XII
I hadn’t experienced such vivid, violent nightmares in months. Memories that I’d worked so hard to suppress rushed back to me in perfect detail. Visions of thirteen years prior; a giant, ugly man handing my parents a bag of gold. He stared at me like a prized horse while my family avoided any final contact with their child. I remembered the sensation of his soft leather gloves gripping my bare skin with perfect clarity. I begged and pleaded for my mother to change her mind as he threw me into the carriage without remorse. I was their daughter. How could they hand me over in exchange for a few pieces of metal?
I was brought to a cold, dimly lit basement where others my age and older- both male and female- were chained against the walls. In the center of the room loomed an instrument I
