I didn't need shackles to bind my hands. I didn't need to be restrained to know that I wasn't free.

Words. Whispered and barely spoken. Words. Shouted or bellowed in command. Promises of more horror ringing along with her laughter. Loud, reaching a higher note until I felt like it pierced my eardrums.

It was these sounds, vowels paired into syllables that formed words.

It was all she needed to keep me in place.

Right beside her. Bonded. Imprisoned by her side. Her servant.

Her people, the ones she called her own, the creatures staying inside the shadows, I knew they were watching, waiting for a sign from her. Out of sight but never out of mind. One could never forget them. Even the wildlings, I could hear them whispering that word. Voices wavering with fear as they said it when they thought no one was around to hear it.

'Soulless.'

I had believed they were the only monsters out there but reality was much more terrifying. There were many kinds of evil and the wildlings were not the worst of them. I believed what they said in hushed whispers.

Soulless.

It was ultimately what these lurking creatures were. What she was.

Keeping my head downcast, my gaze never wavering from the ground that was now hard with the approaching winter's cold, I walked through the camp like a shadow of myself, a shadow of that brave girl I'd wanted to imagine I was.

A coward. Scared and broken by all that horror. There wasn't a night when I would rest without the nightmares visiting my dreams. There was not a day when I wouldn't wonder who her newest victim would be.

Who the person I wouldn't save would be.

'Now, Scarlet, bring her back.' I could still hear the echo of her words from that first night. Repeating inside my own head. It was never going to stop. I couldn't let it stop. I couldn't let her corrupt me like she wanted.

Replaying the sight of her licking the blood off her lips like I stood against a mirror that showed no reflection but the past.

'Bring her back, Scarlet.'

Her face shining from the light of the dying fire, the man hidden by shadows nowhere to be seen anymore, just us there and the corpse of her offering to me.

Following her into the tent, going through its gaping mouth like entering into a nightmare, I could see that girl's face, hear the screams long after they had faded into silence.

She would keep saying it. Repeating it like the only mantra she knew. Every time she took another precious life, she would whisper these words in my ear.

'Bring her back. Bring him back. Bring them back.'

And I'd pray that it worked this time. And every time it wouldn't.

Motioning for me to take my place next to her, she dropped down in front of the small plastic table and not a second later I followed her example. Smiling at me, that smile on her lips the same one she liked to give me before making me watch and then demand the impossible from me, her eyes watching me expectantly, she picked her fork up from the table.

"Let's have a bite, shall we?" she invited, diving into the meal Cole had no doubt prepared for her.

From what she had told me, the wildlings were nothing more than servants to her and her people. They would be the ones to do the most simple tasks, the ones to dirty their hands with things that required pure strength or were a nuisance for the soulless.

Cole and the rest of the people I'd considered once my family were the ones who took care of her comfort and also the ones who traveled outside the camp when necessary. The wildlings stayed here to brutalize the captives while the soulless performed the most violent and horrible tasks.

Like extracting one's soul out with the heart still beating in their shadowy palm.

Glancing down at her plate, I felt a grimace slide over my face. Raw, bloody meat. It was her usual meal with her taste for bloody things. Human or otherwise.

However, seeing her 'treat' today called a picture in my mind that was so much worse than usual.

A picture of a friend, a person who had helped me and today she had chosen that person to offer to me.

Her gift.

"Does it really have to be him?" Words slipping out before I could stop them, my voice pleading once again even if I knew that pleading was useless where she was concerned.

Knowing it hurt me, knowing how much I hated it, she would only make it worse for Lucas.

Diverting her emerald eyes from her meal to look at me, she shoved another piece of bloody meat in her mouth.

"Just eat, Scarlet. You'll need your strength if you are going to bring him back." She pointed at my plate with the fork in her hand, then turned back to her own meal.

Looking down at the plate of baked meat and vegetables, it felt so wrong that she would make me eat three meals a day while the magicals who had been spared were starving.

"Eat!"

Sighing, I picked up my own fork, the first bite that I took like sand on my tongue. No matter what Cole prepared for me, it was how food tasted to me now.

Despair and guilt. Regret that there was nothing I could do to help anyone.

"So, tell me, Scarlet. Why do you care about that guy?"

"You know I care about every one of them, Leila. You know I don't want them to--"

"I do but something changed, didn't it?"

I changed.

"From what I heard about you, you shouldn't have cared about any of them in the first place. You were quite selfish before, weren't you, Scarlet?"

Dropping my eyes not to look at her, "It was you," I told her. "It's because of you and what you do that I remembered what it is to cry because of others' pain. You made me see the difference between people who become monsters because they don't have any other choice and pure evil, Leila. I do understand it now. You are different. You don't have circumstances. You don't have reasons. And you don't have brakes."

Chuckling at me, like what I'd just said should have been obvious from the very beginning, she leaned closer to me, her breath against my skin carrying the scent of blood and making my stomach ache.

"Yes, Scarlet. I'm glad that you realized that I don't have brakes. I have intentions and there's nothing I wouldn't do to make these intentions reality and one more thing," she said, her finger trailing down the side of my face to my neck. 

"You never answered my question but you know what? It doesn't really matter because one way or another I'm going to make you into the glorious weapon you are meant to be. Now, let's go see how much you care about your friend and, hopefully, this time, you're going to find your motivation before it's too late."

Unfortunately for me, motivation was not what I lacked.