Maidens

Pain

"Let me go!" Ravini cried.

"Not a chance, sweetheart," he hissed through barren teeth.

The guard, with his brown side burns, tousled hair, and pearly teeth, was supposed to be handsome, to be nice! What happened too those storybook princes that would choose the girls from the Institution?

"They never existed," Cayden would say. "It was all a tall tale meant to keep you quiet."

Ravini refused to cry as she struggled against the dragging. She felt dirty, tired, and insane with worry. Was Cayden safe? Brenden? Lerina? The camp? And the list went on and on.

"You have to stay strong," Brenden would say,

"The mission must go on. If torture happens along the way to goodness, then so be it," Lerina would tell her.

"Don't worry," Cayden would whisper, with her kind, dark eyes, full of empathy and a fierce anger to protect.

"It'll be alright," she would say.

As soon as Ravini was thrown into a cell, she knew that nothing would be alright. Her friends were in danger, because she'd ran when Cayden told her to. How could she have been so stupid? And why hadn't she tried harder to save Cayden from killing another person? Why? Why had she been too late? It seemed that in an empty, grey cell, miserable thoughts were soup to a prisoner.

She shivered and curled up, her knees closing into her chest. She stared at the bare walls devoid of hope that she could be saved. At first, she was confused. Why hadn't the king tortured her yet? Her eyebrows knit in worry. It could only mean one thing: he had something horrible in store for her, something so terrible that she'd be begging to lay in the cold, grey cell.

The guard with side burns stood vigilantly at the cell door. A thought creeped into her mind. Could she invade his mind? The king didn't know she had magic. Or did he?

Just as she was about to use her powers, she picked up a strong, magical potential energy: Cayden.
She summoned up all her strength and concentrated on contacting her friend.

Stay strong. Stay strong, she chanted to herself. That's what Cayden would want.

Don't use your powers. The King will have the advantage then.

There! She'd done it. Feeling satisfied for the first time in days, she curled up tightly to sleep, but felt a massive pang in her head. She moaned out loud from the pain, and the guard leered at her.

"Sorry, sweetheart. No can do. I can't let you out. King's orders. A mighty smart man he's, too. Knew you'd have some kinda magic. That's why he locked ya up here," he cackled.

Ravini's head began to pound louder and louder, a buzzing sound filling her ear, and she couldn't help but roll around on the floor, cursing and crying out in pain. She heard voices hiding threats, against her friends, against herself.

"No! No! Stop! Don't hurt her! DON'T HURT CAYDEN!" she screamed in a tortured voice.

And for hours on end, she screamed, cried, and wailed, feeling like no tomorrow could possibly exist. She'd been tortured mad into sleep, and even that was painful. And here she thought, torture meant chains and knives...No, she had underestimated the power of minds.

*************************************

"Lay down, Cayden. I command you," Gristo growled, shutting his bedroom door behind him. Although, calling his room a bedroom would be putting it shortly. It resembled more of a house of its own, minus the kitchen of course.