Chapter 5: Free Bird

Six months.

The days bled into each other until time itself became another form of punishment. Coldridge Prison wasn't just stone and iron on the edge of an island: it was rotting dump where they kept the worst criminals among the whole Gristol.

Those who put him there never allowed him silence. At first, it was fists, boots, and blades-the guards eager to beat the "royal murderer." Each session began the same: dragged from his cell, shackled to a chair, and left beneath the glare of a lantern until Campbell's lackeys arrived. Questions he couldn't answer followed. Where had he taken Emily? Who else conspired in Jessamine's death? Names, motives, lies they wanted confirmed.

He refused them. Every time. Stayed quiet as he was taught to as a soldier.

But the refusals brought pain. Rope around his wrists until the flesh swelled purple. Knuckles split open against his jaw. Heated irons pressed close-not always touching, sometimes just near enough that the skin blistered from the heat alone. A cruel game. One he knew they enjoyed.

When the questions dried up, they invented new torments. Days without food, only a bucket of stagnant water to sip from. Shackled in stress positions until his muscles screamed and his body gave out. The guards would laugh as he collapsed, then haul him back up again.

And when they tired of beating him, they starved him of human dignity. No light but the sliver from the barred slit high above his cell. No company but rats scratching in the corners, trying to bite off the flesh from his limbs. No word from the outside world. Just the steady drip of water and the stench of mold.

Six months. His beard grew wild, his hair matted, his body a map of bruises and scars. He was thinner now, gaunt from hunger and sickness, but his eyes-his eyes never gave them what they wanted.

They learned to hate that.

The torturers came to him less often as the months dragged on. Their frustration had curdled into a sort of respect, though it was laced with venom. They called him "the mute dog," "the Empress's whore," "the killer who won't confess." Each insult was meant to break him. To make him loose his honour.

But Corvo endured. Because beneath the bruises, beneath the filth, there was one thing they couldn't touch: the memory of Jessamine's last breath in his arms and Emily's scream carried into the night.

And that memory was sharper than any blade they could put to him.

Then...