Sometimes it was a knife slicing her nerves, a fire consuming her skin, steel driving through her marrow. The softest, most intense pain slobbered in her eye sockets. Jane Page’s mind lived pain. It danced round her soul with deceptive grace, striking delicate blows that paralysed her with agony. The instruments of mental pain were subtler. Old memories rose from her subconscious and into the hands of her torturer. The memories were hollow. They were real, but the events they described were false. Page vividly recalled a life she had never lived. That torture was worse than anything Gabriel had done. She remembered herself at school. A serious little girl studying the innocent faces of her classmates, watching for their weaknesses. A distant voice called her name. Her name. She tried to catch it but the voice was weak. The girl who was not yet Jane Page rose behind her desk, repeating a mantra drummed into her from birth. Nation is strength. Dum‐de‐dum. Blood is strength. Dum‐de‐dum.
