08 : Torture Begins.

MARIA

Maria jerked up from her bed when she heard the sound of the door being opened. She couldn't believe that she was actually thinking it, but damn, she was excited to see him. She was actually anticipating this round of questioning.

He had not been here in the past four days and although Edgar had been giving her her regular meals, she still felt restless. She wondered if maybe her captor was starting to get frustrated by her answers and had decided to stop questioning her altogether.

She wondered if maybe he had decided to kill her seeing as she was of no use to him. But he wouldn't feed her if he planned on killing her, would he?

But then when the door slid open, it wasn't him that walked through it, neither was it Edgar—although she had not been expecting him. The point was that, it wasn't anyone she knew.

They weren't people she knew.

Two leanly built men traipsed into the cell, both blondes, and the looks on their faces told her that they hadn't come to chat with her.

She sat up quickly when they stormed towards her cell, unlocking it and flinging it open, then walking in to lift her out of her bed bodily when she protested. Her heart slammed against her ribcage, threatening to beat right out and land at her feet. What was happening? She had only been joking when she thought that Bran wanted to kill her. She didn't think that he was actually going to do it!

Were they taking her to kill her? She couldn't die. She just couldn't.

"Let me go!" She yelled, fighting against them. But their hold was strong and each of them was ten times stronger than she was. There was no way her little movements were going to budge them.

They dragged her out of the cell despite her protests. They didn't even bother to kick the gate of her cell shut, simply dragged her with them as they marched towards the door.

She was scared. Scared and angry. Scared that these men were going to kill her, or at the very least, harm her. And angry that her captor was too much of a coward to come and get her himself. Maybe he didn't want to get his hands dirty with her blood? So asking his men to do it for him was better?

Anger had her taunting the men. "Is your commander too much of a coward to come get me that he had to send his little boys?"

She got no reply from the men, although one of them gave her a killing look. They walked out of the cells and for the first time since she had been abducted, Maria was seeing something other than the inside of her cell. She was seeing something other than black.

The walls were painted in a cool light blue colour. She found herself wanting to push away from the men and plaster her dirty and hot body against the walls to know if they actually felt as cool as she thought they did. But she didn't want to fight the men. She was Maria Hatzi, a sorceress as dangerous as she was calm. These men weren't going to get a rise out of her. She wasn't going to give her captor the joy of watching her squirm—if he was.

The man to her right shackled her hands behind her just as they turned onto another corridor.

"Scared of a little girl?" She smirked tiredly, her eyes shooting daggers at him.

He gave her a lusty once-over. "Not everything about you is little."

She couldn't hide her revulsion. He was disgusting and he deserved to die for that alone. He was so lucky she didn't have her powers, else, he would have died a quick, but very painful death for even daring to look at her in that manner.

She refrained from saying another word and they walked on in silence, her breath bouncing annoyingly with every step that she took. If only the men could walk a bit slower. Their legs were longer than hers and for every step they took, she had to take two to keep up. If she stalled, they dragged her and she would stumble clumsily, making her hate herself even more.

She couldn't believe that she had been reduced to this person. That men she usually killed with just a snap of her finger, were now treating her this way. Her hatred for her captor increased.

But not only could she blame her captor, she also blamed Ariti for making her into the person she had been. If not for Ariti, she would not have killed the royal family that day and hence, her capture would never have taken place.

A door came into sight and somehow, she knew that was where the men were taking her. Her heart drummed against her chest. One of the men—the one who had made that comment about her body—grinned evilly at her, probably having heard her reaction.

Gods, she really really hoped she lived long enough to kill him. If not for anything else.

He twisted the door knob, pushing the door open and the other man dragged her in.

Two things happened simultaneously. Her jaw dropped and she stumbled, her legs twisting around each other and the next thing she knew, she was falling face down on the floor. She was going to break her nose, or any other bone in her body because she her hands were bound behind her and there was no way she could break her fall.

A hand lashed out and caught her when she was mere inches from the ground. The person righted her, then shoved her away when she was back on her feet.

