The Cities

by K. A Knight

  I watch him die, we all do. As he chokes on his own blood, he tries to hold it in but it seeps through his fingers until he falls at my feet… dead. Then, I meet every eye in here, letting them see how serious I am. I’m giving them a choice. We can be better, we can be part of this world again, join the other clans, stop this fighting, and heed the outcome of the Summit and the lives lost for this.

  “Take me to the room, take me to their bodies,” I order the Berserker who is still watching the man he killed. I point at the giant man as well. “You, come with us,” I say, then I turn to the rebels. “You are in charge while I’m gone. Let who wants to leave do so. Contact the rebels and The Ring, and tell them I am coming.” I turn away then, striding from the room, but at the doorway I stop to look back at the rebels. “Oh, and throw his body to the ferals.” I grin, flicking a look back at Ivar’s corpse. With that, I storm from the room with the Berserkers and Dray on my heels, trepidation worming through me. What I am going to see now is bad, Ivar’s parting gift to me, but I know I can face it. I have survived most of my life at his hands, and I can survive their deaths at it.

  The room is actually Ivar’s torture room above the cells. As soon as I see it, I turn away. “I need to release my friend first,” I mutter, having completely forgot about Evan for a moment. They follow after me and I find Evan standing at the bars with a furious expression on his face.

  “Worth, what the fuck! I thought you were dead!” he screams, rattling the bars. “Get me out of here.”

  I nod at the giant Berserker, and he unlocks the cell door and swings it open. Evan pours out and stops behind me with a nervous look at the others, but he seems to relax when he spots Dray. “Ah, so you killed him?” he questions, and then and there he earns more of my respect. He didn’t ask Dray, he asked me.

  “Course I did. I’ve got to go bury Ivar’s final gift, then we rest here tonight. Tomorrow, we are heading out,” I inform him.

  “Where to?” he grumbles.

  “Paradise, I need my father’s help with something. I will fill you in there, go get some rest. There are rebels upstairs, tell them I sent you,” I demand, turning away as I head back up the stone steps to the room with the closed red door. I stop outside, hesitating.

  “No, I’ll stay with you,” Evan growls, and I shrug, not warning him about what lies on the other side of this door. He will have seen worse by now…right? Or maybe I am too jaded.

  Reaching for the handle, I quickly push it open before I change my mind. The smell hits me first. It might have been less than a day, but that many bodies and blood…yeah. It punches me square in the face and I have to quickly swallow. It doesn’t smell like fucking daisies out in the Wastes, but I will never get used to the smell of rotting corpses. Anyone that says they can is a psychopath.

  Not wanting to look weak in front of the Berserkers, I hold my chin up and step into the room. The lights are burning in each corner, illuminating the horrifying sight as I stop just inside the door and stare. My gaze swings from side to side, taking it all in.

  There is so much blood.

  I can almost feel the pain in the room, and every time my eyes land on glassy dead eyes in one of the slaves’ skulls I cringe. There has to be twenty of them in here, all women ranging in age from young children to adults. Every single one dead, naked, and covered in blood. They weren’t killed quickly, they suffered, and now I know why Ivar would have brought me here. He would have made me walk around each body, telling me what they did to her as he forced me to kneel and watch, and after? He would have done those things to me, not killed me of course, but everything else. It’s the exact same thing he did the last time I was in the castle with him, before I won my freedom.

  I hear someone gagging, and I glance over my shoulder to see Evan. He’s as pale as a ghost and looking like he might faint, yet his eyes can’t seem to move from the bodies. “What the fuck?” he yells and turns away, gagging again.

  “Ivar,” I whisper, looking back over the room. “Once he realised that whatever he did to my body wouldn’t break me anymore, he got good at using others. He liked to play with his slaves, he liked to hurt them,” I admit, my words sending me tumbling back into my own memories.

  “This can all stop, pet, you just need to scream for me,” Ivar taunts and laughs.

