It was mid-afternoon, and we, my two older brothers, two cousins and I, had made camp for the midday meal. My sister was missing again, but she often disappeared for days at a time, so no one thought anything of it.

The horses were tied to a nearby tree to graze while we ate. In the distance I heard the sounds of more than one horse, knew it could not be my sister, and warned the rest of my family. We left our meal and untied the horses as a squad of Roman Legionnaires came into view. Knowing they'd seen us, we took off, hoping to lose them in the forest we could see about a mile past the gorge we were in. Their horses were faster, as no matter how hard we pushed ours, the Romans hunting us gained distance, and we weren't out of the gorge. The twelve of them closed in, and we had nowhere to turn or hide.

It was my responsibility to protect my family, but regardless of anything I sent at them, they either dodged it, or somehow deflected it or sent it right back at us. One shot hit my second brother's horse and instantly killed it. My brother went down as the horse buckled and I grabbed his hand and helped him swing up onto my horse behind me as the squad of Romans closed in even further. One of the Romans jabbed their spear into the flank of my horse and it went down, sending my brother and I over its head as it screamed, tumbling into the dirt with screams and yells.

I knew the rest of my family was smart enough to not stop for us. They got away into the forest while the Romans surrounded us and dismounted from their horses.

My brother picked me up off the ground and stood in front of me, drawing his blade. One of the Romans called out in Latin for us to surrender ourselves and that they would make our deaths quick. I stepped forward and set the male on fire with a subtle flick of a finger. I am the head of my family; I should be protecting them, not the other way around.

Angry Roman hands grabbed hold of me, and my brother decapitated one and severed another's arm while I set another two to flames amidst screams and the smell of burning flesh. We started to think that we would come out of this victorious as we had in the past, what with five soldiers dead already. The remaining seven closed in, and one moment my brother was laughing in their faces, and the next, he had a blade through his gut and he had a mouth full of blood. I saw him hit his knees out of the corner of my eye and the Roman who had run him through swung and my brother's head thudded as it hit the ground and rolled.

Seeing my brother die when I should have helped him made guilt and grief filled rage rise in me. The Roman who killed my brother didn't even know what happened. I ripped his heart from his chest with my bare hands and watched his body drop like a rock and twitch spasmodically. The last six tried to get their hands on me, and two more were either set aflame or I shoved my arm through his chest cavity. The last four grabbed me and forced me down onto my knees where I glared up at them a moment before I felt the cold, hard, cleaving effect of steel prying apart my rib cage. I choked, blood spattering from my lips as I gagged on it. The blade was pulled sharply from my body and I sagged in the painful grip of the Roman Legionnaires. They thought I would die then, so did I, but I heard as mall male voice in my head. The sound was gentle, soothing, the tone kind and loving. For a moment I thought it was my father, but my father's voice was not as deep as this.

This voice, only I could hear it, and as I bled out it spoke to me. It said, 'Fret not my child. You are not meant to die. I have a job for you, and you cannot do it dead.'

The sound of the voice brought tears to my eyes more than the very strange feeling that my ribs and innards fusing back together brought me. The Romans saw this and looked amongst themselves as I gasped for breath. The next moment I felt myself being lifted and jostled, tossed over a horse while still disoriented from my wound. Once I did regain my senses I began to kick and fight to be released, which only resulted in getting my head bashed in with the butt of a sword.

* * *

When I woke, I was tied to a tree and it was pitch dark. My hair was matted with blood from the blow to the head, though the wound had already healed and closed like the other one had. I kept my head down so that the four of them would not notice that I was conscious. Through my blood clotted hair, I could see that the soldiers were sitting around the campfire I could now see as well as hear. They were talking, and I knew enough Latin at the time to know what they were saying.

They were talking of what to do with me; a sharp-tongued female who couldn't be killed. They had been given orders to kill any of us that they caught, yet I couldn't be killed. And they had tried many different things to end my life. I could tell by the amount of blood on my clothes and skin and by how hazed my mind was, how weak my body felt even though I was sitting on the ground. I couldn't have moved if I tried to.

My arm twitched, and a small involuntary pained sound escaped me before I could stop it. The Roman closest to me heard and he said something to the other three that I was awake. He came over to me after getting up, and I found my face being lifted by an almost gentle hand that was holding my chin, making me look at him. I must have looked awful, because he took one look at me, sighed, and gave me some pleasantly cold water. My eyes rolled a little bit as he took the waterskin away and I groaned faintly.

My sight was hazy, so my memory of this Roman's face is not completely solid.

Dark blue eyes looked at me with an expression that, to me, seemed to be almost concern. Sharp features, dark hair that even in the night I could tell was kept a little longer than a typical Roman male, and those dark blue eyes that were nearly purple didn't seem to be able to hold any specific age.

