“No! Stop!” I demanded and tried to jerk from the tight leather bonds that kept me strapped to the chair, but they had been fastened so tightly it made it impossible for me to move an inch.
No amount of begging or threatening proved fruitful as Serpium grabbed vials of potions and prepared syringes of different colours and shapes, to be inserted into me. I tried to escape again, but by that time my mind was the only one left to fight since my body had faded into the chair and proved impossible to control any longer. With the amount of broken bones and throbbing pain, my muscles decided to stop fighting and surrendered to whatever may come.
“Just chop me up in front of the court,” I tried one last time, appealing to the commander’s love for blood and gory scenarios. “Have them playmoonlightwith my severed head,” I urged, remembering the game we used to play as youths when he would find objects and tried to throw them as high as the moon.
“There is no moonlight in here, prince, and your head is more valuable on your shoulders,” Serpium answered and approached with a tray full of syringes and needles, each containing different colour elixirs. He started with my legs and implanted smaller needles into the muscles, pushing a blue liquid from time to time and stopping to see how my body accepted it. Within seconds, the pain vanished and I started recovering strength in parts of my body I had taken for lost. I regained sense of my toes and could even wiggle them inside the straps.
Serpium smiled. “Works fast, doesn’t it?”
“Are you healing me?” I asked incredulously, but even as I said it and he kept poking me with the blue liquid, my body started to feel refreshed, like it belonged to me once again.
“We don’t need a broken soldier,” he uttered and proceeded to continue the healing with precision.
I could do it. I could wait until he healed my entire body. Until I regained all feeling and then try to escape. The leather straps that kept me in place only worked because I was so weak, but once my muscles regenerated and my bones resealed, I could easily break them and fight for my life.
Confidence resonated across my entire body, with tiny specks of hope that appeared abruptly, as my mind urged me to devise a plan. I watched Serpium with newly found determination, trying to grasp where he would point the needle next, trying to find a specific movement or a weakness to take advantage of once I broke free.
My eyes scanned the room, measuring the knives and blades that rested across the various wooden supports, in so many different places and I started calculating the distance and the movements I had to make to get myself free and armed.
I scanned and measured, scheming and planning, until a needle pumped in my chest and took everything away.
“Take deep breaths and try not to fight it, prince, there is no use,” Serpium repeated the same words Marreth had advised, as he stuck the long needle deeper into my chest until it reached my beating heart.
I felt it pulsating away from the sting, trying to make itself smaller and avoid the pain, but with another deep push, Serpium found it and made it stop in place. And me along with it.
Slowly, so agonisingly slowly, the commander pressed on the gigantic syringe, which made the liquid be released inside my beating heart.
That was it, I understood. Once the poison reached my system, it would be streamed to the rest of my body within seconds, and whatever plans I had, whatever I was before this, would change forever.
The commander gave me the poison, aware of every breath I took and every excruciating beat my heart still made, even though it stood poked in metal.
I swallowed sharply, probably the only gesture I would make for myself, which caused Serpium to nod encouragingly.
With that, I expelled. A single breath that became the catalyser of change.
Suddenly, my heart resumed its regular beating, which allowed for more liquid to be sucked into me at a velocious pace, mixing with my blood and every single cell that had to feed on it.
And I felt it. All over, spreading across my chest, invading my lungs and my stomach, at the back of my throat and inside my arms. It possessed me like a parasite, one that I had absolutely no way of fighting back or expelling out.
Serpium retrieved the syringe once all its contents poured into me. The accumulation of liquid left me in a hazy state, as though a veil of blurriness poured over my eyes the instant the last drop entered my bloodstream.
I remained quiet, relaxed, and breathing more calmly. My body accepted the elixir so easily and I would not deny it, it felt good. Pain started fading away as soon as the substance reached a specific part of my body and I was grateful for it. Happy to have the pain finally disappear.
For so long I had been trapped in it, but I did not remember why. I only felt it vanishing.
And I felt relief.
“That’s it, prince.” A hand reached my face and opened my eyes wider, scanning my pupils. I blinked a few times to show them that I felt good, that whatever was happening to me, I enjoyed it.
I did not want them to take the sensation away. It felt too good now, I had grown used to it and it offered tranquillity, like the days when I used to sneak out in the garden and hide in the hollow of the big orange tree with an entire plate of peach-filled seed cakes.
Why was I in a tree?I struggled to remember, the memory hazy and fading away, like I had just woken up from a dream and the images decomposed right in front of my eyes.
“Don’t fight it,” the voice by my side said. “It will get easier in a few hours.”
Fight it? Fight what?I only felt bliss.
Chapter Nine
