The Cursed Lamb

Chapter 16: Thrown to the Wolves

Three days had passed since she was condemned to her death. Three days of mental and physical torture that was ripping her apart. She didn't remember what clothes felt like, she couldn't even fathom what being clean felt like.

The life she lived in the past seemed like a distant, fading dream. Her memories were in shambles and she had lost too much weight. The red hair she used to call beautiful was knotted so tightly to the back of her head that it hurt.

The red color was no longer vibrant, either. It was a rusty, darker color, almost dark brown from oil, dirt, and lack of nutrition.

She was on the brink of death.

The guards had noticed that she could no longer walk and that she had stopped talking. Her breaths were shallow and she would shiver violently in the cold of her cell as she slept.

And she no longer screamed or cried when she was being tortured, which made the king angry.

After all, it wasn't fun to play with a broken toy.

All she did was sleep. Even when she was being tortured, she would frequently fall unconscious. Ice water would be dumped on her to wake her up, but even then, she would quickly fade away soon after.

Just because she refused to admit that they had broken her, didn't mean they hadn't.

The guards starved her and hardly provided her with clean water. Perhaps, that was the cause of her always falling unconscious. The infected wounds on her back and legs weren't helping, either, and she knew that she was approaching death.

Everyone knew that she was approaching death.

Which was why her final execution has come. The king and the royal family had gotten bored watching a broken, hardly alive girl being tortured. It was like a cat and a bird - the cat plays with it until the bird has lost all fight.

Only when the bird has lost all fight does the cat kill it.

Adalia knew that her time was coming as well, and she was at peace with her passing. No longer would she have to live through the bitter winters, barely clutching onto warmth as she tended to the fire to warm her home all night long.

No longer would she be a peasant, scrabbling for scraps to feed her starving belly. No longer would she be whipped, caned, tormented, and humiliated in the presence of the royals who mocked her.

Her mind and her body were broken. Shattered completely, no trace of hope could be found in her bones. Perhaps the only thing that still remains untouched was her soul.

It itched to be released from the body which confines it, begging to be free from this world so that it may join the spirits and sing their haunting melody with the frigid wind. Maybe she belonged not with this world, but another.

Cast aside, forgotten, broken, shattered. Perhaps she served no purpose in this life, perhaps she was simply an orphan in a world that turned their backs on her. Like trash, discarded and left to rot. Like dirt, trampled on without another thought. Her once radiant, beating heart was now torn and littered with scars.

Her heart was as battered as her skin.

And yet, she couldn't help but find a certain beauty in that. Beauty because despite all the ugliness, despite all the evil, despite all the heartache, she never once let bitterness dictate her words nor actions.

She refused to let bitterness make her even more miserable in her last days. She didn't need to be anymore miserable than she already was, so she cast aside bitterness on the roadside for another soul to pick up.