  I clamp my lips shut, my eyes locked on the girl hanging from the ceiling. Her hands are shackled together and tied to the chain dangling from above, her feet dusting the floor slightly. Her head is lowered, her long brown hair covering her face and the blood I know that’s there. We have been here for three hours. Ivar killed the first girl in the first hour. Her name was Kit. I don’t know this slave’s name, she is new.

  “Scream for me,” he whispers gravely in my ear.

  My head is locked into a wheelchair one of the warriors found on a raid. It has a clamp, which goes around my head so I can’t move, preventing me from looking away from the horrors before me. My hands are nailed to the chair arms, my blood running down the side. My ankles are bound by barbed wire, meaning every time I move it tightens and cuts into my skin more. My pain here isn’t the main focus, no, that was an afterthought. Today is all about my mind. Again and again he keeps trying to break me, it has become a game now. One I will win, but today…today is testing that resolve.

  “No?” Ivar sighs, standing back up from where he was crouching next to me.

  He wanders back over to the girl, turning sideways so he can see me as he grabs her hair and yanks her head back. Her eyes are dazed and set in pain, and blood is smeared across her cheeks and lips. Her eyes lock on me. “What shall I do to you?” he murmurs, and the girl starts to struggle. Wincing, I try to look away, but I can’t.

  Ivar leans over, letting go of the girl’s hair, and rips away her tattered bloodstained shirt. My breathing picks up as her breasts are exposed to the cold air. No, no, no, please not again. She starts to sob then, her whole body shaking.

  “Please! Please, leave me alone!” she begs.

  “What do you think, pet? It’s your choice,” he calls, mocking laughter leaving his lips as she struggles.

  “Fuck you!” she cries desperately, and I freeze. Oh, shit.

  I know before he moves it’s going to be bad, but even I’m shocked when he darts forward and bites her nipple. My eyes fly wide as she screams and he jerks back, ripping her nipple away with him before spitting it out on to the floor. Her screaming cuts off as she slumps forward, blood pouring down her chest.

  “Still no scream? Guess I need to get creative, pet.” He laughs, blood flying from his ruby red lips.

  Sands below, please no.

  “Soulmate?” Dray calls, and I shake away the memories, all of them fighting for the spotlight in my mind from merely being in this room, but I won’t let them. I lived them once, I won’t do it again. He’s dead, but it doesn’t mean his ghost and haunting memories can’t hurt me if I let them.

  “We need to bury them, there is space on the cliff edge out back.” My voice is surprisingly even despite the pain still lingering in my mind.

  “I will grab some more men,” the big man informs me, and I nod, stepping farther into the room.

  My eyes catch on the little girl in the corner. Her light red hair is stained with blood, and although I can’t see any wounds, that only makes it worse. A noise catches my attention, and I watch the Berserker drop to his knees next to a pretty blonde-haired woman who is lying on her back with a stab wound above her heart. He grabs her and pulls her to his chest, whispering to her as he rocks her dead body. I look away then, offering him the privacy he deserves as I move through the room, stepping over bodies.

  I memorize each face and burn it into my mind. They are my burden to carry and I will do so each and every day. By the time I have circled the room, men are gathered at the doorway. “One body each, cover them and carry them to the cliff. We need shovels. We’re going to bury them and give them the respect they deserve!” I yell. They move into the room then
and Dray stops next to me.

  I grab the little girl, holding her to my chest, her body cold and stiff, but I concentrate on Dray as he grabs a woman and holds her to his chest like a doll. Swallowing hard at the questions in his eyes, I turn away, needing to get away from this room. I barely stop myself from running, and with each step away, I feel a weight lifting. I wish I could burn that room to the fucking ground, but I will settle for their peace in death. The rest of the Berserkers see us as we go and they follow after us. The trek out to the cliff is hard, but each pull and pain in my muscles just reminds me I am alive.

  I lay her little body gently on the ground and look over at the crosses already buried here—our graveyard. “Let’s get digging!” I shout.

  Two hours later, all the bodies are buried, and we had a moment of silence for their deaths. With it, I vowed that they would be the last to suffer in this castle. The walls are filled with echoes of screams and ghosts, and we can never change that, but maybe we can add some good memories here too.

