01 

THE WINDS HOLLER.

TW: sexual assault.

CLAUDIUS EMBRACED THREE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES that framed her life's philosophy—unwavering self-interest as the guiding light, unwavering rationality steering her actions, and the conviction that through dedicated effort, all aspirations are attainable. While some might draw parallels with objectivism, Claudius saw these tenets as a path to triumph and abundance. Selfless acts go against the very creeds upon which human rationalities are built. In fact, according to Claudius, humans were created to serve themselves first. In this world, humanity's intrinsic purpose was to prioritize self-benefit, a perspective often overlooked in the pursuit of altruism. 

Claudius liked to believe she was worthy of being a queen— she deserved the best of what the world could give and she fucking made sure to let the others know about it. After all, it helped in the upkeeping of her mental well-being. That, and money.

Kaz Brekker hadn't been an easy man to track. He worked in the shadows that were hidden even from Claudius, almost as if he knew every fold and crevice she operated in. She'd seen him only twice in a span of four days— he was nimbler on his feet than she thought— and Claudius had arrived at two conclusions: either he was perpetually holed up in his office, or, he was a harder target than she'd expected him to be.

Well, she was getting five thousand kruge for this petty job— who was she to complain?

Claudius wanted the money and she wanted it fast. So she'd tracked down all of the Dregs' trades, imports, exports— it wasn't a tough feat, because Brekker's sharpshooter had a loose tongue— and then she'd intercepted them. And she'd made sure that Kaz had noticed.

So it wasn't a surprise when a hand clasped over her mouth and dragged her into some dreary corner of an equally dreary street on the fifth night. Claudius had complied, albeit with a bit of struggle. The person— a girl, Claudius realized, petite and fast, had pushed her against the wall with a knife against her neck.

Claudius had smiled, baring her crooked teeth and the girl had pressed the knife deeper into her throat. "Wraith."

"What business?"

This made Claudius smile even more. The Suli girl didn't seem to like that, so she'd made the first move—knife tilting, blade slashing. There'd been a bit more struggle and then, finally, after something that felt suspiciously like a sedative was jabbed into her neck, Claudius had woken up in a dark room that wasn't her own.

Being captured wasn't unexpected, but Claudius didn't want to be held hostage. Every time, breaking free was a little tougher than the last, and she didn't want the last place she ever lived in to be a filthy little jail cell.

She was blindfolded, Claudius realized, manacled from the ceiling. The edges of the metal shackles were jagged, digging into her wrists painfully. 

The silence was loud. Somewhere in the room, there was a water leak in a pipe. Claudius could hear the drops of water hit the ground, erratically, periodically. She didn't know if there were any windows, or any doors. Maybe a trap door on the ceiling led down here. Maybe there was no easy exit. 

Or maybe, Brekker didn't intend to do anything with her. It seemed too cruel—to let her rot here, slowly, as she starved and withered, and then he'd come down here and clean up and burn her shriveled corpse in the Reaper's Barge. It also seemed like what he was most likely to do.

Instinctively, she tugged at her manacles, hissing when her wrists felt hot—white, red, and black; as if they were being burned in a churning furnace. A warm liquid—red and deceiving, Claudius knew it— trickled down her forearms and into her sleeves. Suddenly, she felt sticky with sweat, and there was a press of something heavy on her chest, tight, suffocating. What if he indentured her to some brothel?

I'm not going to rot here, she said to herself. I'm better than that.  

She could rot a step outside this wretched place. She could rot because of a plague, she could rot because of—of anything. But Claudius would not rot belonging to someone else, ever.

She tugged again, this time, ignoring the slush of metal cutting skin. The sting was sharp, warm, different. It was almost as if someone had tied a bracelet of blades around her wrist, cutting away at her nerves and sinews. Biting her lip, Claudius tried to stop her eyes from tearing up. It hurt. 

There was a clipped noise and then her hands were free. She almost sobbed in relief, but then her hands were being cuffed behind her back, rough and harsh. No door had been opened. Whoever it was— a man, Claudius presumed, had to have been inside the cell, with her. She struggled against him, partly as an act in her ruse and partly out of fright, but he gave her wrists a sharp tug that made her let out cry of pain. Fuck, Claudius thought, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat. Elzinger is paying me extra because of all that lost blood.

"Sit," he said, voice soft and so close to her that Claudius inched away instinctively. "And try something funny, you'll never make it out of here."

