Hierarchy (Book Four of the Torrent Skies Saga)

Chapter Eight: Regret and Hesitance

Halemeda felt as though she was going crazy. It was always dark and always quiet in her cell. Always lonely. She was no stranger with her thoughts and no enemy of her mistakes, but she had to admit that she was beginning to wear. Some days she cried, some she screamed and beat at the walls, others she slept or said nothing at all, and some days she talked to herself.

There was only so long she could take this. Her frightening inability to touch magic offered nightmares, and dreams of escape were impossible--always ending terribly. She had never been one for fantastical thinking, after all.

All of her living students and professors were gone. She had ordered them to leave her behind, and she could not regret that. Even if she lived the rest of her days in this cell reduced to nothing, she would not be guilty for their deaths. At least, that is what she told herself.

It seemed like an eternity before her next meal came, though it always arrived. She had spent the time trying to find her magic again and pondering her life choices. Of course she had regrets, and of course she had made poor decisions. But she had always, always put the Tower first. Now the Tower was rubble. Bitterness overtook hunger, and she only stared in the darkness at the platter that had been delivered.

Her home was gone. Likely burnt and crumpled, being cleaned away so as not to mar the beauty of the city. Most would forget it, or act as if it was the Tower's fault. Kryrial would spin some grand story, to twist the Tower and all it stood for into something disgusting. He would say that the magic she taught had been terrible, or that she had dark connections, or some other such lie that the people could easily believe. It would be a lie they could believe until they forgot, and she would be forgotten along with it.

Left to rot... or left to be publicity executed.

She shuddered. Would they hang her? Behead her? Cut out her tongue and let her bleed to death? She hoped for a beheading. The idea of having no air to breathe was the worst of the three, though, she knew her neck would break, first. Unless they made an error. Sometimes, they erred to please the crowd. You could tell if such an accident would occur by the number of soldiers present at such hangings.

Halemeda sat up, feeling the endless matting tangle of her hair. She refused to be a show or an event. She was guilty of nothing except fighting against a tyrant. Dragon or not, rightful ruler or not, she would not be beaten so easily.

Except... what choice did she have? She had lived a life of a thousand favors given, and here she was with no one to return them, and no one to know her fate. Bitterness filled her, but she had nothing to take it out on, and so she only accepted it in the solitary darkness.

Brazen strolled along the easternmost road of O'siaris, the bag on his back full of a plethora of his things. There were scraps of fabric from the tailors that they no longer wanted, a few silver ingots for a project Imeiza insisted he help her with, a few tools, and a broken fishing rod that he was on his way to replace.