  We file back into the castle and the drinking starts early. I notice Ivar’s body is gone—good. I slip from the room with Dray on my heels. I might be queen, but I’m used to being by myself and right now I need some space. I feel like I’m about to explode with everything that has happened these last few days. I need a moment to just stop, to think. I freeze in the hallway, unsure where to go. I have no bedroom here, no escape. Most rooms hold pain and suffering for me, so where do I go?

  I spot Evan heading downstairs and he stops at the top. “I’m going to sleep in the cells, at least they’re familiar. I’ll see you in the morning,” he tells me and I nod, understanding that. “Oh, and Worth? Glad you didn’t die,” he shouts, before he turns and leaves Dray and me alone.

  Me too. As hard and painful as my life has been, for once I realise I’m glad to be alive. I never feared death before I met my guys, never even thought about it, but facing down Ivar, I had a niggling thought in the back of my mind. If I died, it would hurt them. I have people who care about me now, people who depend on me, and that is weighing me down. Each word or action I take has to be thought through before I make it. For tonight, I just need to be me.

  The Champion.

  Not a Berserker Queen, not a slave or a drunk. The Champion. And tonight, I will have the Seeker I always wanted.

  Pain is Pleasure

  No fucking way was I sleeping in Ivar’s room. Instead, I find myself outside of the east tower. The west one was destroyed a long time ago, but the east tower still stands strong, the spire reaching into the sky. It’s blocked off, the door locked and unused. I snuck up here once and found a forgotten bedroom. Ivar didn’t want his men to be that far away from him, and no way was a slave getting a room. One of his men found me and dragged me to Ivar, then he locked the tower after punishing me, but I still remember the glimpse of the room and freedom I found up there.

  I can’t find the key so I turn to leave, but I blink in shock when Dray rams his shoulder into the door and it breaks open, the old lock clattering to the ground. “You wanted in?” He grins.

  “You are a man of many talents, you crazy bastard,” I tease. I push the door farther open and head inside, with Dray on my heels. I look over my shoulder to see him moving the door back in place before he turns to follow me.

  Stone steps, at least fifty of them, spiral upwards, leading to the tower room. I start to head up the stairs before I hear a grunt and I receive a slap on my arse. “Hurry up, soulmate, before I throw you over my shoulder,” Dray growls.

  Men.

  I roll my eyes but speed up, my legs cramping after being stuck in a cell without much exercise. When we make it to the top, the brown wooden door is standing open so I slip inside and my shoulders relax. Finally. I’m finally away from people and their prying eyes, and I can just take a minute to relax. It’s exactly like I remember it, a forgotten gem in the midst of a medieval castle. A large, four-poster canopy bed sits opposite the doorway, pressed against the stone wall with steps leading up to it. The bed is covered in a dusty white sheet, protecting the bedding underneath. This has to be the only room in the whole fucking castle that doesn’t have some type of bloodstain somewhere. It also holds no ghosts for me.

  Two large, arched windows sit on either side of the bed, looking out across the Wastes. A balcony lies to the left, with wooden shutters covering it, darkening the room. To the right of where I am standing is another doorway, presumably to a bathroom. I glance to the left, spotting an old-fashioned dressing table and mirror, which is the only furniture in the room apart from the low-hanging, useless chandelier.

  “I’ll go get some torches,” Dray murmurs, and before I know it, he’s gone.

  Stepping farther into the room, I kick off my boots and lay them gently at the bottom of the bed, before heading straight for the balcony shutters. They are a bit stiff from years of disuse, but I manage to pry them open enough so I can step out onto the terrace. A crumbling wall surrounds it, with dead brown vines wrapped around the grey stone. It looks like a piece of the world long forgotten, a place away from the bloodshed and pain. It’s just here, existing in the center of it.

  Being careful not to rest too heavily on the crumbling wall, I lean out and look upon the wasteland spread out below us. I can see far past the courtyard and ramp into the castle, and the huts for the other warriors, and out into the dust-covered land we call home. It has a dangerous beauty about it, the sun beating down on a world that just won’t die. Our people are strong. You have to be to survive here.

