CHAPTER TWO:
RAVEN.
I dunked the blood-soaked rag into the basin again, pausing only briefly to wring it out. Her skin was a battlefield of red flesh and purple hills. Entire strips of skin were missing in patches all over her body. The crisp neat lines of the missing patches of skin were telltale of someone who'd been practiced in flaying and had a fondness for mercifully sharp knives. The skin that did remain was a wretched mix of purple and crimson. How long had she been tortured before coming here? And who would send someone here of all places for medical attention. Here to a whorehouse.
Her leg was broken and as I leaned closer to set the wound it made my own leg ache in sympathy. I pulled my skirt over my calf, the ugly, broken thing it was. The beating I'd gotten from trying to escape wouldn't be leaving me any time soon. The sound of the snap as my tendon coiled up the back of my leg like a spool of thread would replay behind my eyelids every time I tried to sleep.
'You don't need legs to lay on your back' she'd said to me at the time, delighting in my loss of hope, when she refused to let me treat the wound.
The torchlight cast dancing shadows across her skin like a coiled dragon ready to strike. The patchwork girl, Dove, was still beautiful despite her sorry state. Her pale skin was unblemished, delicate but strangely angular and symmetrical features. Her lips were a natural reddish-purple and her eyebrows were arched, even and full, the hair a whisper darker than her silky platinum blonde locks. Her body was curvy but gaunt, like someone who'd been used to being well fed but had fallen on hard times. A lot of girls like her came into the Aviary, members of the court who'd resorted to selling themselves after the Usurper had claimed the throne. Even more of them had bleached their hair to look like hers, to resemble the missing crown princess.
I brushed one last blonde strand away from the girl's face before I placed the cloth back into the basin and pushed myself up into a standing position with some difficulty. My bad leg seizing in a cramp from being seated for too long and I nearly fell before catching myself on the wooden stool. The basin's water splashed down my legs and all over the floor with a clang. She didn't move despite the loud noise. At least the basin would be lighter now, picking it up off the floor and dragging myself to the sink, before emptying its contents in favour of fresh hot water.
The girl was so wounded, so decimated by what had happened to her that this was the third basin I'd emptied since starting. The herbs to help with pain, disinfecting wounds and promoting healing smelt lightly of mint and something else I could never name. The taste of it in the air made me cringe as I breathed it in and carried the basin back to the girl. The hard wooden stool wasn't an old friend, but it greeted me none-the-less as I sat down to continue cleaning her.
DOVE.
The smell hit me first –blood, piss, peppermint, rot. Not the sweet kind of peppermint that clung to nobles' cloaks during winter festivals. This was medicinal. Bitter. Unforgiving.
Something warm pressed against my skin. A cloth. A hand? I couldn't tell. My body was one long scream dulled by exhaustion. My body felt foreign –stitched together from agony and salt. The pain lived inside me now — a resident, not a visitor.
I kept my eyes shut. If I don't move, maybe.. he won't notice me. Maybe he'll leave me alone tonight. Keeping my eyes shut was safer. I don't know who's hovering over me and I don't want to know.
But no one shouted. No boots cracked against stone. No belt whistled through the air. Just that quiet breathing and slow, careful, methodical hands.
A voice hummed low and soft, not to me, but to herself. I couldn't place the tune, only that it felt... clean. Like a room with the windows open.
Another rag, another sting. My back arched, a gasp scraping up my throat before I could stop it and I tensed up more in fear than in pain.
"You're alright," a girl murmured, "I've got you." Her voice wasn't cruel or tender, it was just low and tired, worn around the edges like an old stone staircase. A treasonous whisper trying to poison my mind with hope that had been beaten from my bones ages ago.
She worked in silence, rinsing and rewrapping, moving with care even though I knew I didn't matter. Not really. Whoever she was, she didn't flinch at my ruined skin. Her touch was precise. Purposeful. She even muttered an apology when she peeled a leaf back from a still-open wound on my leg.
