Coveted [New/Revised Version]

THIS DAY WE FIGHT

MUSICAL INSPIRATION: BREATH OF LIFE by FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

The number of days that lapsed since her kidnapping blurred severely. Hours melded into days and days stretched for eons. There were only three things she was conscious of: the shifting of her spiteful wardens, Lisa and her grimoire, and the sweltering pain of every ceremonial spell casted. Lisa did them interval, conscious if she overdid them, they could be fatal to Iris. Though the spells lasted no longer than seconds did, the agony lasted hours.

With every spell Lisa would slashing her. Iris' eyes would pool as what felt like microscopic scores of beasts clawed at her from the inside, leaving her flesh ragged and bleeding. She screamed until she was hoarse. Wept until her eyes were red rimmed, swollen, and devoid of tears. She quickly discovered blacking out did not equate to sleeping.

It only alleviated her pain for an instant. When that moment was over, her reality would pick up where it left off. Despite her pain, she struggled and jerked in her shackles to free herself. She only ever succeeded in making her wrists raw and bloody. Her body was weaker now and she got sweaty and exhausted quicker than she'd ever imagined.

It was utter Hell on Earth. Whether she was fed bypassed her remembrance. Food was irrelevant. Showers were irrelevant. The only swirling thought in her brain was her endless torment and the dire need to escape it.

Half of the time she was barely aware of where she was or what was happening until pain shot through her fragile body. Only fragments of reality seeped through her haze of anguish. Being dragged up on a plane, trapped in a seat between Blake and Kay, escorted into a mansion then down to a basement where she was bound again. She'd learned those chains didn't let her use her magic. Without being able to fight, without her magic too, she was helpless.

She hated it but couldn't dwell on it long. Not when she suffered every waking second. She found she couldn't revert into herself—that she didn't have that lovely perk victims usually had where their brains shutdown. There was no anesthetized state of being for her. Only Lisa, her athame and spells, and her guards.

She kept a sort of time with their rotation. There weren't any windows, but through conversation she gathered Galilea came in the mornings, Blake in the evenings, and Kay at night. She never understood why but she knew their weak link. So she decided to push her luck when Blake came for his shifts. He wasn't quick to respond to common insults like Connor.

No, he was more complex—more even-tempered. Trying to set him off became her experimentation. With that, she could cope with her afflictions; she could focus on her findings. Mentally breaching him seemed harder than compulsion at first. However, with nothing to pass the time, she found eavesdropping was her new entertainment.

Then she found the one thing that could push cool, calm, and collected Blake over the edge. Loyalty. Specifically, his loyalty to Zairian. And so she tried using it against him.

Her questions never ceased to irritate him:

"Why do you stay faithful to him?"

"Do you really think once he gets what he wants—becomes all-powerful again—he won't change?"

"What do you think will happen to you when he reevaluates things and you don't fit his agenda anymore?"

"How are you going to deal when he does something you don't like—something so horrible that redemption isn't even on the table?"

"What do you owe him?"