Sacrifice

Drum beats. There they were again--ricocheting off of her internal organs, rolling around in her mind as if each of them was a giant boulder, careening into her mind with every slam of stick onto skin. Nya stood on the daise with her family, her hands literally tied to her sides, her feet bound beneath her gown so that no one in the audience could tell that she had been forced to attend the ceremony against her will. Of course, the binding was also to prevent her from taking action against her father as he went through the motions of selecting the next person who would die at the hands of the angry dragon.