I wake up to dry air gazing at my arms and cheeks. Darkness, shadows, and stone surround me like a blanket from the depths of the God of Souls realm. My limbs and ribs are covered in bruises and sores from laying on the stone floor for Gods know how long. I mutter curses as I sit up and peer into the gloom. Something, or someone scratches and shuffles against the stone, coughing and spluttering. The stench of vomit, urine, and blood permeates the otherwise stagnant air. My stomach churns as bile surges up my throat and I clamp a hand over my mouth, swallowing it back down. A single candle shoots bravely towards the ceiling from its mount on the wall opposite my cell. Fragments of fiery light glint and gleam against the achromatic puddles and stone.
As I peer through the gloom, I realise there's someone's skeleton propped up against the wall of the cell across from mine. A knife buried in his dried ribs. His jaw bone nothing more than crushed chips, pebbles, and dust beside his decay-stained pelvis.
That's when a scorching flame stretches across my abdomen and into my chest, down my arms. I hiss, reeling back. Whimpers dribble from my quivering lips as I take in the old and new blood staining my tunic. I lift it and my heart sinks. A deep wound is carved into my stomach like I'm little more than game waiting to be skinned. Fresh, inky scarlet leaks out, streaking towards the lining of my pants, making me shudder and curse as the fiery needles cascade in all directions of my stomach.
Where did this come from?
Why am I here?
"Ruben?" I mumble, pressure swelling in my chest.
Is he in the dungeon, too? Has King Talin tossed him down here to starve, to serve punishment for helping the girl who ignited a rebellion against his crown?
I bite my lip and tear the sleeve from my shirt. My torso shudders and trembles, my stomach muscles bouncing up and down as I gently, slowly, place the grimy fabric over the wound. Fangs plunge into me, drawing sharp winces and groans from my cracked, dehydrated lips. My hands shake like a lonely leaf clinging to a tree branch, holding on for dear life before it falls to the snow. I wrap the fabric around my waist with feeble, pitiful energy. The tears dribbling over my lips taste of salt and copper.
Finally, I knot the fabric next to my hip. I reach out for the iron bars of the cell door, grateful for the frigid splinters pressing into my palms, distracting me from the pain. I pull myself closer, inch by inch. My breath falls ragged. Blood pools in my cheeks. Sweat promenades with my tears.
"Is there anyone there?" I call out, cringing at the croak in my voice.
"Elle?" Aston's voice, so small and distant, chiming from the depths of the charcoal.
"Where are you?" I tug at the collar of my tunic. Air. I need air. My throat dries and the breath catches into a fissure in my throat.
"They locked us all up," he calls, his voice both distant and near, ricocheting against the cobweb-covered walls and my aching ribs. "Are you hurt?"
My whimper is his answer. But of course, there is nothing he can do. There isn't much a prisoner can do. I shift myself back, muttering curses and yielding grunts as I lean against the wall, biting back the primal urge to scream. "It's only a... scratch."
There is a pause and for a gut-wrenching moment, I wonder if he has passed out. "Are you dying?"
I startle at the bluntness of his question. "I'm fine."
"Let's agree to not lie to each other. We've been through too much for half-truths." He grunts, and I wonder if he, too, is riddled with bruises and a wound leaking the life out of him.
I suck in the air, licking my cracked lips as I swallow a wad of spit, desperate for it to coat my throat. "I'm... bleeding. Someone stabbed me. My stomach." My eyes scrunch shut as a tingly feeling creeps throughout my body, snuffling out the pain.
Aston rattles his door. The clank of metal against stone makes me flinch and my hands fly to my ears. "Hey!" His shout reverberates into the ceiling. "We need a medic!" Aston yells and screams until his voice becomes hoarse.
The fire rolls through me like waves of nausea, snatching my breath away, and weakening my muscles. Eventually, my body can no longer handle it and I slip into restless sleep, dreaming about Ruben and Lyra and a world without the king. I move in and out of sleep, shuddering, my teeth clattering like a dying animal in a snow desert. A bluish, purplish tint forms beneath my fingertips. Each time I open my eyes, the world spins, and sways like I've gulped shots of whiskey, and a cloudy haze stretches across my vision.
At some point, the fire across my stomach grows and throbs, demanding my attention like a rabid animal, dragging me from my stupor. A claw scrapes and knocks against my skull. Tears would flow if I had more water. A strangled groan tears from my throat as I peel off the crusty, bloody scrap of fabric and bile burns my tongue. Puss oozes from the wound. I lean my head back against the wall and whimper, my chest rising and falling like I've sprinted across the bridge.
"Aston!" I call, forcing my voice to work. But it still crackles, drier than the skeleton across from me. "Aston!"
But he doesn't respond. Only the silence greets me. I wonder if the Tranqs let him out. But what if he's dead? Rotting in a shallow grave right now. Or loaded on the back of a wagon ready to join the mass of corpses in the Convex Sector? Another hunk of flesh with no significance. A number.
My heart wants to shrivel up. I don't think it was designed to handle this much pain.
But he is the boy who delivers produce to the palace. How could his life not matter?
Thick tears stab my eyes and trickle over my cracked lips. Where is Ruben? Why isn't he helping me out of here?
