Chapter 11 - The Punishment Mansion
"Strip her," Madam Fion commanded.
In any instant, aggressive hands ripped off her dress till there was nothing left. Her son had been pulled away from her the moment she had been dragged into the empty room.
They set him aside, far away from her. But she could see him, untouched.
Unpunished.
As it should be.
The women dumped buckets of water on Idalia. Their whips were swift against her skin, painful like a thousand tiny needles.
She forced her cry to remain nothing but a whimper, a grunt, a heavy breath through gritted teeth. Her throat hurt with restraint and when her back bled, her eyes watered.
"You," Madam Fion said, breathlessly. She pulled up Idalia's face by her chin, and spat on her. "Know your place."
There was a dull ringing in Idalia's head.
All this for a bucket accident she didn't even commit?
She smiled and that did nothing but enrage Madam Fion. She stared at Idalia in confusion for a moment, as if she was trying to decipher her.
Then her face twisted with anger. "Bring the child."
Idalia sprang up despite her restraint. "You will not touch him!"
But someone did and the next second, all Idalia could taste in her mouth was blood. The scream of the maid whose hand had held her son pierced through the room.
Idalia's arms went around crying Arik as she let the maid go. She stumbled back, and Idalia watched her skin stitch itself back together.
Another Unstable.
Like the one that had been dragged away before her auction.
The room stared at Idalia like she was mad.
"No one touches my son," Idalia declared, her breath coming out ragged.
"That's alright. You and your son can get punished together."
The maids had moved quickly, and before Idalia knew it, she was being dragged out of the mansion. Then staged across the field that the spikes of heads had been placed on recently -though now removed, then through the woods, 'till they finally stopped in front of a mansion that looked like it had been pulled out of a nightmare.
They pushed her into it. And right before they locked the doors, one said to her, "Just never come back, like the others."
Like the others?
What had happened to the others?
Then the doors swung shut.
There.
She and Arik stood in silence.
In darkness. With only the sound of the door echoing around them.
Finally alone, Idalia's shoulders dropped and her breath quivered. She looked around at the large receiving room.
It was empty, and neat.
Neat in a way that reflected something hadn't been in use for a long time.
It felt cold.
The words of the maid echoed in her head.
Just never come back, like the others.
Her body trembled slightly, and she turned sharply in a direction where she thought she heard something.
There was nothing there. But her mind was certainly already coming up with different images of what she believed could be locked in here.
Before the maids had pushed her here, they had to remove the chains around the doorknobs and open the big padlock that had been purposely there to keep people out of it.
Just never come back, like the others.
Maybe she had been brought here as food to whatever it was that lived here. That wouldn't be surprising, after all, Madam Fion had called them food.
Maybe whatever lived in here was what the vampires became when they consumed too much blood or too much of anything that gave them the power they had.
Idalia still found it confusing how they were capable of all they were without having a counterpart like a wolf. But maybe that lack of balance was affecting them. Maybe it was what had happened to whatever was in here.
She went back to the door to try and push it open but it didn't budge.
She searched around for windows, buried under thick curtains. She could see the sun setting outside.
The windows wouldn't open either and the glass looked like one that would be absolutely difficult, if not impossible, to break.
Trapped.
Idalia paced around, searching for more escape routes and ending up with nothing. Then she stopped in the middle of the receiving room, and she shifted from one foot to another.
"Arik? Are you scared?"
Arik babbled something and she chuckled.
She was terrified.
But sometimes, fear became so much that one didn't know what to do with it.
Like right now. She didn't know what to do with this feeling.
But she knew that she didn't like the fact that she was naked. Nor did she particularly fancy the fact that she had no weapons.
Besides every move she made hurt. She needed to take care of her cuts, and she needed any piece of clothing to wear.
The receiving room was absolutely empty so it couldn't provide her with anything that she needed.
So, like a moth drawn to the flames, like a sailor answering the songs of a siren, Idalia took the first step on the stairway that led to the floors above.
The room seemed to spin around her with each move she made, but Idalia had concluded that it was just the heaviness of her head and the blood loss she was experiencing.
She wasn't used to bleeding for long. Her wolf would usually heal her wounds but now…
A bird flew over her and Idalia flinched, almost missing her steps and tumbling to the ground, but her hand held the railing tightly, just as her grip around Arik became firmer.
With her pulse racing, she turned in the direction that the bird had perched. It was somewhere in the receiving room, standing on the piece of silver rod that was attached to the ceiling.
A raven.
Idalia let out a gasp.
She hated ravens.
The feathers were as black as the night and there was something about its eyes that made her feel uneasy.
Then it gave a gurgling croak, before it said, "Hello, Coin."
Well, that did it.
Idalia's feet flew across the floor. She didn't stop. Not until she was in a room with the door slammed shut behind her.
While she gasped for breath, Arik laughed. It was infectious, and she laughed too.
She straightened up with conviction.
She had to get out of this place.
But in this room, there were different pieces of cloth covering different packed items.
They were stained with neat, as neat as the room was.
If Idalia did not believe it before that someone was living here, now she did. If whatever was living here could be so resourceful that everywhere was exceptionally well taken care of, but still locked away in this mansion, then Idalia dreaded coming face to face with it.
She had to get out of here.
Now.