"You were flayed," she said softly, not looking me in the eyes. "Beaten. Broken leg. That's what I was told."
It hit me then—my leg. Broken. Splinted. Tied in place. She didn't mention rape. She didn't need to.
I wanted to ask how long I'd been out. I wanted to ask where I was.
But the words wouldn't come.
When she left the memories crawled back like vermin.
Erik's voice. Where is she, little ghost? Tell me where Cecilia ran. Where is the crown princess?
I remember the cell stinking of mold. Of old blood. My blood.
I remember the whip curling like a question mark around my hips.
The knife gliding between my shoulders.
The way he whispered, You were born for this. You're not real. Just a shadow of her.
I didn't know where she'd gone. I didn't even know if she was alive. If this was just all a pretty illusion and I was really still there, in that room, while he watched on in sick fascination at my torment.
No matter how many times I said I didn't know or how much I pleaded for mercy, the usurper king never believed me and he always came back for his pound of flesh. I chanced opening my eyes and she didn't notice right away so I took the chance to study what I could see of the room. It was warmer here than I was used to so I had to be either somewhere heated or further south and a high stained glass dome ceiling with vegetation like a reverse greenhouse loomed overhead. It seemed to sparkle in the starlight but I couldn't make out the patterns in the dark. The walls I could see around me were lined with shelves that were populated by a variety of baskets and jars.
It struck me then that maybe someone had finally come for me, someone had got me out, away from that monster and I was afraid to hope. Afraid this was just another one of his tricks and I couldn't make myself voice my question out loud.
She emptied the basin, came back with fresh water. This time she added something bitter and sharp. Peppermint and sage, maybe. The scent coated the inside of my mouth just from breathing. Her limp was worse now, more pronounced. I heard her wince as she lowered herself back beside me.
The woman tending me had long dark hair that looked like liquid ink and elegant features. She was pale but it looked like it was only so because she clearly hadn't been in the sun in a very long time. She shifted often, like something deep inside her leg was twisted wrong. I smelled pain on her like salt on a wound.
She didn't speak. Just worked. Her hands moved like she'd done this before—like she'd seen bodies stripped like mine and stitched them back together.
She cleaned the blood from my breasts, my thighs, my hips. She didn't look away, but she didn't stare either. She was careful with the worst of it. She used her whole palm to support me when she had to turn me over.
And when the pain made my vision go white, she just whispered, Almost done.
—
RAVEN.
I took a moment to stretch my bad leg before, with a sigh, I picked up the basin one last time. With more difficulty than I'd care to admit, I dragged myself back over to the sink where the clang of metal against the basin made a resounding thud. Picking up a basket I made my way back over to my stool. Inside was string, smooth exotic-looking oversized leaves and a large jar. That jar was worth more than my life. Spelled medicine that could heal almost anything.
I'd never seen it used before and I'd only ever even seen one jar in the whole building the whole year I'd been here, and only in the madame's room on a shelf for her personal use. Being directed to use a whole jar had been … astonishing.
My fingers tingled as I stuck them in the jar and I slipped my rebellious fingers down to my mangled calf when I was sure nobody was looking. The balm made the ache ease instantly. If it helped, even a little, that would be worth the risk.
—
DOVE.
She brought a balm next. Thick, green-gold, glistening in a jar like it was made of moonlight.
"I used the good balm," she said under her breath, not to me, but maybe to someone watching. Then, more quietly, "worth more than both of us."
Her hands trembled as she applied it. The next thing I felt was relief. Sweet and sharp and burning. The balm touched my wounds and the pain dulled, like a fever breaking. For a moment, I almost wept. Not from the hurt—but from the absence of it. It became a dull, faraway thing and I could breathe again. A little.
She wrapped me again in those strange, oversized leaves. They crinkled softly with every breath. I must have looked like a corpse prepared for pyre rites.
She sat with me. Didn't speak. Just breathed. Her presence anchored me in a body that didn't feel like mine anymore.