His face got close to mine, and he asked my name in a low, deep voice that both soothed and made my blood run cold at the same time. That face and voice I could tell had made many a person weak in the knees and follow instructions blindly. But I had my brother's death fresh in my mind, and I was sitting down. I spit in his face as I glared weakly up at him. I felt self-satisfied as he sighed and started to turn away. Without warning, as his hand came away from where I had spit in his eye, the back of his hand cracked sharply as it connected with my face. The whiplash sent my head back against the tree I was tied to with such force and, once more, everything went black.

Three days passed before I awoke once more. I was not pleased to awaken choking on water, no matter how frigid and refreshing it was. My eyes opened, and met with those same hypnotic blues from the night of my capture. It was bright, just past noon by the sun's position in the sky, and though still weak, my mind was clear as crystal. Only my wrists were bound now, but I realized we were on the move. I was riding astride this odd male's horse, set in front of him so I could not jump or 'fall' off. He kept one hand on the reins, and the other held the freshly replenished waterskin, offered out to me not he was I was awake. I looked from him to the waterskin for a moment before I snatched it from him with my bound hands. The next second it was gone from my hands. I looked up, and the waterskin was being held by this Roman who was now scowling down at me, to which I scowled right back. I wanted that water. I refused to speak Latin, so I croaked out a demand for the waterskin in my native tongue.

I was thoroughly surprised when he leaned down to my ear and spoke my own language back to me. "Behave like an animal and you will be treated like one."

Being treated like a child and reminded of my manners in my own tongue shocked me enough that I could say nothing at all for a moment before I simply held out my bound hands for the water skin. I refused to speak now, however, since now I knew this Roman could understand everything I might say. Since I was no longer being exactly rude, the Roman handed me the water skin once more. An almost silent sigh of relief escaped me as the almost frigid water ran down my parched throat. I was still so thirsty when he took the skin from me I could have cried, my pride and stubbornness being the only thing that kept my eyes dry.

I stared straight ahead of me on the jet black horse as the hours slid by and dusk set in. The sun dipped behind the tree line and the male behind me barked out an order to make camp in Latin. The other three dismounted and started to go about doing just that. My captor dismounted himself and reached up to pull me down beside him. He turned to his horse for his saddle bags and I bolted, running faster than any human possibly could back the way we had come. I didn't even look back to see if anyone was coming after me or not, until I didn't hear any hoof beats or running. The silence was unnerving, so I looked back for a split second, saw only three Romans watching, and promptly ran full tilt into something solid.

As soon as I hit him his big hands grabbed a too tight grip on my upper arms, my wrists still bound. My head swung around to look up at him in shock. I hadn't even heard him move. I fought him, trying to wrench my arms from his grip, which only succeeded in that grip tightening and nearly breaking the bones until he ever so easily cut my legs out from under me and threw me to the ground, his own body pinning mine to the ground.

I kicked out at him, trying to get my bare foot to where I might be able to push him off me while trying to get my hands free. I swore at him viciously in my own native language. He only laughed at me and said, "Go ahead and keep struggling. I'm enjoying it~"

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Sure enough, I could tell he was, considering he was poking at my stomach, which he was sitting on. I felt my eyes widen, and my fighting stopped instantly, to which he laughed, clearly intensely amused. I growled, glaring daggers up at him, and demanded that he let me up, to which he only chuckled more. He leaned down so his nose was barely an inch from my own, that amused and teasing smirk on his face.

'I do not believe you are in any kind of position to be making demands. Do you~?"

For four days I had been captive, and though I had not been wounded since the first day, I was still covered in blood. My hair was matted and caked together, with the addition of sand, and my simple Egyptian clothes were stained with blood, as was my skin, which was flaking the dried blood off slowly. I was filthy, and here I was making my demands like the royalty I was while I looked like an abused slave.

I huffed, turning my head away from this male whose logic I blatantly denied with the gesture, closing my eyes in disgust as my hair crackled a little from being so blood clogged.

He chuckled at my denial of his perfectly sane logic, standing up and pulling me with him as he did so. He shifted his grip from my wrists to my upper arms and forced my feet forward, back towards the camp. When we got there he marched me right past the other three soldiers, only pausing to grab up his red cloak. One of them said something snide, and I made to rip his tongue out with a growl, but the grip on my arm turned painful and stopped me before I could.

This male was so odd, looking angry as he shoved me out of the camp site and to a spot where the nearby river curled in an inlet pool. Roughly letting go of me with a shove, he pushed me to the edge of the water.

'Bathe. Don't take forever. And don't even think about running off again.'

I glared at him. Had he no common sense? Of course I was thinking of running the first chance I got. I DID want a bath first however, and stepped into the water, still fully clothed, and the male huffed at me. 'Are you daft? You can't bathe in your clothes.'

