Chapter 41

Warning: the following chapter consists of mentions of attempted rape. Reader discretion is recommended.

Dom had remained silent for a while now, and Iris thought maybe he had gone back to sleep, but she found him staring at nothing on the dragon-painted ceiling.

She tried again, with a different approach:

“The first time he had gotten me banished from the sacred temple, he was not content with my simple banishment. Like banishment wasn’t enough of a punishment in his eyes, so he had me found, lured, and captured in such a way that no one suspected him for over a century, and by that time there was no one to put him in his place.

I—I spent the next eight, nine decades in magically fortified, cemented walls built for animals, on an operation table being cut open daily and injected with so many potions and chemicals. For the first couple of decades, they would take me from my cell to the operation theater and back once they were done with me for the time being,