Daria was naked.
She was also gagged and blindfolded, her arms and legs bound so tightly with rope the skin beneath was chafed and bleeding. It wasn’t the only part of her that bled. The long, cross-shaped gouge they carved in her upper arm with the tip of a hunting knife was still bleeding freely and throbbing.
She had been in the trunk of this vehicle for hours, since she had awoken with the blinding pain in the back of her head where they had hit her with something blunt and heavy. Her arms were tied behind her back, her knees were drawn up against her chest, her body was racked with uncontrollable shivering.
They would kill her. Of that she was sure.
Expurgari. Terror and fury roiled in the pit of her stomach, sending the acrid sting of bile rising up her throat.
She hadn’t seen o
