The Seven Year Crow by Lanne Garrett

Author:Lanne Garrett [Garrett, Lanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YA Young Adult Fantasy Romance Fiction
Publisher: Finch Books
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I slowly came back from a fog of my own creation, my temper’s creation. The first time I woke, I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t understand why I stared up at a stone ceiling and not in my bed, safe at home in Whitwick. When I moved to touch the walls, pain surged, and the reality of where I was crashed down on me. From a sliver of light from under the door, I saw where my temper had brought me. I had been warned repeatedly but had allowed it to take control, and I paid dearly in strips of flesh and blood. I’d never make it to the end of seven years if I left pieces of myself on the floor each time I came out of my bedroom. I, like so many before me, would finish off my years as a twisted mess. I’d never survive, never be able to run, if I were hobbled in the Golden Court.

Each time I woke, I was both thankful and filled with regret. The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt. It burned and throbbed. But it was nothing compared to the pain I felt in my heart. I couldn’t do much more than lie there and cry. The tears brought an inability to taste and smell, and I was more than thankful for not smelling the rotten stench held in the air. Gone were the flowers, replaced with a disgusting odor that soured my empty stomach. Everything smelled of the dead and the prayer for death. I’ve learned that there are things worse than death, and one of those things was knowing the smells of rot were coming from my own body. I stank of infection and dying meat still hanging on the bone.

My prison cell was nothing more than a blood-stained cot on a wet, stone floor and a crude toilet in the form of a used bucket next to the steel door. There were no windows and one drain in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t a cell as much as it was a roomy coffin with better lighting. From under the door and cracks in the frame, a low flicker of light rolled in. When in complete darkness, not much light was needed to see. My eyes adjusted quickly. And once I could, I wanted to have remained blind to it all. Nail marks scarred the stone, claw marks on the floor of someone being dragged out made me wish the room had no light at all.

At the door, two plates of food and a jug of water sat, and I wondered how long I had been out. Did they feed me three meals a day or just enough for me not to die? I slowly sat up and ate my screams behind a clenched jaw. My head pounded from hitting the floor after the lashes, my skull bones taking the brunt of the landing. I swallowed back the bile. If I were to heal, I needed energy.

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