Black Storm - Red Queen Fan Fiction

Chapter 12 - The Mirror part V

The sentinel kept Jon in her hold and her face straight. I felt a strange satisfaction by watching the seer manipulate a Silver, just as he had influenced me, even though I couldn't grasp what they were talking about. A brother who was like Jon, among the Silvers? It couldn't the blind man who was so eager to touch me, could it? And Griffey was loyal to Maven, she killed on his command and asked no questions. Whatever compassion she claimed to have for me.

Eventually, Jon went on. "I see you've been taught to stay silent, for instances, at least." Well, she wasn't as quiet when we were alone.

"I know better than to trust a prophet." Griffey retorted.

"Are you really not interested? Not even about the woman from Monfort? Or the boy?"

I gasped as Jon mentioned Monfort, the country secretly run by Newbloods - or Ardents, as they were called there - but I shouldn't have been surprised that he was aware of them. Yet Griffey's face fell at this goad, revealing her shock.

"Don't fuck with them," she whispered, switching her hold so he was sudenly in front of her, facing me.

"Why is it that you hate games so much, Cassandra?" Jon asked, unpertubed by the blade on his neck.

She hesitated only for a second. "Because I don't want even more rules in my life."

She shoved him away.

"Don't you need to know why I have come here?" Jon insisted, and I craved to find this out, too, despite my previous experiences.

"Seer gossip," Griffey sighed. "You aren't supposed to be here. That you sneaked in here, when I was absent and Lilian away for an appointment is proof of that."

She contined to drag him out, while Jon fixed his gaze on me. I stared at him in return. I couldn't resist the temptation of ending the constant ignorance and isolation I was kept in, however manipulative the information he offered might be.

He knew this and smiled at me, tragically as he liked to do. It gave me goosebumps. "Your poor brother, Miss Barrow, hasn't she told you what he has left?" he said and my anger rose despite my curiosity. How did he dare -

"Why don't you tell her something useful, for once?" Griffey exclaimed. " 'You will get out of here then if you do that,' 'Maven won't rape you,' or-"

"Shut up, Griffey!" I shouted and she was aghast at my first vocal protest so far. "Let him." My whole body shivered and my heart beat faster, but I felt like I had to hear Jon's message.

He almost looked surprised himself, until satisfaction spread on his face. I was his devoted listener again.

"I wouldn't have imagined how much one can worry about children," he said. "Myself included." He wriggled out of Griffey's hold, took out a key and walked out of the cell without making a fuss.

Griffey stood still, helpless for once. "... can't have children," she murmured to herself.

"What?" I asked, befuddled by her mumbling and the strange encounter.

She turned to me. "That was what he talked about, that jerk. How everyone loves babies. As if they're all that matters in the world." She rolled her eyes. "What does that have to do with your brother?" She didn't expect an answer as she started to take care of the mess Jon's visit had caused. Of course she was unaware of the chaos he had left in my heart. He threw riddles at me, and I didn't expect to solve them.

He had talked about Shade - and children? The children at the Choke, or those at the notch? But - "hasn't she told you what he has left?"  It couldn't be. Frantically, I assembled the fragments of my last days in freedom, focusing on the talks and fights I'd had with Farley, although I wasn't even sure if Jon had meant her. But I had walked in on her and Shade, and she had been sick for some time, she had refrained from going to the Choke and she had -

Damn.

There, was, just a very small, very presumptive and dubious possibility that she expected her and Shade's child. I felt a sob rising in me, but I wasn't allowed to show tears in this place. Never again. I forbade myself to think about this further, burying the idea in the confines of my petrified heart.

Instead, I looked to the stars and let hope burn in my eyes.

But I couldn't escape the idea, the wish, in my sleep. I knew when I dreamt of a golden-eyed little girl crawling on a meadow, tugging the hand of a blond woman.

"What is the ability of your brother?" I casually asked Griffey the next time she came to me. She hesitated to answer, of course. You didn't give information to a prisoner. But she had broken this rule often enough.

"I admit this isn't much of a secret anyway. You're not the only one to wonder about a blind Eagrie eye," she began. But instead of going on she played with her braid. I waited.

"You know, the assertion about Mareena Titanos wasn't all a lie. About Silver powers being mixed." Pause. "Hagen can - as he can't see with his eyes, his gift shows in another way." She bit her lip.

"He sees things in his dreams."

She was still omitting something, that was obvious. But she had given me something else, that I had to figure out by myself. And I tried my best, to distract me from the possibilty I didn't bear to sustain if I might never knew for sure. I thought about the patterns in my dreams, that had changed so much since I've been brought here. That besides the one time Samson Merandus had appeared in my cage, no one else had tried to interrogate me, a key figure of the rebellion.

Then I realized the rankling truth. No one came for me because the mindreader didn't need to meet me in person.

Commentary:

Finally! This needed to happen. It has to happen in canon. (I have some hope after that certain commentary from Miss Aveyard.) *__*

This chapter is a huge turning point: I'm not sure if this is in the middle of the story as the peripeteia should be. I plan for ~ 7-8 chapters to come. But maybe XI is more of a peripeteia, though.

This one has Halsey quotes. Maybe someone will find those ;-) Another terribly fitting song I've used is "Holy" by PVRIS. I heartily recommend PVRIS.

Otherwise, I feel the need to explain.

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

He chuckled. "Indeed, Cassandra, indeed. So are you.

As I wrote in chapter X, Cassandra Griffey's brother is called Hagen. Both Hagen and Cassandra are names from mythology. Cassandra of Troy is a seer who isn't believed and Jon, a prophet himself, is amused that a woman named like a such seer states that she "trusts no prophets". Hagen von Tronje is from the Nibelungenlied/Der Ring des Nibelungen etc. (whichever version you prefer). He's usually seen as an antagonist, a man so blindly loyal to his king Gunther that he murders the assumed hero Siegfried on his and his queen Brünhild's command (FYI, Siegfried is not a hero, he's a rapist and invader). His signature weapon is a javelin. These roles, obviously, I've switched and genderbent. My Cassandra refers more to Hagen von Tronje, while my Hagen refers to Cassandra of Troy, the seer.