I looked back at him, staring indignantly before I growled and stripped off my bloodied clothing and threw it at him, then turned and waded my way into the cool water while he chuckled behind me. I got into the water quickly, knowing full well that he was watching me, and I let the gentle current wash over my bruised and beaten body. I didn't pay any attention to the dark haired male sitting on a fallen tree trunk behind me, wading into the water until it reached my shoulders and I ducked beneath the surface to get the dried and matted blood out of my hair. When clean, and after I knew I'd annoyed the male by taking my sweet time without even giving him a show, I stood. My clean hair hung down to thankfully cover me as far as my waist and the water covered everything else. I held out my hand.

'Give me my clothes,' I said.

He only smirked darkly at me. 'And so it speaks~!'

He strode directly into the water, and I held my ground as he stopped in front of me. I moved, trying to take my clothes from him, but he reached out and grabbed my throat in a grip that almost frightened me, and I took a step back. I glared up at his smirking face, my toes feeling the sharp jagged edge of a large rock I stepped on. My hands gripped his forearm as my toes curled around and picked up the dagger-like rock. He was saying something, I could see his lips moving, hear his gloating voice in my ears, but my concentration was on my leg swinging up. The sharp rock was clasped in my toes and I expertly and viciously slit his throat with it. I flinched as his blood spurted and a little splattered on my face. His voice gurgled with the blood, his vocal chords damaged. But I could tell he was laughing at me.

THAT frightened me. I snatched my clothes from him as his body splashed ungracefully in the water that was tinted red with his blood. I all but jumped into my clothes before grabbing up the red cloak he had brought. I bolted back to the camp. A fire was going and the other three Legionnaires very quickly met their own deaths as I stuck to the shadows under the trees. I wiped the blood from myself as I ran to the horses. I don't know why I was in a rush with all my captors dead, but I had a bad feeling, a knot of apprehension in the pit of my stomach. And as I leapt up to mount the huge black stallion it was revealed why.

A hand grabbed my wet hair and yanked me to the ground where I was pinned by a heavy body and harsh hands. I stared up at my captor in horror. He held no evidence that I had slit his throat at the river whatsoever.

'Not possible...' was the only thing I could manage, and as he chuckled darkly I started to struggle. The best my strength got me, and only with intense effort ,was that I was able to lift my hands a few inches from the ground, and only fora few seconds. Twenty minutes later I was gasping for breath, sweating, and exhausted. The odd Roman hadn't even broken a sweat. I glared up at him, my chest heaving with the strain and futile effort I'd wasted.

'Are you through?' He arched an eyebrow at me as I glared and gasped for breath. It was too easy for him to keep me pinned down. I was stronger than any human being, and yet this male was seemingly infinitely more so. I lay there in the grass glaring, refusing to say anything even to answer him. I wasn't going to getaway from him it seemed. Not if he survived having his throat slit and seemed to be faster and stronger than I was. I hated him in that moment as he finally yanked me up and tied my wrists together as well as my ankles, making sure I would not be able to run again, and put me down by the fire before he proceeded to ignore me, and I him.

* * *

Weeks passed in the same manner as they had right after my attempted escape from captivity. I remained tied at the wrists and ankles, and I remained silent as the grave. Nights were spent around a fire, during which time I tried to think of some way I might get free and get away. I would spend hours thinking, pretending to sleep so that my captor would lower his guard and do the same, but he never did. I tried throwing myself off the horse when crossing a river, and it resulted in my ankles being tied to the stirrups and my hands to the pommel of the saddle every morning. I slipped my ropes, he tied them tighter. I'd break silence to sneer and set fire to him, I got my head bashed in. One morning I completely disregarded the ropes around my wrists and shoved both hands right through his chest, grabbed his spine and yanked.

Blood all over me for the I don't know what time, I snapped my ropes and leapt up onto his horse and took off from the camp at a full gallop. I made sure to not go either back the way we had come, nor did I take easy paths, intent as I was on losing him and knowing that I really didn't have much time to do so. I'd already killed him four times, and attempted it more times than I could count. The man just would not stay dead.

I crossed rivers and streams, keeping to heavily forested areas to keep out of sight, though I kept glancing back over my shoulder with the feeling of being watched or followed. I wasn't sure if it was just paranoia or if I hadn't managed to lose the odd Roman and that he was already closing in on me. The trees scratched my skin and left me looking like I'd gotten into a fight with an angry cat, but I didn't stop, even when night fell. I'd stolen his red cloak again, like I had the first time I'd attempted to escape, and when it got cold when the sun went down I wrapped it around myself for warmth.

