Ryleigh's head had never hurt this badly. And she was blind. Or perhaps the night was just pitch black dark. She wasn't sure.
She wasn't really sure of anything, let alone where she was. That was: she assumed she was still in her cell, but she wasn't sure if she was on the floor or on the bed, or standing on her head. She wasn't sure she even had a head. Yes, she did. It hurt too much to be gone. She wasn't sure she had anything other than a head. She couldn't feel her body. Perhaps they'd chopped off all her limbs so she couldn't run. But then she should feel pain.
She blinked, hoping that her vision would return that easily. It didn't. There was a dark blur over her eyes, like there was smoke crawling all around her.
Her stomach cramped, which both told her she still had a stomach, and that she was going to throw up in three, two –
She turned hastily and fell off the bed, groaning as her head hit stone. That solved the mystery of her location. She was most definitely on the floor. She lifted her torso just enough to be able to throw up, and blindly crawled a few inches away afterwards, so she wouldn't fall face-first into her vomit.
The floor was cold to her touch, but she welcomed it. She lowered her head down on her arm and wiggled her legs, just to make sure she still had them. They twitched. Good. She blinked again, and slowly a bug crawling across the floor right in front of her face came into view. It was a beetle with a shiny black body.
There was a soft scraping sound right outside her cell. Probably the guard keeping watch over her. Was he laughing at her? He probably had a great time watching the Shadow Walker squirm on the floor. He probably thought this was rock-bottom for her, but little did he know. It was bad – make no mistake – but Ryleigh had seen worse.
She rolled onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling. It was hard to tell through the pounding of her head, but she felt different. Her mind felt different. Had Jade put a spell on her after all? But no. She felt lighter, if anything. Not more burdened. For the first time in what must have been months, there was calmness in her head. Usually, the first thing going through her mind waking up were images from the battle fourteen years ago. Blood and corpses and water and silvered arrows. Sounds of screams and cries would fill her ears. Her shoulder would ache as though there was still an arrow lodged into her skin.
Right then, however, her mind was silent. She blamed it on her fragile state. She was too botched up to think about the past. That had to be it.
Her heart started pounding almost as loudly as her head. A realisation crept onto her the same way that the beetle was creeping across the floor, slowly and without respect for her personal space. Jade had been right.
She shut her eyes. No. There had to be a different explanation. Except there wasn't. When she thought back to her conversation with Corbin, there was a different kind of recollection than there used to be. She still remembered their discussion, but there was a part afterwards that she didn't remember before. A part in which Corbin stopped her in her tracks and violently gained access to her mind. He did it quicker and with far more skill than Jade had done, but then he had far more experience. And she didn't see it coming, so she wasn't ready to fight him. Before she realised he was doing it, it was done already, and then he altered her memory so she never had a clue.
Jade had been right. Denial was no longer an option.
Her chest constricted. He'd manipulated her. Her own father. He'd promised he'd never mess with her head and he had. It dawned on her exactly what that meant. If he hadn't mind-controlled her, would she have lost her mind like she had? Would she have spiralled like she had? There was no way to tell, of course. She might have done everything exactly the way she had done it now. But there was a chance – no matter how small – that things could have ended differently, and he had robbed her of that possibility.
Perhaps she would have been able to put the past behind her. Perhaps, for the first time in fourteen years, she would've wanted to. Perhaps she wouldn't have driven Austin to madness. Perhaps he wouldn't have rejected her. She didn't quite understand why she hadn't rejected him much sooner, but that was probably because she didn't remember any of the good things.
Perhaps she wouldn't have felt the urgent need to kill king Alder. Perhaps she wouldn't have pushed Jade away. Perhaps she could've convinced Jade not to move into the castle. Perhaps she could've made a deal with Alder that restored her people to their former glory. Well, no. That was unlikely to have happened, mind-control or no mind-control. Still, everything could've been different.
But that wasn't even what mattered to her. Realistically, she knew it would've ended up exactly like it had, even if Corbin hadn't manipulated her. Austin might not have ended things when he did, but eventually he would've come to the same conclusion: that they had no future. And if he didn't, she would have. After all, she'd known that from the start. She didn't belong at Midnight Moon. She never would've belonged there. She never would've wanted to try. No, that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was that Corbin had lied to her.
