Bound and Blindfolded

The first thing Cassia became aware of was the cold.

Not the gentle chill of a winter morning seeping through curtains, but a deep, penetrating cold that seemed to have settled into her bones while she slept. She tried to shift, to pull her blanket tighter around herself, and that was when she discovered the second thing. She couldn't move.

Her eyes snapped open.

Darkness. Not complete darkness, there was light somewhere, flickering and orange, casting long shadows that danced across stone walls. She was in a room she didn't recognize, seated on a wooden chair that bit into her thighs through the thin fabric of her sleeping shift. Rope bound her wrists to the chair's arms, rope bound her ankles to the chair's legs, and when she twisted experimentally, the knots held firm.

She was in some kind of chamber, stone floors, stone walls, vaulted ceiling lost in shadow above. Torches burned in iron sconces at intervals around the perimeter, their light insufficient to reach the room's far corners. The air smelled of incense and something older, something like earth and stone and ritual.

And she wasn't alone.

To her left, arranged in a row of identical wooden chairs, sat perhaps a dozen other young futa. All were bound as she was. All wore their bedclothes, sleeping shifts and loose tunics, nothing more. Some were still ****, heads lolling against their chests. Others stirred groggily, blinking in the torchlight as awareness slowly returned.

Cassia's heart hammered against her ribs. Kidnapped. In my first semester at the Academy. Mother will be furious. If I survive this…

But even as the thought formed, something about the scene gave her pause. The ropes were tied with skill but not cruelty, her wrists weren't chafing, her circulation wasn't cut off. She'd been moved while ****, yes, but she'd been moved carefully. And the others in the row... she recognized some of them. That was Aelia from her Politics seminar, the quiet girl with the severe braid who always sat in the front row. And two seats down, that was Portia from Combat training, the one who'd nearly dislocated Cassia's shoulder during grappling drills.

Students. All of them students.

A groan from her right made her turn her head. Antonia was waking up, her dark curls a wild tangle around her face. She was wearing a silk sleeping shift that probably cost more than most families spent on food in a month. Even rumpled and disoriented, bound to a chair in some underground chamber, she managed to look fashionable.

"Cass?" Antonia's voice was thick with sleep. She blinked rapidly, her green eyes focusing on Cassia's face, then widening as she took in their surroundings. "What in the Hela-"

"I don't know," Cassia said quietly. "I just woke up like this."

Antonia tested her bonds with quick, economical movements, the kind of assessment that spoke of a practical mind even in crisis. "Ropes are good. Not getting out of these without help." She looked down at herself, then at Cassia, and despite everything, a small smile tugged at her lips. "At least they didn't take our shifts. That would have been awkward."

"Antonia."

"What? I'm trying to find the bright side." But her eyes were scanning the shadows now, tracking movement, calculating escape routes. The smile faded. "Do you think this is-"

She didn't finish the question, because that was when the chanting began.

It came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing off the stone walls so that Cassia couldn't tell if it was one voice or many. Low and resonant, a language she didn't recognize, rising and falling in a rhythm that felt older than speech. The torches flickered in response, flames bending toward the center of the chamber as if pulled by some invisible wind.

And then they appeared.