[i]The walls were dark stone and spattered with blood, old and new. A crack of a whip and a white line shot across her vision and she screamed with the sudden agony across her back. And her torturers laughed, and again the whip bit her, again and again, until there was no skin left for it to tear.[/i]
Aery awoke to hands fluttering over her, over her face and torso. She screamed and swatted at the hands, thinking they meant her harm. Then a candle lit and she realized where she was. In her bed, safe in her room. One of her maids, an urchin named Lillyan, hovered over her. In the light of the candle she signed to Aery. YOU O-K? SCREAMING CRYING. BAD-DREAM?
Aery nodded, not trusting her trembling hands to sign back. "I'm fine." She whispered. But obviously she wasn't. Obviously by the tears streaming down her face, by the shudders wracking her frail shoulders, the terrified, haunted look in her icy eyes, she wasn't. "I need light... Please... Lilly, light all the candles in here, and the fire, please."
She frowned, but did as she was told. Aery forced herself to not lunge for the fire when the first happy glow came from it. As it was she got up from the bed, still shaking, and went to kneel by the fireplace, staring into it, absorbing the heat, trying to banish the darkness in the happy glow. Her head bent forward, her hands over her ears though she would never hear anything again, shaking, rocking back and forth, trying to calm herself before the darkness in her heart could swallow her up entirely. Out of habit, the poem that had been drilled into her head a thousand times in all of her training rose up in her mind. She could almost hear Rowan and Celaena and Ansel and all the other assassins who had trained her, every one of them, reciting it. The darkness tried to stifle it, tried to drown it out.
[i]I....will...not...fear. F-fear is the m-mind killer. Fear i-is the little d-death that total obliteration.[/i]
Then, out loud, knowing Lilly probably thought her insane for it but not caring. "I will...I-I will face my fear. I will p=permit it to pass over me and through me. A-a-and when... And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." And she added her own line. "And I will be unbroken." Over and over again, until the darkness was, while not vanquished, subdued at least, and she was calm enough to drink some tea. She wanted to go back to sleep but the guard called the fifth hour after midnight, which was usually when Aery would wake up. She sighed, needing to make do with less than three hours of sleep every night over the last week, but got to her feet and forced herself to get dressed.