He had taken her trust and he had shredded it. How much fun he must have had, watching her self-destruct. How much he must have gloated when she went down on her knees for him. It had all worked out perfectly for him. He had her back and not only that, she was more determined than ever to get revenge, even if that meant following the cause and his orders. He had her exactly where and how he wanted her, and she'd walked into his trap with both eyes wide open. She'd trusted him and he had betrayed her.
She moved to her side, planting her elbow on the floor and propping herself up. If she blinked rapidly, her cell almost came into focus again. She dragged her torso up from the ground. Her head spun and she brought both hands up to it, afraid it would roll off her neck and fall into the pool of vomit. Goddess, she was miserable.
When she lowered her hands again, she glanced in the direction of the guard for the first time since waking up and realised it wasn't a guard at all. It was Austin.
"Hi," he said, his eyes flitting over her pathetic physique.
Her gaze strayed around. There were no guards present. There was only him. Or if there was anyone else, they were standing out of view.
"What are you doing here?" she said. Her hand brushed her throat. She could hardly push out words due to how much it hurt, not to speak of the nasty taste in her mouth.
"Your dinner's over there." Austin nodded to a corner of her cell. There was a cup of water and a lump of bread on a plate. Not much in the way of dinner, but it was better than nothing. If, at least, she could get there. She attempted to get to her feet, but her legs gave out and she crashed back to the disgusting floor.
She pushed to hands and knees and crawled around the pools of vomit on the floor towards the corner. She was panting by the time she got there, and her head was spinning, vision speckled with black again.
She blindly grasped for the cup, almost knocking it over in the process. She squinted her eyes shut, the cup trembling in her shaky hands. "Goddess."
"You shouldn't have fought so hard."
"And you should shut up." She would've glared at him if she could. Without looking, she brought the water to her lips and took a sip. The liquid did little to wash the taste from her mouth. If anything, it made it worse.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, hating to have to repeat herself.
"Just making sure you're okay."
"I'm not okay."
She leant her back against the bars, both to support herself and so she didn't have to look at him. Blinking open her eyes again, her gaze settled on the bread. She took it, breaking off a little piece and tossing it towards the beetle, who was still manoeuvring a way to the other side of the cell. She broke off another piece and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. Her stomach protested, but she pushed on anyway.
"Jade was right, wasn't she?" Austin asked.
Had there ever been a time when his voice made her weak in the knees? She imagined so. He had a kind voice, and she could imagine it dipping to sultry depths. Still, there was not much special about it. Just like there was nothing special about his appearance, or his height, or anything else about him. Apart from his eyes, maybe. He had nice eyes. But a pair of fine eyes were hardly worth all this drama.
"I know it hurt, but aren't you glad that at least you know now?" he asked. "And that his spell on you is gone? Your mind is your own again."
She chuckled and raised the lump of bread to her mouth, nibbling from it. It was stale and rather gross, but still better than the taste in her mouth. "I wish she hadn't lifted it."
Goddess, perhaps this was rock-bottom after all. To wish to live a lie if that meant avoiding reality – how pathetic could one get?
"Why?" he asked.
She shook her head. It was a good thing she had her back towards him. Otherwise he might have seen her eyes get ever so slightly moist. She blamed it on the pain in her head, or the pain in her chest. It definitely wasn't the pain in her heart. She didn't cry over feelings.
"Jade betrayed me," she said. "And so did you."
"I didn't betray you."
"Yes, you did. You begged me to stay, made me believe that you could love me, and then you decided that no, I wasn't worth the effort. You should've let me go when I still wanted to leave. But no, you had to make me believe the fairy tale, just to rip it away from me."
"I'm sorry."
She snorted a laugh. The stool scraped over the floor again and she heard him approach. He crouched behind her. She could just see him from the corner of her eyes. His scent wafted around her, but it didn't make her hairs rise. It didn't send a jolt through her body. His scent was just his scent. Pleasant enough but nothing to write home about.
"If I had known you were being controlled I wouldn't have sent you away," he said. It was hardly a declaration of love, and in any case it was too little, too late.
"Right."
"I abandoned you right when you needed me the most, and I am sorry. I'm really sorry, Ry."
She imagined that, had she had all her memories, this kind of apology would have made her feel better. Now it just made her mad.
"Sorry doesn't change anything. You've betrayed me; Jade has betrayed me; and now, Corbin has betrayed me too. Why should I be happy to know about it? It just means I have no one left to trust."
_____
A/N: I lost count of how many times I've suggested Ry might have hit rock bottom. Maybe this is really it.
Thank you for reading <3