Shadow Seer [18+]

~ Eight ~

Content Warning: Self Harm / Attempted Suicide

~~~

Unwilling to get up, Sanaa lay in her bed for a long while the next morning, simply staring at the ceiling of her gilded cage. Miri arrived at the usual time, ready to dress her for the day, but for the first time in several years, Sanaa refused. She did not want to get out of bed and start another pointless day of learning more ways she could be pleasing to her abuser. She refused to partake in more fruitless activities alone.

Always alone.

There was nothing and no one for her in this place, a fact she'd always known but after Amir and Ghassan's words last night, felt heavier somehow. For years Sanaa had not felt her situation was truly hopeless, but now, the reality of her imprisonment came roaring to the foreground. She was a pig being fattened for the slaughter that was Ghassan's abuse. His words left no question about how he planned to use her and how vicious he imagined their coupling would be. Sanaa was afraid.

The last time she'd felt fear of this magnitude was the day they'd found her and stolen her away. No matter the years that had passed, Sanaa couldn't forget the heat of flames on her skin, the stench of smoke seeping into her lungs, and the ache of missing her mother. She still remembered her mother's smooth nutmeg skin. Skin that glowed in the sunlight as vibrant and beautiful as the woman beneath it. Sephina was an amazing fantastic woman and an even more spectacular mother to Sanaa and her brother, Mateus.

Sanaa's father had died only months before, a sickness of the lungs taking him from them, meaning Sephina had to raise her growing family alone. Sanaa had been determined to help in any way she could, knowing that her mother would need her to be strong and useful now that her father was gone. They had lived a good life from her father's income as the local carpenter, subsidised by her mother's holistic skills, passed down from mother to daughter for generations. Along with something else.

When Sanaa had her first vision at age five, her mother had been the one to explain what it meant. She explained what the special little mark on her body meant and how it would change her life forever. Sanaa had grown to accept and adore her power until she'd told a friend about some years later. There'd been a commotion, people at their door, angry people demanding... something. Her parents had turned the mob away and from that moment on, Sanaa had known that her power was now her secret and must be protected. They'd fled to Cotai almost immediately and lived their lives away from people who knew the power she possessed. They'd lived safely in Cotai for four years before Ghassan and his army had entered her home and destroyed what would be the rest of her life. What was the point in any of this if she would be Ghassan's whore, anyway? If he married her, it was what she would become, and she couldn't bear it.

She wouldn't.

Sanaa looked at the candelabra that hung from the ceiling. Made of iron or perhaps pewter, was bolted securely to the ceiling, she knew.

She'd tested it before.

Slowly, she sat up in bed before getting to her feet, her toes tangling in the crisp white sheets. Decidedly, Sanaa pushed at the straps of her nightgown and let it slip from her body. She gathered the material and began twisting until it lengthened, then threw it over one of the protruding branches of the candelabra. It swayed as Sanaa knotted it before realising it was not long enough.

Sanaa looked to her feet, at the white sheets that covered her bed. She hurried to gather the sheets, throwing them up and over the light fixture then began to twist. She wore no underclothes and so she stood naked, twisted the sheets into a rope.

Yes! Sanaa smiled to herself as she knotted it best she could so it would fit over head with just enough length to...

"Mistress?"