She felt her hands go around a pillar, one arm above the other and then a rough shove against her head. Claudius gritted her teeth, spitting at where she assumed the man was. That bastard. Now she couldn't even pick her way through opening her cuffs, with both her hands so far apart from each other and her body.

"Sit." It was a warning. 

Claudius forced her knees to bend, hissing at the soreness of her joints. The man grasped the front of her head, snapping it forward with such force that she could feel her wrist crack against the pole. 

"Fuck," she sucked in a breath. "Bloody idiots." She felt the sharp sting of his slap and the metallic taste of blood filled the insides of her mouth. Claudius spat at him, again. 

To her delight, the man finally removed her blindfold. Maybe he had something in his head other than patriarchal dick issues.

The room had one single flickering lamp in the corner where, as she had predicted, a faulty pipe dripped water on the ground. The asymmetry of the drops made her skin prickle and it made Claudius all the more motivated to skewer Elzinger into small kebab-like bits. There were no exits in her line of vision— which meant any one of two things: one, the exit was on the wall behind her or two, there was a trap door which led to this dismal, dingy room. Both possibilities made her heart race in alarm.

And finally, the two men which stood in front of her. Both of them were tall, dressed in some dark and somber color to match the pallor of this room, except one of them was built like battering ram, shoulders wider than both of Claudius' arms spread wide. Must be a bruiser. Was this Keeg? 

Instead, Claudius let her eyes graze the floor, looking for a loose floorboard or some uneven rise. From what she could gather from the structure of this room, it was unlikely that the exit was behind her. A center pillar in any structural makeup—let alone a building in the Barrel, where space was scarce— was impractical. She felt her heart thundering, I'm going to fucking kill Elzinger, but there was no clasp on the floor. Maybe this was a basement? But there wasn't enough light for Claudius to gauze the clear-cut layout of the roof. 

A sharp clack of metal on wood. The lamp fizzled and died and that invited all the ghosts of panic, letting them slowly course up through a fingers, arms, toes, legs, chest— a vise tightening its grip with each breath. Deliberate, languorous, insidious. 

She forced her breathing to remain even, to exhale and inhale in rhythmic beats. One, two. In. One, two. Out. But she couldn't hear anything over the quick and desperate clapping of her pulse. This is a cage I entered and locked myself in. She had no one to blame but herself. Then, forcing the words into her head, carving them out to ease the ebb of panic: I have their attention. I am in control. I have their attention. I am in control. I have their attention. I am in control. 

Claudius cleared her throat. "What a grand welcome. The feast has my mouth watering."

She waited for the slap, a tug, a push. The familiar jolt in her nerves. To her surprise, it did not come. She looked up, eyeing the place where the lamp had been lighted. She could feel the barest flicker of movement, and was surprised to only make out the outline of one man. Bastards. They didn't want her to know the exit, but that made her hopeful because that meant it was within her grasp.

A click. "Who's spider are you?" The voice was male with a low undertone, giving it a strange texture. It was different from the first voice. Was this Brekker? Haskell? Another member, a spider?

"Fuck yourself." She spit on the ground for good measure. 

There: There was that goddamn slap. Her head lurched to the side, jaw cracking, lip bleeding. Claudius gritted her teeth, sucking in her cheeks. 

Then, just as calmly as before: "Who's spider are you?" 

She had come prepared. "He'll kill me," Claudius said, letting her voice catch on the last syllable. 

"I can do much, much, worse," his fingers gripped her chin, and his breath whistled. Claudius held her breath. She will cut off his fingers for touching her. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Lo—" And then she felt hands on her waist, moving to the buttons of her shirt, unbuttoning, opening. Something tore inside of her. There was no longer any panic but an animalistic rage, it was white and hot and it consumed her whole. She was going to kill him. She was going skin him alive. She opened her mouth but she couldn't scream, his palms grazed her bare skin and she wrenched herself back, against the pillar. All she could she was white. She spat at him, and with the lack of reaction she knew he had moved out of the way.

"Feisty," the man said. Then, he was one the floor because Claudius and struck her foot to what she assumed was his groin and the blade from the soles of her boots lodged itself in his pelvis. A guttural growl tore through his throat and she savored the sound, but she had to kill him. She had to burn him down from flesh to bone. 

Claudius heard more shuffling on the ground so she let her legs swing wildly, and she didn't stop till the pounding of her heart was the only sound she could hear and the stench of blood made the air taste metallic. 

I will ruin you, she promised. But it wasn't to the dead man on the floor.  

⁜

( a/n: old, unedited chapter from 2023. i haven't abandoned this story, i promise.)