I didn't open my eyes until nightfall, the light dulling behind my eyelids, but she was still there. Tall, slender, dark-haired. Emerald Isle beauty, with shadows behind her eyes that matched my own. She blinked when she noticed I was awake.
The room was quiet, except for music far off –flutes, laughter, wet slapping sounds. Screaming. I shuddered.
My mouth worked, I think, but no sound came. My tongue was too dry and too thick to form words.
She noticed. Came closer. Offered a cloth soaked in cool water.
"You're in the Aviary," she whispered. "I'm tending your wounds. You've been flayed... and beaten."
Aviary. The word sounded like a memory I hadn't earned yet.
I forced my lips to part. "What is the Aviary?"
She faltered. Pressed the cloth to my lips again. I closed my eyes again. I didn't want to be here, wherever here was.
"What's the Aviary?" I rasped again, more forcefully, my voice like broken glass.
She flinched and then stayed silent for a long pause.
"A whorehouse," she said finally, preferring directness to tact. Something in me cracked. Not loud. Not with screams. Just with the salt trailing down my face. I didn't know there was anything left to take.
I didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just stared at the ceiling until the tears slid down my temples. I didn't sob. I couldn't.
The Usurper never raped me. I thought that meant I'd been spared something. That some part of me still belonged to me.
I turned my head and pretended to sleep. She let me pretend. She didn't speak again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her back away to her side of the room and slide into a steaming bath nestled beside a wall of greenery. Her leg dangled over the side, and I realized she wasn't whole either. Not really.
Maybe none of us were.
—
I must have drifted because the next thing I knew was rainbow coloured lights danced behind my eyelids and a woman's voice, old and sharp, was interrupting the momentary peace that had settled in the stillness around me.
I heard her—Raven, the name came with the voice—jump to her feet.
"You best not have been sleeping, child," an older voice snapped.
"Just stretching, madame. Dove woke earlier and asked where she was, but she's been quiet since."
Dove.
The name struck me like a slap. Was it mine now?
"She understood well enough to ask a question," the madame said, her voice sharp as broken teeth. I heard the cane thump closer.
I forced my eyes open. I wanted to see her. I needed to. The first thing I saw was beautiful glass mosaics of dragons over my head and then a thin woman with a cane leaned over me. She looked surprised –then pleased.
"You didn't say how green her eyes were," she hissed to Raven.
She leaned close and pressed her gnarled hand to my brow. Her face was weathered, cruel, and clever. She didn't smile. She didn't need to.
"Rest, princess," she whispered. "You're safe here."
Liar. But I was too tired and too scared to say so and I didn't have the strength to fight it, either. So I let sleep drag me back under.
Raven
When her eyes finally closed, the madame pulled me aside and hissed, "If she dies, so do you. You'll sit here and attend to her however long it takes. Change her wrappings in 6 hours and apply more balm, this one is important and I don't want her permanently marked."
She left me with a second jar of balm and nothing else, but her slightly crooked smile looked like money.
My stomach twisted in on itself. I hadn't eaten in two days. I fumbled through the baskets and found a hunk of sweet toast and some old honey, then curled up by the shelves, chewing slowly.
The music from the gardens drifted up like smoke breaking my fragile reverie. Toxic, putrid and turning my stomach. I discarded the rest of the toast, no longer hungry.
And so I began to strip, flexing my bad calf with a small bit of satisfaction at my increased range of motion before slipping into the hot spring that overlooked the girl's spot at the table. My bad leg sat peeking out over the rim letting the balm continue its good work.
Somewhere below, someone screamed. Somewhere above, I swore I heard a dragon cry.
I stared at the sleeping girl wrapped in leaves and whispered to no one, "Who are you?"
She didn't answer. Not with words, anyway.
—
DOVE.
In the stillness of the morning the word didn't come to my ears, but to the hollow place inside me where names lived—the kind of names that reshape the world when spoken aloud. It lodged behind my ribs like a splinter of light, waiting to be remembered. When I opened my eyes the memory was lost like sand in the wind.