Last Rank

Chapter 8

- Elly -

The cart rattled to a halt. Elly groaned. She had hoped for all the painful shaking to stop, but now that it came, it did not bring the relief she had craved. Her body hurt well without it. She had taken too many beatings, sat too long in this uncomfortable crouching position.

The curtain got lifted, an ugly face stole a peak at her through the iron bars of the cage she was trapped in like a filthy animal.

The face was covered in bloody bandages and unhealthy pale. It grimaced with satisfaction upon seeming her miserable.

Then the darkness returned.

Elly had come to wonder if that was her punishment for disobeying her father, for stealing her mother's savings or abducting the Goldsteins' horse. If she had done one thing less, committed one sin less, would it have made a difference?

Surely if those men hadn't spotted Mr. Stingley from afar, they would have never noticed her. If she hadn't had her mother's savings with her, they would maybe not have had that much interest in her. If she had obeyed her father, she would have never been on that road.

And if she hadn't met the Count, it would have never come so far in the first place.

No, irrational.

Absent-mindedly Elly scratched at an itch behind her ear. Frightened whispers caught her attention. She regarded the other girls for a long moment. Some crouched together, others tried to have a glimpse at the outside through the slits of the curtains. They had screamed hours away, just like her, but no one dared rise their voices anymore.

What had been all their sins then?

No, this wasn't punishment. This was all wrong. This feeling of hopelessness. Being at cruel men's mercy, this brutality the captors practiced, nothing of it was deserved.

Elly fought tears, wishing for her mother to brush them away for her. To hug her to sleep like she had done when Elly had still been little and afraid of the dark.

She wished for her brother to come and protect her, like he had done when she had picked fights with the boys in town she shouldn't have.

And she wished for her father's pat on her shoulder and his strong worlds of harsh, yet good meant, advice.

Elly had never known how much she had depended on all of that. How lost she was without any of it.

Well, too little, too late.

The curtain rose again, and the man Elly had injured fumbled at the lock to the cages. He held and arm to the badly bandaged gush at his chest while he opened the door and yelled at the girls to move.

Elly thought she heard the men speak something about an auction. An auction for what, though? People?

The first one to leave the little safety of the cage was a boy whose appearance was more feminine than some girl's Elly knew. As far as Elly had talked to her companions, he was the only one who was here willingly. Some other hadn't been able to pay debts with money and had to pay with their lives instead.

The boy held himself with pride and when it was finally Elly's turn, she tried to mirror his dignity in this horrible situation. Even if she felt broken, she would not give her capturers the satisfaction of knowing that.

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