  What are my men looking at right now? I wonder. Do they see the Waste and think of me like I do them? Or are they prisoners looking at nothing but four walls?

  I hear footsteps and without moving too much to give it away, I palm a knife and wait for them to draw closer. When they’re near, I spin, pressing my blade against their crotch, and when I see who it is, a smirk crosses my face. Dray grins down at me, moving closer and digging the blade in more.

  “We have been in this position before, soulmate. Do you remember what I told you?” he growls.

  “That my knife turned you on,” I reply with a laugh.

  He grins then presses closer. “Still does.”

  “Crazy bastard.”

  He licks his lips then. “So fucking beautiful.”

  “The view?” I ask, confused.

  “No, you in a crown. I told you, you’re a fucking queen. I knew it the first moment I saw you. I told Archel you would be mine. But, Taz? I was wrong—I am yours.”

  “You won a queen,” I remind him. “But I’m no queen.” I may have played that role earlier, but I am and always will be a warrior, the champion.

  He steps closer, obviously sensing that the title makes me uneasy. “I don’t give a fuck what you go by—Taz, Queen, Champion, Slave... To me you are just my soulmate.”

  My heart softens, but a strong mix of desire, urgency, and pain overwhelms me, needing to be let out. A wild lust he can take. I know he can.

  “That’s sweet, but right now I don’t need sweet. I need the man who rips out people’s throats with his bare hands. I need you feral. I need to feel alive, to feel pain and your touch. I need to be reminded that everything that happened here is in the past. Please, Dray, remind me,” I beg almost urgently. Every time we are together it seems to get violent, but maybe that’s exactly what I need from him. I don’t turn to Dray for sweet words and love, I turn to him for claiming, ownership, and pain mixed with pleasure.

  “Every day, for the rest of our lives,” he growls.

  He grabs the blade then, wrapping his hands around it, and I stare deep into his eyes. His cold gaze burns through me, and he doesn’t even wince as he throws the blade behind him, but I know it had to have cut his palm. He brings his hand up and I sigh, seeing I was right. His palm is slashed and bleeding, dripping down his arm. He laughs then, the sound moving through me, stirring my fight. “This won’t be the last drop of blood spilled tonight, soulmate.”

 
; We both snap then, bored with words. I want to feel his actions. I want his mouth, cock, and blood like he said. I want him to feel the pain ripping me in half, I want to carve it into his body, I want it all…

  I push him back, smashing into his chest until we land heavily on the stone floor. I drop my mouth onto his, biting at his lips, and he growls. He grabs my hips and throws me over his head, and I roll at the last minute, ending up crouched as he flips and stands, prowling towards me. I jump to my feet and back away, farther into the room. He follows after me, looking like a feral animal, his ice-blue eyes locked on my every move. Blood trails behind him from his hand and he still has his blades strapped over his chest.

  “Are you running from me, soulmate?” he growls.

  “Never. Just getting you exactly where I want you,” I taunt, as I spin slightly to the side and he follows, until his back is to the dressing table.

  I run at him then and he catches me mid-leap, falling back against the old, wooden table. It creaks under our weight and he smashes back into the mirror with a grunt. The glass shatters and drops around us, no doubt cutting into his back, but it only makes him wilder. He grips my hips and spins us, throwing me into the mirror.

  The air is knocked from my lungs and he’s on me in an instant. His hand grips my throat, pinning me there as he kicks open my legs and steps between them. “I love it when you fight me,” he whispers seductively, licking his lip as he squeezes harder, cutting off my air supply.

  I scramble my hands on either side of the dressing table and a shard of glass cuts my finger. I feel along the rough edge and grip it in my palm, cutting it slightly as I bring it up and press the jagged edge to Dray’s neck, drawing a drop of blood. He smirks and presses closer, causing a line of blood to drip down his chest. “You want to fight, soulmate? You want to feel that knife’s edge of pain and pleasure?”