Once at their camp, Corri found out she’d already seen what there was to see. The camp was Spartan. Each tent contained two cots and the normal assorted camp items and non-perishable foodstuffs. So where was everyone? She looked around and brought her rusty tracking training to bear. 
There was evidence of downtrodden grass, a faint […]

I stand undressed before Coby, unashamed, compliant, gone. I’m not here, this is just a hollow shell, my body waiting for him. Waiting.
“Turn around,” he commands.
I obey.
He sits on the bed and studies me, the bruises on my hip where McBane hit me with a bottle when he came by last week, the cigarette burns […]

Keely started off in the direction she’d just looked.  Not far was a cove and inside the brown-gray cliffs a cave, the most treasured of her secret places.  Often she’d escaped the castle to relax in a place totally her own.  She’d shed a few tears there as well, most often over an intense loneliness.  […]