Storm Born

Pain. Four simple letters, one little word. It didn’t even sound that threatening, really, and it certainly didn’t encompass the depth of what he’d put me through.

Every hour, every minute, every second was torture. Detailed and intimate. A bone-deep anguish that stripped me down to the marrow.

I didn’t know where I was. The ground was hard and unforgiving, just like every other surface I’d lain on for… however long I had been here. My body was soaked and beaten, like I’d been drowned and pummeled with an inch of my life.

For all I knew, I had been.

“Fascinating,” a hoarse voice said. “She survived the torrent. I did not believe she was so strong.”

“Nor did I,” he said. Him. The man who did this to me. The man who stabbed me with a crystal blade in the middle of a hurricane. “She is a last resort, but she has proven far more industrious than my other targets. Let us see if she can withstand the other trials.”