She turned around quickly in time to see the man she had been expecting to see for the past few days. She hadn't seen him when she initially came into the room because she had been too focused on what was in the middle of it. Right now, she even dreaded looking at it. So, instead, she focused on him.

He wore a black shirt that covered his arms totally and equally black trousers. Did this man wear anything other than black?

He stared at her for a fraction of a second before dismissing her, turning away to walk to the far end of the room where a set of chairs were arranged. Chairs just like the one in the middle of the room.

Swallowing, she turned and fixed her eyes on what she knew was solely arranged for her. Or maybe it had been there all along and it was just her turn to use it, but she knew that was the reason the men had dragged her in here.

Arranged at the centre of the room, was an iron chair and table. The chair was plain, in good condition. Nothing wrong with it whatsoever. What terrified her. Was the table. It carried a sharply curved blade, not that big, the size of her palm.

She didn't need to be told what its use was.

The men grabbed her, hauling her towards the chair placed in front of the table and forcing her down on it. Did they have to be that rough? She wasn't even fighting them. She was too numb to do anything.

They locked the straps from the chair around her hands and legs, holding her in place. Even if she managed to rock the chair sideways, there was no way she would be able to get free without help.

Her hands were pushed to the table and kept in place by black leather collars. She was sitting on a chair, her hands stretched out on the table in front of her, waiting to be chopped off. Because that was what they were going to do to her. They were going to attempt to cut her hands off.

The blonde men stepped back after checking to make sure that she couldn't move, then retreated out of the room. Before the doors could close behind the, a small man walked into the room. The closer he got, the chiller Maria's blood got. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he was the one going to be torturing her, because yet again, her captor was too much of a coward to do it himself.

He stood in front of her, his face in a sort of creepy smile that didn't do anything to help her blood pressure. If what they planned to do to her didn't kill her, then she was going to die of a heart attack.

Her eyes darted to her captor who sat in the corner of the room, watching everything happening before him with dead eyes. His eyes locked with hers. Cold. Emotionless. How had she found this man attractive?

"I'm sure you already know what's happening."

She didn't even grace him with an answer. He was a cold hearted bastard and she hoped that he would die in a fire. Slowly and painfully. Just like what he planned to do to her.

"You have one last chance to answer my questions." His voice was flat. "Why did you kill my parents?"

"I've told you before. I don't know."

He didn't react. His face was still carefully blank.

"Where did you take my sister?"

What was wrong with him? Did he think that she was lying? Her life was on the line right now—okay, not her life, more like her hand—did he think that she would withhold the truth from him when the consequences were so dire?

"I don't know!" She yelled, frustrated.

Silently, her captor nodded to the man standing in front of her and her eyes flew from him to the man's hazel ones, just as he pressed a black button on the table and the blade whirled to life, rolling for a bit before starting down on the path that lead to her wrist.

She jumped in her chair, unable to move. Her eyes darted around, searching for any means of escape, but there was none. She decided to try again with her captor.

"I'm not lying to you. Why can't you just believe me?" Her voice rose with panic, her muscles knotting and her forehead sweating as the blade moved closer to her hand. "Get a mind-reader. An oracle. Anyone. They'll tell you I'm speaking the truth!" She cried.

But that still didn't move him. He stared at her blankly, his expression as vacant as the man's standing in front of her. The blade was only a few inches from her hand.

"Please." She begged for the first time in as long as she could remember.

Maria Hatzi. Begging. Who would have thought?

But she was helpless and she didn't have a choice. If that blade touched her hand, then she was as good as dead. She had not yet frozen into her immortality. Which meant that her hand wouldn't regrow. She was going to freeze into her immortality with one palm and she was going to have to live with it forever.

She thought she saw something in her captors eyes, but in a flash, it was gone. The look he gave her was one of a man who had made up his mind.

She was going to lose her hand.

The hatred she felt for him in that moment was so deep and almost physical, that she felt it pressing on her chest.

With tears welling in her eyes, she stared at the blade closing in on her hand.