Black Storm - Red Queen Fan Fiction

Chapter 12 - The Mirror part V

She looked at my face, strangely kind. No. She wasn't allowed to see this. If she did...

"Or are you aware?" she continued. "Perhaps, but you hide the truth even from yourself. How you fall apart. Searching for anything and everything to make you feel whole."

"Shut up."

"But what about other people? Your comrades, and your prince? Have you told them to shut up, too, or wasn't that necessary? Were you that good at hiding your heart that they didn't notice that you're a poor unfortunate soul?"

"Stop it." I would fall on her if she went on.

She kept silent, just fixing me with her mismatched eyes. I realized she did have more to say to me that she didn't voice.

"I -" hesitation crept over me.

She inclined her head. "It's okay to talk about your sorrow. I do it all the time." She rose, turning to leave the room. "But I'm aware that I'm hardly the right person for you to trust in. I am, indeed, a monster." She reached the glass wall. "Please try to eat your food."

And then she left my cage.

I stared at the window, yearning for the tiniest piece of the outside world, and not daring to meet the glances from the sentinels in the anteroom. Griffey was right about me. I didn't know how someone like her managed to understand me, when no one else did. Besides Maven, but he was a different case to being with. I jumped at the slightest of sounds and I couldn't stand the person inside me. I'd never been able to. If there were any mirrors in here, I would have turned all of them around.

I had come to cherish my sleep. It arrived easily enough, without tormenting me with nightmares. I simply remembered my life, without lingering on the horrors I'd seen. I had dreams as they were supposed to be.

I was alone in my cell when Jon showed up in in my prison two days later, chasing away any doubts about his deadly alliance with Maven. He looked non-descript no longer, he was dressed in a tailored grey suit like a favourite lackey. It was still a costume. He watched me, as dazed and detached as he'd been when he'd come for me for the first time. Yet I met his eyes that had betrayed me.

"You still haven't understood, Miss Barrow?" he asked. "I took great care to form the right words. But you prefer to disappoint my expectations."

"I don't want to know what you care about when you sold me out. My team. My brother." I threw the words at him, feeling the grieve rise again.

"O Miss Barrow, you care so much, and yet you don't know," he continued to taunt me. "It's quite tragic to watch this. You see -"

Jon's approach was stopped by a pair of knives darting in his way, slicing his sleeves. The blades were followed immediately by my gaoler rushing in and grapping him, slamming Jon against the wall, with another knife pressed on his throat. Her duty hadn't started yet when Jon had come.

"Your skills are as good as promised, Queen of Limbs," Jon said to Griffey. "What does it help to foresee a blow if you cannot dodge it?"

Griffey said nothing.

"Certainly you have learned these tricks from your yearing brother. But I am more curious about the things your other brother, the one that is like me, has told you. Cassandra."

Even as he was pushed to the wall, I was able to see the grin on his face, as if he had an amusing idea. Griffey merely tilted her head, flashing a grin in return.

"I've always admired how aptly my mother has named her children."

He chuckled. "Indeed, Cassandra, indeed. So are you. Tell me. Where do the loyalties of the assasin 'Queen of Limbs' lie? Obviously not with the usurper."