It was funny. Nesta had never before been grateful for the huge gaps in her memory. She had never thought to be grateful that she couldn't remember her past.

But today, she was very, very grateful for it. Because, when she came to, naked and tied to a chair, her body covered in bruises and cuts, she was very, very grateful that she couldn't remember what happened since Anatoliy dragged her out of the royal palace.

All she could remember now were the vaguest details. She remembered Anatoliy bringing her to this warehouse, somewhere on the outskirts of town, where any hope that Count Valiev was waiting to intercept Anatoliy was dashed, and any hope of rescue along with it.

She remembered that there was another man here, a Solniyan, and that, between him and Anatoliy, he was the more dangerous of the two. She knew he'd questioned her, that he'd been the one who'd given her the bruises and cuts that now mottled her flesh.

But she knew all this in the cold, clinical way you knew something you read in a book. Which was to say that she knew it in a way where she felt little attachment to the facts her tattered mind now laid out for her to peruse.

She also knew that she hadn't answered any of the man's questions.

Another reason to be grateful to her broken mind.

It was cold, in the warehouse, and they'd left her alone, and Nesta didn't want to think, didn't want to remember. Part of her wanted to give up, to go to sleep and never wake up.

She'd wanted that before, she remembered.

No. No! 

She shoved that memory, and all the rest that crowded behind it, back down into the depths of her mind. She tore that hole back open again, ripped her mind apart. She refused to remember. She refused.

The thing within her, the ugly, powerful, hateful thing... 

It shifted. It uncoiled. It surged through her veins, and when Nesta tried to tamp it back down again, to bury it in the pit of her stomach where it had slumbered for so many years, it broke free of her grasp.

She hissed as her blood heated, as her heart began to race. Her vision seemed to sharpen, and the dim and dingy warehouse suddenly seemed bright to her eyes, the faint light stark and harsh, the shadows crisp.

Nesta shuddered as the thing seemed to take over. She could have sworn it was speaking to her, that it was whispering in her mind.

No. It wasn't that thing inside her. It was the very shadows themselves, she thought. The shadows... They whispered to her. They sang to her. The way they used to...

Was this madness? This thing that no longer slumbered within her–was it the same as the gaps in her mind? Was it just another sign that she was going mad?

Or perhaps she had always been mad...

I woke once before, the thing within her seemed to whisper, like a gentle stroke to soothe her frantic mind. Do you remember? You liked it when I woke.

Nesta shuddered and wished she could press her hands to her ears, to block out that awful voice. Her hands strained against her bonds, but she couldn't get free.

"Shut up," she hissed aloud.

But the thing within her merely laughed.

✦————✴————✦

Time passed. Nesta didn't know how long. It could have been hours; it could have been days, or weeks, or an eternity.

The light didn't change in her prison. Day and night were impossible to distinguish in the murky gloom.

Anatoliy and the Solniyan came back several times. They brought her water, tepid and dubiously clean, but no food. They questioned her more; Nesta knew they did. But she could never remember what happened before her mind went ominously black. Every time she emerged from the darkness of her own thoughts, she had new bruises, new cuts.

And she was hungry, so hungry. And cold.

She thought it might be the hunger and the cold that had finally driven her mind.

Or perhaps it was that thing inside her, the madness that had lurked for so many years, buried deep within her where even she sometimes forgot about it.

But you called on me, it whispered to her in the gloom of her prison. Oh, so many times, you called. And I came. Do you remember? I came.

Nesta tried not to remember. She tried not to remember the pattern of a playing card changing in her hand. She tried not to remember the nights when men would stalk her in the dark of the streets, and never find her. She tried not to remember how she'd hidden from the port officials on the night she'd arrived in Zaryevsk, how it had seemed like they should see her, like she wasn't that well hidden, and yet...

She tried not to remember lying on a too-soft bed, pinned beneath a heavy body, beating at him with her tiny fists and screaming, but instead of her voice, something else came out instead.

She tried not to remember, just like she tried not to listen to the shadows as they whispered to her.

But she did.

✦————✴————✦

Nesta didn't know how long she'd been held in the murk and the damp when the Solniyan came into her prison alone for the first time, and her mind screamed an unnecessary alarm at her.

He'd never been alone before. Anatoliy had always been with him.

Danger, the shadows whispered to her, or perhaps it was her own mind. She couldn't tell the difference anymore.

"Well," the man murmured as he approached her. There was a strange tenderness in his voice that made Nesta feel sick. "I confess, I did not expect you to last this long."

Nesta shuddered.

"I was told not to underestimate you. I should have listened. But perhaps this will make you talk."

Nesta shrank back as he began to undo his belt.

Oh, Saints, no. Not this. Not again.

Wait, not again? She couldn't remember... But she knew...

She had made a vow, once, her mind supplied. She had vowed... Never again.

The thing within her began to pulse, to throb, to strain against her control. Her veins felt like they were full of liquid fire. Her heart began to race. Her head spun. It was a heady rush, like a bolt of pure energy shot through her heart as instincts she didn't know she had took over.

"He didn't want me to do this," the Solniyan continued as his trousers fell down around his ankles. "But nothing else is working. So, shall we begin?"

Nesta let go.

Light and shadow erupted around her as the shadows' whispers turned into screams.

Never again, the shadows cried. Never again, Nesta's mind replied. Never again, the thing within her agreed gleefully as it poured out of her with all the force of a raging torrent, now that it had finally been set free.

Never, never, never, never.

And she let herself lose control. 

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