Free Claimed by the Elven King: Part One by Cristina Rayne Page A

the satin material of my nightgown being swiftly lifted up my body.
    “What are you doing!” I cried, finally finding the fight in me. I
struggled uselessly against the surrounding bodies imprisoning me like iron
bars. “Why are you…where am I? Why can’t I see?”
    “You will not be harmed,” a soft, melodic female voice near my ear
assured me. The shock of hearing someone speak silenced me into immobility.
Hearing a woman’s voice was as out of place as a clap of thunder in a cloudless
sky.
    “Why?” I pleaded helplessly, unable to put my confusion into words.
    My captors refused to say anything more, but they quickly removed the
rest of my clothing. At this point, I knew it was pointless to resist them.
Where would I run? I was freaking blind!
    I gasped when I was lifted into something warm. It took a moment for my
frightened mind to realize that it was water. My confusion increased when I
felt my captors begin to wash me with something that felt both coarse and soft,
like sponges. No inch of my body escaped them—my ears, my breasts, my groin. I
knew I should have felt violated by what they were doing to me, but I couldn’t
really think straight, like everything happening was as surreal as a dream. Yet
some deep voice within had finally started to shout out through my confusion
that all of this was very real.
    I was removed from the water, dried, and clothed in what I could only
guess was a lightweight robe that glided over my skin as cool and smooth as
silk, although they didn’t bother with any undergarments. I was placed on a
flat, but still somewhat soft, surface, and what happened next was something
that I shudder to remember now even after so many years.
    Pain !
    From one moment to the next, my whole body was saturated with pain. It
was like a million tiny needles were stabbing into my body simultaneously and
trying to tear me apart. Even then, I didn’t scream. I gritted my teeth and
suffered my agony in silence. I did it for a sense of control, even though I
knew that screaming was a release that would help ease a little of my pain. I had
no clue why I had been taken, what my captors were doing to me that was causing
every single nerve ending in my body to light up with pain, but I would be
damned before I gave the bastards the pleasure of hearing the torment they were
inflicting. “You will not be harmed” my ass!
    I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks, scalding against skin that
had gone ice-cold despite the warm bath. My body felt as if it were being torn
apart atom by atom.
    Only when the excruciating pain abruptly ceased what felt like two
eternities later did I realize that the thing I was gripping tightly was
someone’s hand, though there was something wrong with it. The skin was too
soft, feeling as silky and pliable as the garment I wore.
    I felt a hand with the same texture as the one I clutched rest on my
forehead as if checking for fever. The natural reaction should have been to
flinch away, but instead, I felt a curious peace flood my body, spreading a
pleasant warmth and washing away the lingering spasms of pain throughout my body.
    “You are strong. That’s good,” I heard that same woman say somewhere
behind me.
    “For what?” I whispered, muddle-headed and feeling as if I were waking
from a half-remembered daydream.
    “Soon.”
    Someone lifted me from the surface where I lay and carefully placed me
onto my now extremely unsteady feet.
    “Why can’t I see?” I anxiously asked again, then frantically grabbed
onto the arms of the person still holding me by my upper arms before my wobbly
legs could give out.
    I suddenly felt like a newborn foal taking its first steps. My chances
of escape were quickly falling towards zero.
    “Soon,” the woman repeated maddeningly.
    They once again forced me to walk down what felt like an endless maze
of corridors, my legs still weak and unsure. What was going to happen now? Why
was I taken, and by whom? What had my kidnappers done to