Page 2 of Bound By Blood and Lies

Her cry is guttural as I watch the hulk behind her rip her head back by her hair. Her neck bends at an awful angle as hisdisgusting penis penetrates her. As he pulls out this time, I see the blood and remind myself not to be sick. She warned me. She told me he wouldn’t stop until blood had been spilt.

How is this training? How is this okay for his bloodline? I refuse to buy into his narrative that this is anything but torture. He tortures women simply because he can. Because his bloodline isn’t strong enough, isn’t elite enough, isn’t pure enough. He can convince himself of whatever helps him to sleep at night but I know the truth. Robyn knows the truth.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I feel his hard cock press against my spine, and I try to use all my training not to flinch as the stench of onion washes over me. The sick fuck is getting off. Is it his daughter being naked? Or being raped? Or is it the power he has over us right now? Maybe he’s just so turned on by cock he can’t fucking help it. I refuse to believe a man who loves women can treat women like this. No, Fisher doesn’t love women… he loathes them. But men… men he loves.

“Blood is so beautiful isn’t it, wife?” Fisher sneers in my ear as he licks my earlobe and I shudder involuntarily.

I don’t answer. I haven’t spoken to him since the first day and I know it’s getting to him. I can see it in the twitch of his eyes and the way his fists clench. But I don’t care. The thing is hewantsme to talk; hewantsme to engage and now that I know that I would rather die than let him hear my voice ever again.

My fingers twitch behind my back as if they are searching for hers across the concrete that separates us. I can’t reach her. I know I can’t. But if I could just touch her, just once, I could anchor us both. I try to remember her laugh. It was always so loud and unfiltered. The way she threw her head back when something genuinely surprised her. Now instead of laughter there are tears, instead of her throwing her head back in joy, it’s in pain.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Something shifts in me as I hear her scream. It’s the part of me that survived Father, the part that survived training, the part that learned how to catalogue weakness and wait. Fisher thinks this is punishment. He thinks this is dominance. What he doesn’t realise yet is that he is building something with every rape, every whip, and every scream. I lift my chin slightly.

Robyn’s blue eyes land on me as I mouth “I’m here.”

She nods.

I’m still here.

And when this ends,because it will end, I am going to kill him. Not quickly. Not mercifully. But completely. The sound lands for one final time as the hulk groans his pleasure. This time, instead of flinching… I memorise it.

CHAPTER 1

FAE

28TH DECEMBER

The mattress sinks under her weight when she shifts and the pitiful springs beneath it groan like they’re tired of holding us. When I first arrived, we only had one mattress between us. Forgood behaviour, we got another mattress that actually has a bed frame. Of course, it wasn’t actually for good behaviour, it was for Fisher to rape me easier without hurting his back. He can dress it up how he likes but I know the truth. Our bodies are maps of the cuts, welts and bruises that have been left behind by cruel hands. The bed frame makes it easier to tend to them as best as we can.

It’s like some sick rota. One day it’s Robyn, the next it is me. It does mean that Fisher doesn’t need to help us though. We became our own nurses. On the days she can’t help, I do. On the days I can’t help, she does. I’m sure a couple of my ribs are broken. The pain every time I breathe in stabs through me like a knife.

I kneel beside her with a bowl of water that’s already gone pink. It smells like antiseptic and iron, and the mixture makes me swallow a gag. I’m nauseous all the time now. Robyn isshaking as I wipe more of her blood away. Her whimper hits me deep in my soul and I silently wipe away the tear that escapes my eye.

“Hey,” I whisper even though there’s no one else here. “I’ve got you.”

Her lip trembles. It is the same one that used to pout at boys who didn’t text back fast enough. The one that used to grin at me across lecture halls as we shared a private joke no one else understood. Now it has been split open again. The gash never has time to properly heal.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes.

The words gut me. I press the fabric into her shoulder gently but she flinches. Her fingers fist into the thin blanket beneath her as more whimpers fall from her mouth.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say, firmer this time. “Do you hear me? Nothing.”

I dip the cloth back into the water and wring it out slowly. I can’t rush. If I do, I will hurt her and I refuse to hurt her any more than the world already has.

Robyn starts crying, not the quiet tears from earlier. No, these are the kind that break out of your chest like they’ve been trapped there for too long. In one breath, I hate that she’s crying, in the next I love that she still can. It means she’s not empty yet. It means my soft but loud best friend is still in there somewhere. Even if she’s changed slightly. I move closer so my hip is touching the mattress and press my forehead to hers as I breathe her in.

“I look disgusting,” she whispers, turning her face away from me.

“You look like you survived,” I answer as my throat tightens.

“I don’t feel like it,” Robyn shakes her head weakly and sniffles.

I offer her a weak smile as I brush her hair from her forehead. It’s matted with dried blood, and I clench my jaw at the new gash by her temple. Robyn wasn’t lying when she said she looked disgusting. Although disgusting may be the wrong term. Destroyed is more like it. There isn’t an inch of skin that looks untouched to me.