he returned in the middle of the following week. He unlocked the door and kicked it open, then threw a filthy, tattered gown at her. “Get dressed, wench. Don’t make me tell you twice.”
She didn’t. He unchained her ankles and yanked her up by her hair. She didn’t ask where he was taking her, she knew better now than to question Drakar again, and besides, nothing could be worse than where she was already. Her legs were stiff. He pulled her harder to keep up with his long strides. He dragged her up a long stairway on the eastern side of the church by her arm, cursing about her appearance the entire way. But Willow wasn’t listening. She squinted into the colorful light of a stained-glass window on the first landing as they passed it. Breath held, she stared at the tinted glass that had stopped her feet from moving. She was transported to her garden, and there was Caleb staring at her, his hair flowing to his shoulders while a circle of light hovered over his head. Beautiful flowers of every color imaginable surrounded him. The colored light painted her face and she smiled, tilting her face upward toward it.
“Caleb,” she whispered on an aching sigh.
Drakar yanked her forward. “That is Predaria’s Jesus,” he told her and laughed.
Jesus. Willow’s smile grew, and tears brushed across her eyes. Everything was going to be all right.
“Who is this Caleb you pine for?”
“He’s the king.” Willow told him breathlessly. Drakar laughed looking over his shoulder at the glass window depicting the Savior. “Yeah, He was the king until Baltrasard shut the churches down.”
“He is still the king.” She told him boldly.
He yanked her arm. They reached two wide doors and Willow was still smiling dreamily when Drakar shoved her into a brightly lit room. She looked around at the dozens of wooden chairs scattered about with rubber mats placed under each one. There were two large barrels set in the corner.
“They’ll be coming soon. So get ready.” Drakar threw her a sponge and a towel when she turned to face him. “There’s water in the barrels behind you.”
“What do I have to do?” Willow asked then winced when Drakar took a step toward her.
“Clean the slaves before we sell them. What do you think?” He gave her a menacing smile. “Would you rather clean up their waste?”
No, that’s a task meant only for you, she thought to herself and remembered Seth. She closed her eyes thinking of him. He probably ran away, left Predaria before her father could be found, or maybe the Warriors killed him.
Drakar shoved a bowl in her face and laughed as if he were hearing her thoughts. “Even the Warriors can’t stop us. There’s always slaves to be found if you look hard enough.”
Please find me, Caleb.
The doors opened and Willow’s eyes opened wide with horror at the sight that met her. There were dozens of people, young and old, all filthy, some covered in blood, and every one of them wore the same horrified, haunted look on their faces. They had been snatched away from their lives and would be sold as slaves, never to see their loved ones again. They were pushed and shoved into the large bathing room by their captors and flung roughly into the wooden chairs.
“Clean them,” Drakar ordered, glaring at Willow. “Every one of them, and you better do a good job, make their new owners happy.” He sneered through his thin lips and the other Catchers entering the room laughed.
Willow went to one of the barrels and dipped the bowl into the water. When she looked at what she had retrieved, she gagged. The water was cloudy. She turned to the chair closest to her and stopped.
He was a young man, probably her age she guessed. He sat clutching the arms of the chair until his knuckles were white. He was drenched with blood.
She wept while she cleaned him and so did he.
All day she bathed them, and each one was worse than the last. She felt as if she was violating them, touching their bodies, exposed for all to see. She prayed with many of them, prayed for deliverance and freedom. Some were crawling with lice and fleas, while others had skin plagued by sores from beatings left to heal on their own. The young girls were the worst for Willow, their horror playing out on their faces like some macabre nightmare. They clutched their breasts and tried to cross