The infection draws the last drops of moisture from my forehead, and they streak, slowly, down my temples. I slip in and out of delirium, coughing and spluttering and aching. Now and then, a Tranq stalks past like a wolf guarding pups in a den. But I don't even have the strength to tell them where to go.
The clack of the mouldy wooden door startles me from the jagged haze of my delirium. My forehead scorches and sweat drips down my cheeks and runs cold down my back. A fever. Perfect. Footsteps scuttle along the dungeon hallway.
"Ruben?" I mumble, forcing myself to sit up against the wall. But I wince at the ache in my muscles. The ache is burrowing into my bones, and I fear...
A scruffy auburn mop of hair swims before me, his light brown face morphing with the iron bars as the world spins. "Killian?"
"Oh, thank goodness," he says, blowing out his cheeks. "We've found you."
"Water," I mumble, releasing a dry cough. "I need water."
"How are you feeling, Elle?" he asks, arching a brow. The mole beneath his eye twitches.
"I'm... dying." I lift the cakey material from my abdomen. "See?"
Killian gulps, holding back a gag. The angry wound seeps both translucent and yellowish pus. He smacks his lips and reaches through the bars, taking my cold, dry, calloused hand. "You'll be okay, Elle. I'm going to find Ajax. We need to figure out how to get you out."
"Where's Ruben?" I ask, heaving a raspy breath. Gods, I sound pathetic.
Killian squeezes my thumb. "He's with Ajax, trying to get you out."
"Please don't leave me." My voice cracks and all I want is to curl up into my mother's arms and let her carry me into the cosmos, where I belong. Tingles ripple through my limbs followed by the feeling of sand in my muscles. My eyes fall as if tiny hands are trying their best to yank them closed.
"We'll be back," he says, withdrawing his hand and standing. I don't even have the strength to reach out and grab his ankle. "I need to tell Ruben and Ajax where you are. I don't have a key, Elle. I'm sorry."
I force myself to swallow the dusty pocket of air in my throat. "Come back for me. I just wanted to save my sister. I didn't mean for this all to happen."
Killian stiffens, matching the stone around him. "I know, Elle. I'll be back." His echoing footsteps beat at my eardrums like the blade of an axe.
Those little hands yank my eyes shut and I welcome the darkness. Was I wrong about Ruben for all this time? In thinking he was the night incarnate. It seems the darkness burrowed into my battered, wrecked bones long ago.
But he.
He is the light between the darkness.
His is a feeling that sunk beneath my chest at some moment in time between the moon and the shadow. Insistent. Unwelcome.
Silence creeps around me for the first time since I arrived in the dungeon. It curls and twists around my guts and rings in my ears.
"I guess my luck finally caught up with me. The Gods got tired of all my silly whims and wins," I say, letting out a braying giggle.
Am I talking to myself?
"Yes."
Look at you. Finally locked up to rot, where you belong.
"But I didn't do anything. I only tried to save my sister. To keep my promise to my parents."
And look where that got you? She is decaying in a mass grave as we speak.
"Mama," I mumble, my breath hitching in my throat. "Papa. I'm sorry to have failed you."
My words carry on wispy tendrils into the cold and stone, leaving nothing but the gaping hollow of loneliness in their wake.
At some point, a figure traipses past, wearing a helmet with curved horns. He crouches in front of my cell. Green eyes glinting.
"Ruben," I mumble, reaching for the door. But his figure blurs into a phantom of my delirium.
Night and day stop existing. They no longer matter. Images of my sister and my parents morph into one another. Childhood memories; the good and the terror and the hunger.
A groaning creak jolts me from my trance, and I peel my eyes open. Gods know how many days I've been here, surviving off a jug of water and a hunk of bread every so often.
"Gods, you look terrible." A voice swims into my head.
I blink, rolling my head to the side. A shadowy figure stands in front of the cell, his pale fingers curled around the bars. I almost close my eyes again, convinced for a moment it's another hallucination. But the jumping flame in the lantern on the floor flecks against the person's face, brightening the jade eyes, and throwing light over the ridged scar across his left cheek.
He crouches down and pulls the hood of his cloak off his head.
"Oh, Elle," he says, voice low and hushed as he brushes his white, blond hair from his face. "I have something that can heal that nasty infection and wound." He reaches into his cloak's pocket, pulling out a small, corked bottle filled with dark crimson liquid. It shimmers in the candlelight like it has captured the cosmos, stars, and the darkness between in its glass walls.
Who are you? I want to ask. But my voice cuts before the words make it, too hoarse and haggard from days of dehydration, infection, and not speaking.
"Sorry for the confusion," he says, his lip twitching as if he's hiding behind a mask. "But this kingdom does seem confusing. I'm from beyond the walls, so it's not familiar here. But I'm wondering if I was, in fact, better off growing up outside."
My mind reels and I open my mouth. "What the hell?" I say, voice raspy and words barely audible.
"I'm from the kingdom. You may know my brother." He pops the cork out of the bottle and reaches through the bar, tilting his head. "Would you like to feel better, Elle?"
I narrow my eyes, pressing my lips together.
He heaves a sigh and takes a swig, grimacing. "See? It doesn't taste great. But I promise, it's safe. It looks like you need it." He gestures to the grotty, festering wound on my stomach and then to my sweaty, pallid face.
Against my better judgment, and every instinct, I take the bottle, and bring it to my lips.