She looked beyond that bloodied finger to the man in the street. He wore a tattered burlap shirt not all that different from her own. Dark brown hair hung from his head in sweaty locks, and on his cheek—smudged, but visible—was the brand of a slave.
Quinn’s heart began to pound so loud it was all she could hear as the slave master’s whip came down again. Tendrils of black that only Quinn could see snaked up the slave’s arms as he used them to attempt to cover his face from the brutal assault.
“Stupid. Pathetic. Weak.” The master spat one-worded insults with every blow as a woman in a slave shift stood behind him, screaming with silvery streaks of tears running in rivers down her face. The baby in her arms, swaddled in dirty rags, bellowed its own outrage.
Quinn didn’t think as her feet moved towards the man. She didn’t register what she was doing as cold calming clarity settled deep within her bones. She hadn’t known how much the man’s fear—the woman’s fear—the baby’s fear—all called to her.
All she knew was a whip and blood and silence.
The master struck once more, turning his head to look at the crowd, the end of the thin leathery weapon falling into the sandy streets in front of her. Quinn’s boot came down on top of it, holding it in place as he yanked his arm again. He turned when he realized it would not budge. Sweat slicked his skin, cheeks red from anger and exertion, tan skin rough and darkened in uneven patches. He had a finely trimmed beard and black eyes, but these things were all trivial to Quinn as she followed the path from the whip being jerked about beneath her boot to the handle that he gripped tightly.
“I detest whips,” she said quietly. Her voice was abnormally distant, the roaring in her head louder than her words. The sound so consuming that it blocked her from hearing or feeling or thinking about anything else. It stopped her from seeing the shadowed figure in her periphery.
“Who do you think you—” the slave master started.
“It doesn’t matter,” Quinn answered softly. She knelt down, her fingers reaching for the smooth leather vice. She picked up the thin end of the whip, trailing her nails along its bloodied exterior.
Without any warning, her left-hand wrapped around it.
Her right reached for her dagger. The one she always kept on her, its sheath resting over the brand of a master from long ago. A master that had the same detestable urge as this man. To beat her to the edge of death. She never went anywhere unarmed after that. Even when she became as much a weapon as the sharpened bit of metal that she kept on her person.
With a flick of her wrist, the dagger soared true. A crunch of tendons snapping and bones splintering. An anguished scream as he dropped the whip’s handle.
The dagger protruded from his hand, sticking out the other side. Red smeared the open wound, dripping down the gleaming steel and into the sandy streets.
Quinn didn’t even blink at the mess she’d made. Violence was in her bones. Brutality in her blood. She swung the whip and the thick end veered straight into the man’s face.
A deafening crack rang, and shadows gathered beneath his skin.
Fear. The very thing that called to her.
She licked the copper taste from her lips and swung again and again and again.
The leathery end pummeling his face into a bruised and broken pulp. The blood vessels in his eyes burst, turning them a grotesque shade of pink. The skin over his cheekbones split, and when he spat, a wad of crimson and mucus came out, two of his teeth landing in the puddle of fluid.
Even still, Quinn didn’t stop.
Not when his breathing grew shallow or the stench of piss ran in the streets.
Not when the thick end of the whip coiled around his neck, choking the life from him.
Not when she ripped the dagger free, only to raise it—
“Stop.”
Quinn blinked.
The roaring quieted.
All at once, the bubble of silence around her popped and she heard it: the screaming, the sobbing, the shouting, the chaos. The cracks of the whip had lulled her into a state where there was only rage … only pain.
And the sound of a man’s voice—dark as a shadow, deep as the ocean, powerful enough it reverberated through every bone in her body—was what pulled her out.