Part 23:
"Please, you must not resist," the pretty young woman told her. "Please! It will go very badly for you!"
Mira couldn't bring herself to let them cut her hair. She was fighting tooth, claw, and nail. It shouldn't have mattered. Intellectually, she knew this. It wasn't really that important.
Except, it was. It was the last connection she had to a mother she barely remembered. "One hundred strokes each night before bed. One hundred strokes each morning before breakfast. Your hair will grow long and beautiful."
She had chanted it every day to Mira when she was little, because Mira wanted long hair. Forever. Such was the mind of a child. And her mother had been patient with her about it, caring for her hair no matter how difficult she was about it.
When brought to the circle, she had fought them every inch of the way, until the First Enchanter had told them to leave it, and just put it up. Then one of the kind women there had helped her.
It was personal. It was a part of her. It was emotional for her. She couldn't give it up.
Finally, with a sigh, the shy young hairdresser left the room. The guards went with her, spitting venomous looks at Mira.
Still she resisted, her arms wrapped around herself in terror and a desperate need for protection.
When Chevalier Montreux entered the room, Mira knew she was in horrible trouble. He looked angrier than the thundering sky overhead. He came in, and asked her, politely, in the coldest voice she'd ever heard, "Won't you change your mind?"
Mutely, she shook her head.
He grasped her by the hair and began to drag her, stumbling and trying to keep her feet, behind him. They went down hallways, with guards either leering or trying hard not to see. They stumbled down stairs, she being jerked back upright by his grip in her hair if she stumbled.
Then they entered the dungeon. It was damp and cold, and Mira shivered as much from fear as from cold.
She was thrown into the hands of two guards, and dragged behind Montreux into a hallway. Her companions were all there, and they stood under guard, a large number of archers with arrows pointed at them and ready.
Montreux asked her calmly, one more time. "Do you still not care to change your mind?"
She trembled, terrified. But she couldn't bring herself to say 'yes.'
Montreux told her. "You'll never be able to convince me that you don't care about him—for now." Then he walked into the cell with Alistair, pulled on mail gloves, and began to beat him.
Mira finally found her voice, and screamed. "No! Stop it! I'll do it! Just stop it!"
But he didn't stop. He beat Alistair with open, unabashed fury. She cried and pleaded, promised to do anything. But the blows continued to land, and she heard bones crack and break.
When he was done, the soldiers let go of her, and she collapsed at their feet. Montreux then kicked her in the ribs. Once, twice, and three times. This time, her own ribs cracked, and burning fire lanced through her as she tried to breathe.
"Bring her," he told the others, throwing the hair that had fallen across his face from his exertion back into position. Flexing and rolling his shoulders, he told one of the guards, "Kill them all."
The guard saluted, a gauntlet across his chest and a lowered head.
Mira was dragged from the room, agony shooting through her. She heard the loosing of arrows and screamed, a prolonged, agonized shriek that sang through the castle and seeped into the hearts of men and women alike.
Never had he been this brutal before, the servants whispered and the guardsmen thought.