Inside the dark, there were no stone walls, no husband, no cold air of the vault. There was only the smell of old incense and wet slate.
Eris was a little child again, and her wrists were very small.
The cold beneath her bare legs was absolute... the flat, unyielding chill of the sacrificial altar inside the deep temple.
She could hear the iron links clink as she pulled against them, her small fists bruised where the metal bit into her skin. She pulled with her arms; she pulled with her legs. The iron did not yield. It had never yielded.
Around her, the shadows moved. Tall figures wrapped in heavy wool stood in a circle, their heads bowed, their mouths moving in the rhythmic cadence of the ancient tongue.
The chant vibrated through the stone, through the iron, straight into the bones of her ears.
"Father!" her small voice broke, thin and raspy from hours of crying. She turned her head as far as the neck restraint allowed, searching the edge of the candlelit circle.
