Page 713 of Coal Hearts

I’d rouse as something hot was ladled down my throat. I’d wake spluttering as someone fed me water, reminding me too much of drowning as the guards chucked a bucket of ocean on my face.

I winced as someone tended to my injuries and begged anyone and everyone to let Ily go and me to die.

I didn’t remember what I said, but I knew I’d entreated every entity I could think of. I prayed when I’d never prayed before. I tried to make my shattered mind find that oasis of calm and concentration.

But no matter how hard I clung to living, death was a fierce undertow.

I dreamed of running in the black.

Being chased.

Being hunted.

Being butchered and eaten and burned.

I’d wake screaming, only for Ily to speak softly in our prison, telling me things I couldn’t recall, sending me back to sleep with her unconditional love.

I didn’t deserve it.

Didn’t deserve her.

But I slipped again, and more time passed.

Days.

Then weeks.

No light.

No sun.

No way of truly knowing how many nights had passed.

We existed in a perpetual one.

Never-ending.

All consuming.

Nothing but pain and misery.

* * * * *

“Henri. Henri.”

The clanging of chains and the tinny whack of metal against metal echoed in my ears. It reached down, down, down into the abyss where I now lived.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to crawl out of it for long.

My eyes cracked open.

The pain swamped me.

But...it didn’t seem as debilitating as before.

The fiery ache from dislocating my shoulder had abated, the joint now stiff and seized from the endless cold and almost constant unconsciousness. The hundred contusions along my torso and legs slowly slipped through the sickly colours of healing. A cast covered my right ankle and foot. Another locked around my left forearm above my cuff. Heavy bandages wrapped around my torso, keeping me marginally warmer but not stopping the sharp pinch each time I breathed with broken ribs.

I’d never been so badly beaten before.