Only To Be Without, Book 1

Memories #1

(June 1703, Cosenza, Calabria, Italy)

Elsebeth Appolonia Calabrese, once Bianchi, saw a flame at the edge of her cell. It swam out of the outer darkness like the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and it brought tears to her eyes, both because the sudden bright light hurt them, and because it meant he was coming again.

She drew herself back tighter against the corner, trying to make herself small, hoping against hope that she could disappear entirely, that she could die and be released from this hell before he reached her.

She did not have the energy to sob, she was tired and cold and hungry and every breath made her aching ribs seize before she could finish it and she felt dizzy with lack of air. The tears slipped from her eyes silently and she stared at the packed soil of the floor beneath her, over the tops of her knees pulled to her chest, avoiding his gaze as the demon drew closer to her, setting the torch in the iron sconce on the wall.

"Are you finished yet with being a sullen child?" Carlo whispered . It was a small gift of comfort that he kept his voice quiet.

She said nothing, but that was the wrong response (everything she did was wrong now) and her head swam as the back of his hand connected with her cheek, snapping her head into the wall behind her.

She slumped sideways momentarily but he was crouching in front of her now, grabbing onto what was left of the gown she had been wearing when she had been... kidnapped, punished, imprisoned, starved, chained, beaten, raped, brutalized. A hundred different prayers spun together in her head, dear Father in Heaven, Blessed Virgin, please take me home, please let me die, please have mercy on me.

She had no idea how long she had been down here. There was no sun to be seen, no moonlight, her only grasp of time came from the fact that she had dug 100 lines into the dirt of the wall: she could feel them in the almost perpetual darkness with her fingers to count, for each time that she had fallen asleep, then woken.

The demon's visits were sometimes frequent, sometimes sporadic. Sometimes he brought food and water, sometimes he withheld it for punishment, sometimes only for spite, and sometimes he simply forgot that he needed to feed and water the chained animal he kept in the cellar.

He jerked her back upright, bits of her tangled, lank blonde hair ripped out as they caught on the uneven surface of the wall. Her already cracked lips were bleeding now; the swelling and bruises beginning anew on her cheek, already a mottled mask of green and purple like the rest of her face and most of her body.

He shook her, and her head snapped backwards painfully. The dry sound from her mouth was muffled.

"You will speak when you are spoken to."

"I will do nothing for you." She croaked and gathered what little moisture there was in her mouth and spat it into his face.

He snarled at her, baring white human teeth in an animal expression, and her heart seized in terror as a storm of black coalesced in his eyes.

Her voice was hoarse and it hurt to even speak: throat raw from long hours of screaming, voice cracking, parched from too little water for too long a time.

Her stomach lurched and her throat clenched at the thought of cool, clean water. She imagined holding her hands beneath the waterfall in the garden and drinking till it made her sick and her head ached from the cold: the pain and discomfort would be bliss.

"I am your husband, Elsebeth. You will obey me, as you vowed to."

"You're not!" The lie filled her with rage. She lashed out with one foot and both of her arms, chains clanking as she swung and kicked wildly. He batted all of them easily away and her head snapped to the opposite side as he hit her again.