cut. Her cut. Her chest felt tight. She kept backing away, tears streaming down her face, until her back bumped into the wall. I’m a monster. I’m just as bad as he is.

“You’ll come around,” Synakrein said, regarding her coldly. She shook her head rapidly. He was wrong. She wasn’t going to come around to his ghastly past time. In fact, she’d never do that again. He couldn’t make her. She didn’t care how many nights she spent in the dungeon, or how badly he abused her. She’d never turn into a monster like he was.

“It gets easier. Watch,” Synakrein said glibly. He turned and picked up a meat cleaver from the table. Before Rana realized what he planned to do, he brought it swiftly down on the man’s wrist. The man on the table screamed in agony.

Rana’s watched with wide eyes as his hand was severed from the rest of his arm, blood freely flowing from each of the stubs and dripping off the table. She turned and vomited the little left in her stomach. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her chest was tight and her head felt light.

“Funny how something that can ruin one person’s appetite can rouse another’s.”

Rana looked towards Synakrein as he spoke. She was horrified to see him holding the man’s hand in his own. The man on the table was still screaming at the top of his lungs, but the only thing Rana could hear was the beating of her own heart. She struggled to get a breath.

Suddenly Synakrein lifted the hand and took a bite from the man’s thumb. Rana gaped, watching in horror as blood dripped off Synakrein’s chin as he chewed on the flesh of the serf. She struggled for a breath, but none came. Her head felt light, then she felt herself collapse as the room faded to black.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Rana’s eyes fluttered open. She gasped and sat straight up, all of the memories flooding back to her at once. She sat panting for several long moments, looking around in confusion. She was in a bed. Her own trunk was at the foot of the bed. There was no dungeon, no prisoner, no cannibalism.

She fell back onto her pillows in relief. It was all just a bad dream. She’d not really been in the dungeons at all. All just a trick of her imagination. That meant there would be no marks on — Rana’s breath caught as she saw the bandages on her wrists. Not just a dream.

And if the part of her being in the dungeon was true, that must mean that the part with the poor man was true, too. And the part where Synakrein… she shivered at the thought. She knew he was a monster, but she’d never imagined he’d be capable of that level of depravity.

She rubbed her wrists, looking around the room. Someone had changed her into night clothes, and her dress was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t even want to know who’d taken the liberty of changing her while she was passed out. Her head throbbed terribly and her stomach still ached.

Her door opened. She tensed, expecting to see Synakrein. Instead, her father strode into the room. She still didn’t relax as she watched him cross the distance between them. It was hard to say what his visit meant, or if he planned to add more abuse to the work Synakrein started.

“How are you feeling, Darrana?”

Rana hesitated a moment, stunned at the concerned tone to his voice. “Uh… still not great.”

“I imagine,” Father said, stopping next to her bed. She started to sit up, but he gestured for her to stop. He gently pulled the blankets up around her shoulders, tucking her in for the first time she could remember in her life. She nearly gaped. “The prince told me what happened.”

“He did?” Rana asked, confusion clouding her brow as she looked at her father. Nothing made sense. She didn’t know what to make of Father suddenly acting like a father should, and she certainly didn’t expect Synakrein to confess his sins to Father.

“Oh yes,” Father brushed her hair out of her face. “You must have been so scared.”

“Yeah…” Rana agreed slowly. “It was unpleasant.”

“I imagine so,” Father said. “Ruffians never have pleasant manners. It’s lucky they didn’t harm you even further.”

“What?” Rana questioned. She slowly began to realize that Synakrein probably didn’t tell Father anything close to the truth. The only ruffian she had to deal with was the prince himself and his boorish guards.

“The Prince told me that he told you to go into town ahead of him,” Father said. Rana bit back a sigh, waiting to hear the rest of this fiction. “And by the time he went to meet you, he found you’d fallen in with a group of ruffians trying to get your change purse. It’s fortunate he was able to get there before they did serious damage to you. It’s hard to say if you’d have ever woken up if they abused you further after you passed out.”

Rana suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Of course Synakrein had made himself into the hero of the story — it’s not like he could tell Father that he’d actually imprisoned her and made her witness the torture of a man. “That’s not what happened.”

“What? Of course it is, dear,” Father said. “That’s exactly what the Prince told me.”

“No,” Rana insisted, deciding to risk inciting his rage. “Prince Synakrein threw me in his dungeons. He’s the one who hurt me.”

“Oh dear,” Father said. “You must be in shock. You poor thing. Get some more sleep. The Prince and I decided that we should head some tomorrow, in light of your unfortunate run-in this afternoon. We leave first thing in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night,” Rana said helplessly, watching her father walk across the room. He shut the door after him, leaving her in silence to work through her thoughts.

She should have figured on the prince inventing a story to keep Father happy, but somehow this was unexpected. It felt like an even further betrayal, beyond his dreadful treatment of her over the past day. Not only did he get away with it, but he managed to make himself look good in the process. And Father wouldn’t believe a word she said to the contrary. The prince was frustratingly good at being bad.

Rana sat sulking for nearly an hour. She was still exhausted. From the darkness outside the windows she guessed she’d been unconscious for many hours, but it wasn’t enough to restore her energy. She looked at the clock. It was well past when she should have fallen asleep. Her conscience wouldn’t let her.

She couldn’t help but think of the poor man in Synakrein’s dungeons. She wondered if Synakrein eased his suffering after she fainted, or if he prolonged it. She shuddered at the thought. Sure, the man was a thief. But he was stealing to feed his family, and that somehow felt like less of a crime.

And yet Synakrein treated him as though he stole thousands of coins from his treasury to gamble away. A goat for food or a bag of gold were equally as precious to the Prince, it seemed. She hated him for it. She hated that his peasants were as thin as the man was, and that he was so desperate for a way to feed his own children.

She hated that she was in the castle of the heartless psychopath. And most of all, she hated the fake kindness he’d bestowed on her and Father. She wished she could scream profanities in the prince’s face and throw all of his gifts and food back at him.

Her eyes wandered to the foot of her bed, where the change purse was still sitting on top of her chest. It made her feel sick to think of accepting such a generous gift from such a stingy man. She didn’t need his gold. If anyone needed that money, it was that serf’s family.

Rana sat up suddenly as the thought struck her.

His wife needs it more than I do… I’ll take it to her.