Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 143

143 No More Waiting for Mercy

Arya’s POV

I moved between their rooms.

That was the worst part.

Not the striking.

Not the screaming.

The moving.

The rhythm of it.

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Margaret first, hair, questions, the crack of leather across shoulders already bruised from transport restraint, her begging turning high and fractured.

Then Lisa, refusal to listen, refusal to explain, refusal to let her frame this as survival when had paid for her safety.

Then back again.

Each time I walked the corridor, the stone seemed narrower.

Each time I lifted my hand, I remembered another version of my own hands.

Hands sorting herbs in the infirmary beside Lesley.

Hands checking ration lists.

Hands washing blood from frightened women who came in from border skirmishes.

Hands pressing over my belly in private, smiling at a future I didn’t dare name aloud yet.

By the third round, sweat clung to my back beneath my shirt.

My arms ached.

My throat felt scraped raw.

my

child

Margaret was half-curled on the floor, sobbing and promising gods and moon and ancestors she

would serve me forever if I spared her.

Lisa had gone quieter in the way pain sometimes made people go quiet, not stronger, just farther away from themselves.

143 No More Waiting for Mercy

Neither of them looked like monsters.

That made it harder.

That made it easier.

Because monsters would have been simple.

These were women.

Women I had helped.

Women who made a calculation and decided I was the price.

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I stood in Margaret’s room again, leather strap hanging loose in my hand, staring at her while she cried

into stone.

My chest hurt.

Not from exertion.

From memory.

I saw her as I first found her, not at a gate like Lisa, but after rogues had hit a caravan route and mauled her friend. Margaret drenched in someone else’s blood, hands shaking so badly she couldn’t drink water without spilling it. She had clung to my wrist like drowning people cling to anything solid.

I had told her she was safe.

I had meant it.

A laugh broke out of me then, short, awful, not a laugh at all.

Margaret flinched and tried to crawl backward though the chain held her.

“How does it feel?” I asked.

She blinked through tears.

啓

“To be helpless?” My voice sharpened. “To know no one is coming? To know the people who promised

to keep you safe traded you the moment it became inconvenient?”

She sobbed harder. “Please, please, Arya,”

“No one rescued me.”

I didn’t mean to say that part aloud.

<143 No More Waiting for Mercy

The room went very still around the words.

Margaret stared.

My hand began to tremble.

I tightened my grip on the strap until the tremor became pain.

Menur

“I screamed truth into a room full of wolves,” I said, and now I could hear my own voice breaking but I couldn’t stop. “I begged for proof. I bled. I lost my baby. And no one came.”

Margaret’s crying turned small and terrified. “I’m sorry,

“Sorry?” I snapped, stepping in so fast she cried out before I touched her. “Sorry is for dropped dishes. Sorry is for careless words. You stood in a hall and helped bury my child under your fear.”

I struck the wall beside her head instead of her body.

Leather cracked against stone.

She screamed anyway.

My lungs burned.

My eyes burned.

I was suddenly so tired I could have dropped where I stood.

That scared me more than the rage.

Because rage I understood.

This, this shaking emptiness after, felt too much like the days after the flogging, when pain left and weakness arrived and I hated myself for surviving.

I left Margaret’s room without another word and went to Lisa’s.

She looked up the second I entered, eyes red, face swollen, wrists raw.

I stood there and looked at her for a long moment.

Then I set the strap down on the stool.

Hope flickered across her face so quickly it disgusted me.

“No,” I said when I saw it. “Don’t mistake exhaustion for mercy.”

Her hope died.

Good.

No More Waiting for Mercy

I crouched in front of her one last time.

“What you have here is your life,” I said. “Do you understand that?”

She started crying again. “Please…”

“I could end you. Right now. Both of you. And part of me wants to.”

That was the truth. Ugly and hot and alive.

I held her gaze until she stopped trying to look away.

“But I won’t give you quick endings. Not after what you did. You will sit in what you chose. You will remember every word you said in that hall. You will remember the child your lie helped kill.”

Lisa broke completely then, forehead hitting the floor as far as the chain allowed, sobbing, begging,

trying to touch my boots and failing.

I stepped back before she could.

My own eyes were hot now.

I hated that.

I hated them for it.

I hated myself for still being a woman who remembered feeding them.

I turned for the door.

It opened before I reached it.

Maxwell filled the frame, one look taking in the room, the chain, Lisa on the floor, the strap on the stool,

me standing there breathing like I’d run through fire.

His face changed by degrees.

Not shock.

Assessment. Concern. Anger held on a leash and directed not at me, but at what grief had done to this

room.

He stepped in and shut the door behind him.

“That’s enough.”

143 No More Waiting for Mercy

The words were quiet.

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I laughed once, harsh. “Enough? Was it enough when they lied? Was it enough when they watched me,

He crossed the space in two steps and caught my wrist before I realised I’d lifted my hand again.

Not hurting.

Unmovable.

“Arya.”

My breath came ragged. “Let go.”

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