I stopped when dawn started to light the sky, and only because the horse needed to rest as I had pushed the beast to the max for almost and entire day. I tied him to a tree near a little stream where there was plenty of grass to graze and water within reach, and I myself climbed up into the tree to keep out of sight. I was twenty feet up into the huge maple tree, and I reached up to grasp the next branch, only my hand grabbed hold of something that wasn't wood. I looked up to see an ankle wrapped in my hand. My eyes turned up further to see HIM smirking down at me and looking like I had not ripped his spine out through his chest and I think my heart stopped for a moment. His relaxation and good humor was only on the surface. I let go of his ankle and his smirk turned dark.

'Looking for me~??'

That dark purr sent my blood cold as ice and I felt ever bit of color drain out of my face right down to my toes. I couldn't move, that is, until he did, starting down the tree at me. I lost my death grip on the branch I'd been holding and my bare foot slipped on some moss and out of the tree I fell. Down twenty feet to land on my back over a gnarled fallen branch, a large knot hitting on my spine and snapping it as I screamed in agony before sliding onto the soft bedding of dead leaves at the foot of the tree. My spine, like my skull and the more severe wounds I had received since being set upon what seemed like ages ago now, pieced back together slowly, healing without a trace as I lay paralyzed, my entire body numb and agonized and limp as a result.

I wasn't even done healing when I was picked up roughly, which earned another agonized and blood curdling scream to tear from my throat and leave me completely breathless, The shattered pieces of my spine pressed against and aggravated as I screamed until I had no voice left. I was thrown down like a saddlebag and I just lay there, trying to breathe through my now sore from screaming throat. I watched him bring his horse into the small camp with pain glazed eyes as my spine snapped and pieced back together. He said nothing, but sat down and just looked at me like I was a child, or some bug he might like to squash. Worse, he looked almost sympathetic at the same time. Like he wished he could put me out of my misery.

We stayed in the camp all day. I wasn't tied up, but he didn't leave eye shot either. I could only lay there, paralyzed and numb and barely able to breath. My throat was raw and dry from screaming and gasping for breath and becoming painful as the day wore on. When I started to have trouble breathing, choking on air, I was given water, which I choked on as well but managed to get down.

The day wore on into night, and a fire was lit near enough to me that I was kept warm with the addition of the red cloak, which was put over me like a blanket. I still had not moved, and my spine was still snapping periodically as it pieced back together slowly and my nerves repaired themselves painfully. He had said nothing at all since startling me out of the tree, and I could not, nor did I want to, carry on any form of conversation with the man. I wanted him to just stay dead.

In the morning he picked me up, put me in front of him on the horse, and once again tied my ankles to the stirrups and my hands to the pommel of the saddle before mounting up behind me and starting off at a walk. I was still limp and unable to move for the most part, my nerves and muscles still healing the damage from a fall that would have killed a human being in that day and age. Sitting up was agony for me, and the horse's gait only made things worse. By the time night settled in I was gasping again for breath. I was set down in soft grass, surprisingly gently and not what I had expected, and once more given water to sooth my parched throat.

He moved his cloak, which had been kept wrapped around me during the day, and made to apparently check my back, where there was a mottled black and blood blistered bruise where the branch knot had shattered my spine. He placed a finger on it and my body jerked painfully, both because his skin was hotter than my own, and because he had touched a damaged nerve. He lay me on my stomach and covered me with the cloak once more before making a fire. We had passed several small towns this day, and apparently I had only aided in getting to Rome, as he said that we would get there the next day before dusk.

And so we did. By mid-afternoon we passed through the gates into the busy thoroughfare. He kept me completely covered with his cloak when outside of the military's headquarters so that I was not seen. I still had no voice from the pain I had suffered, but I was now able to move and my spine, though still bruised and sore, was no longer broken or damaged. He stopped his horse outside of a building that was strange, it was small, and inside the doorway was pitch black aside from a single torch that was set in a sconce just inside the door.

He untied me from the saddle and set me on the ground. I didn't even bother to run now; it was much too late for that with people and Legionnaires every way I turned. He made to grab my upper arm and though I flinched to do so, I ripped out of his grip. 'I can walk.' The statement had no substance, sounding more like a vehement whisper than the venomous defiance I felt. It was still hard, but I walked ahead of him. The little building held only a set of stairs leading down, and the male took the torch from its sconce and told me to go down.

Each and every step was agony for me. My brother was dead, my family was scattered to the four winds, and I was in Rome, the last place on the planet I wanted to be. The Romans had hunted us for years. Now, for me, the hunt was over. Like a tiger in a cage I walked the steps down into the underground prison, where two guards immediately tried to grab hold of me because I was unbound. I killed them both and sagged from the effort and energy it took. My captor grabbed the back of my neck and half dragged me to some room in the very back that had an iron door with no windows or anything other than a couple of air shafts up to the surface. He pushed me into the room, removing his cloak from me as he did so, and shut the door. A moment later I heard the bang of an iron timber being slid into place to bolt the door.