For easily the tenth or twelfth time that night Elizabeth awoke with a jolt, a stab of pain across her shoulders and neck; yet again, it appeared, she'd tried to roll over in her sleep, the restraints at her wrists tugging against her movement and forcing her back into position. With a groan, she slumped flat onto her back once more, rolling her stiff shoulders as much as the bonds would allow. She blinked, her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom of the tiny room. She'd no idea how long she'd been there now, whether it was the hours it felt like or simply a handful of long, drawn-out minutes. She looked up at the tiny, round window high in the gable wall, close to the ceiling; red and orange streaked the small sliver of sky visible to her through the grimy, soot-smeared glass. Clearly, then, this was daybreak. The last time she'd looked up, and the times before that, all she'd been able to see was the deep blue-black of the night-time sky dotted with stars. So, that answered that question: hours rather than minutes, then. That explained the aching in her hips and shoulders, the numbness in her fingers and toes. She lifted her head from the bare, lumpy mattress, looking down through the valley between her pale breasts, the rings at her nipples a familiar sight now but one still capable of arousing a shiver of humiliation and anger the strength of which sometimes surprised her. She tensed her thigh muscles, bending her knees a little and digging her heels into the mattress to flex her legs, wriggling her toes back into life in defiance of the cold and the restriction of the cuffs.

She lay supine on a rough wooden pallet, only the filthy mattress between her naked skin and the bare wood of the cot. Not that it provided much in the way of comfort; aside from the greasy stains on its coarse hessian, the mattress had obviously seen better days, and appeared to have been stuffed with straw, horse-hair, or possibly, Elizabeth thought, gravel and rocks. She groaned softly, shifting her hips slightly to allow a slightly different portion of her numb arse to support her for a moment or two, her hips protesting as she moved. Her slender legs were spread wide, leather cuffs buckled around each ankle attached to ropes fixed in turn to the bed's supports, preventing her moving around or closing her legs, keeping her exposed pussy vulnerable and on display. Not that anyone was around to see it; she'd seen no-one since her arrival last night, when Mistress Alys had, as she put it, "settled her in for the night and got her comfy". She'd heard plenty, though, the noises of men and women laughing, drunken singing outside, even, she was sure, the slap and squeal of a girl being spanked or strapped, followed by shouting and sobbing and the sound of running footsteps on the floor below.

Now, though, the house was silent aside from the creak and groan of timbers flexing under the warming sunlight. Elizabeth shuffled an inch or so onto her side, pulling one ankle-rope tighter still and flexing her other knee, twisting her ribcage slightly to the left and turning her head against her outstretched arm. Her arms were restrained in a similar fashion to her legs, leather cuffs at her wrists attached to the pallet's supports by ropes, stretched high above her head and out to each side, exposing the soft skin of her underarms and the curves of her breasts and fixing her spread-eagled on her back in a classic star-shape. She let her head flop back onto the mattress, imagining the sight she would present to anyone coming into the room right now; unable to close her legs, her sex pointing directly towards the low doorway, the pink lips protruding slightly from the strip of reddish-brown curls between her parted thighs, each pierced like her nipples by a small silver ring courtesy of that traitor Lucius and his disgusting pet gaoler. Elizabeth blushed slightly at the memory of those piercings, the shameful naked march through the streets to the jeering of the crowd, the sheer horror of being publicly displayed on the stage as the gaoler manhandled her soft flesh, mauling her breasts and stuffing his fingers roughly into her slit before shoving a red-hot needle through first nipples and then labia, ringing her then tattooing a mark onto her behind like a common slave as the crowd - the crowd that only days before had cheered for her and her father as they rode through the streets of their own goddamn kingdom! - laughed and pointed, discussing her naked body with their neighbours, commenting and taunting. She bit her lip, tears prickling her eyes even as she felt the familiar fluttering in her lower belly, the tingling between her legs, and the tugging skin of her nipples as they puckered and hardened. Elizabeth sighed, clenching her fists in frustration, fixing her gaze on the small circle of gradually lightening sky as she waited to see what fresh degradations this new day might bring.