The robe was short too, barely reaching down enough to preserve modesty. Her thighs were marked with the same violence, slashes, thin bites, deeper tears where the blade-tips of the scourge had kissed and ripped away. Her calves bore smaller cuts. Her wrists were bruised beneath the restraints.
Even her feet, bare against the freezing stone, were split and wounded, the soles cut and the skin around her ankles rubbed raw by iron and movement.
Her limbs were shackled individually.
One chain held each wrist.
One each ankle.
Another around her waist.
Another around her throat.
The crystals fixed to those chains glowed in low gold pulses, feeding from her, suppressing her, or both. Around her neck sat the cruelest restraint of all: a broad collar-ring of celestial metal, polished like gold but too cold, too severe, too holy to be ordinary.
