Faizah woke to mud-streaked light and the smell of stale sweat. Her wrists ached where the ropes had bruised her skin; the chair beneath her was rough and splintered. Around her, the cell hummed with the bored cruelty of men who had been given power for a night.
A soldier spat near her boot, a wet, ugly sound. "Worthless," he muttered. Another laughed and called her names—words meant to wound, to remind her of the place they believed she belonged. They shoved a tin of sour porridge across the stone and left, their boots clanking away like a judgment.
Hours slipped by in a blur of waiting. When the heavy door finally opened, the torchlight painted the corridor in angry gold. Lumingu entered, his face a mask of fury and unease, flanked by two of his brutish guards. He regarded her with a hot, dangerous gaze, the kind of look a man gives a dog that has defied him.
