Phoenix (dystopian romance) (Theta Waves: Episode 1) by Thea Atkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

genuinely afraid of her.
    "Please, Erich." She gets no more out as the archbishop takes her other arm and together with the constable, they twist her, shoeless, through the parlour and out the back kitchen onto the cobblestone streets. Her servants move aside like a wake.
    It's cold even for March, and the frost of the stones bite into her heels as she takes her first steps from her warm home. She can't help stumbling.
    "See how the devil faints in the face of divinity," the constable says.
    "A woman falls when she's dragged shoeless into the street," she corrects him then quickly realizes her mistake. Innocent or not, she'll pay for that haughtiness; that pride will fuel the constable's prejudice now; he has the scent of her wealth in his nose. He'll never see her as innocent.
    She twists her head to peer back at Erich as he stands just within the doorframe, shadowed by the inside. She hopes she can catch his eye, beseech him, remind him of all the nights they'd shared, how pleased he was to have her on his arm, consorting about Trier with such pride. While his fists are clenched at his sides, his mouth is now a controlled line. A sob catches in her throat as she begins to realize the full extent of what's happening. She won't get out of this, not alive.
    "Please, Erich," she says, resisting now. She drags against their arms, twists, kicks. He loves her, he wouldn't accuse her so. She can make it better, take it all back. She can be genteel for him, bear his children if he likes. "Please."
    A sharp sting in her cheek brings blood to her mouth. Her legs turn to water as the pain washes down to her jaw. From one knee she tries to regain her composure, closes her eyes as she drags in a breath.
    She's pulling in air, probing through the blood in her mouth when she's yanked back to her feet. Everything blurs: the house with its brown beams and stucco, the cobble stoned street, the faces about her. She could be swimming underwater with her eyes open as those images twists together, move forward, backward, around on each other.
    There's another sting in her cheek, this time rattling her teeth together and sending a scream of pain down her jaw.
    She fights to open her eyes, but the blackness that seeps in from the edges makes her lids too heavy.
    When she wakes, it's to pain in her wrists. She lifts a feeble head to the blackness around her, lit by torches in their sconces, the smell of sweat and blood heavy on the air. She tries to move and discovers she's manacled to a chair. Her expensive dress has been stripped away, and the shift she's left in is made of coarse flax instead of linen. Someone has undressed her, redressed her in something befitting a criminal or a lowborn peasant. She's cold; the goose bumps on her skin strain painfully away from her flesh. She tries to work through the muddle of thoughts, each trying to find its own prominence. Erich, she thinks. A flash of his face comes to her in the dark.
    "Your husband can't help you," a voice says. "He's the very one who accuses you."
    She lifts her gaze toward the voice. Herr Schönenberg, she realizes. Flanked by two other men, one of them the constable from earlier, the other she recognizes as a magistrate of the court. All of them sit at a table in front of her, one of them with a quill and ink.
    "Why am I here?" She manages to say. Her voice is feeble, as though she's been screaming, and then she realizes that's exactly what has been happening. She remembers that she's been here in front of these men for hours. The memory of that time tries to swim in front of her, but she bats it away, unwilling to revisit the images; they are too painful, that much she knows.
    "You've been charged with heinous crimes against God, surely you remember."
    She struggles with that. "I... I don't want to remember."
    "That's because your master, Lucifer, has taken away your memory. We can help you."
    She hears the scuffling of boots from her left, but before she can protest, searing agony