Chapter Twenty-Eight
Pasiphae woke like she had never been awake before, crawling back into the world after being pitched into a crevasse of eternal slumber.
She took air in through the gaps between her teeth, her prone form still dead to the world. Her limbs were numb as she tried to take inventory, barely able to open her eyes.
Still groggy, she gave her shoulder a furious yank, only to be met with stronger resistance that gave no leeway.
She had been tied up.
A hot, chafing pain began burning at her wrists and ankles.
The room was dark, with the only light source coming from the slit below the door, shining in as four parallel lines that slashed across Pasiphae's body.
A buzzing sensation ran from her nuchal muscles down to her back, returning to life too as Pasiphae wriggled, trying to loosen the rope that secured her arms above her head. The rope wound and twisted around her, pinning her to a thin pole an inch from the floor, so gravity did its work in rubbing the skin on her wrists raw. A thicker strap of rope was tightened around her waist, and then more bindings held her ankles to the bottom of the pole.
Pasiphae struggled with a new fervour. Now, she recognised this place, despite the current emptiness. She had seen a set-up like this before—another girl held up like this in another time—and she didn't want to stick around for what was waiting for her.
The thought was premature; the doors swung open loudly.
Light flooded into the room, white hues from the corridor and golden tones from above as the chandeliers flickered on.
Queen Morgana swept into the room, followed by ten guards, five on each side that trailed after her. She had changed into a black dress: high at the front but low-slung in the back, allowing her immense wingspan to spread.
Pasiphae had always worn black to the prisons in Ruqyah. It made the bloodstains less obvious. Maybe this was the universe repaying its debts.
"Terribly sorry about stringing you up," the queen said, removing her gloves as she approached. "It just makes it easier for me. Bring him in!"
The last part wasn't directed at her, but at the guards. One at the end of each row broke formation and ventured outside.
They returned with Seth.
No.
Pasiphae lunged against her restraints, but she couldn't budge against the rope around her waist.
No. No. Nononono—
Seth lifted his head, and she realised she had spoken aloud. A dark bruise decorated his face from his temple to his jaw. Pasiphae had to hold in a cry as their eyes met, his filled with agony and hers startling troubled at the situation they had both found themselves in.
Something was different about him. The initial shock had affected Pasiphae so intensely that it took her a prolonged moment to realise that his wings were trailing vividly after him: brilliant and gold and bright as a sunbeam.
"Found him trying to take down my entire army," Morgana remarked casually. She jabbed a thumb at Seth, who was trying to shake off the guards to no avail. They held him down to a chair, securing him with chains thicker than ivory tusks.
Pasiphae bit down on her tongue.
The queen seemed to notice the gesture. She tapped her own painted-white lips.
"Were you aware of his identity? I can't imagine you would be too happy to find out."
All the blistering anger had already left Pasiphae's body. The queen was prodding at her with an iron poker, trying to stoke the flame and destroy the hearth, unaware that the coals had already died.
Ice built over her tongue.
"No," Pasiphae lied plainly. "But it would have been nice to know. I've already killed one Crown heir, after all, wouldn't want to kill another."
Morgana jerked back, the first time Pasiphae had ever seen her be taken by surprise. Pasiphae had found the wound, and she had torn it wide open with nothing but her bare hands and blunt teeth.
"Do they know?" she pushed, tilting her chin at the guards. "That Nata is dead because you forced her to take my magic? That their Crown Princess was tossed onto witch soil and then burnt with the rest of the garbage that day—"
Pasiphae's jaw slammed shut, so hard that something cracked inside her mouth.
"I think that's enough," the queen said, her fist squeezed tightly. "We only sent you back to create dissent in the power ranks. I see now that it was a mistake." With every tensing of the queen's fingers, Pasiphae's lower face throbbed with reciprocal pain. "Shut the door!"
The guards hurried to act on Morgana's command. The doors banged shut and reverberated into the silence, drawing on until Pasiphae heard phantom echoes.
Morgana was unhurried.
"Airesi has sent out battleships that are idling all over Callistra," she finally said. The Unseelie queen posed the statement like the start of a conversation. "They are pointed at us." She pivoted on her heel to face Seth, only the prickling of her wings betraying any emotion that could be bubbling beneath the surface. "Were you aware of this?"
"My mother hardly consults me on her actions," Seth said with a roll of his eyes. "You're asking the wrong person."
"No, I would have to disagree on that sentiment." The queen spun back around again. "See, I would rather like to know what Sesostris Basillerius is doing parading around my Court pretending to be one of mine. After I welcomed you, it makes me look rather stupid, don't you think?"
She seized out her hand, hooking upwards, and though she was across the room from Seth, he was held up at the throat by an invisible grip.
Her magic was too strong for him. He would be vastly overpowered attempting any attack.
"I would like to know," Morgana continued, "what the Seelie Court knows, and how they're going to inevitably use it against me. Now, please."
Seth quite literally snarled at the faery queen. He proceeded to suggest that she do something anatomically impossible.
"Why do you have to be like that?" Morgana mused. "I don't want to do this, you know."
"I frankly don't care what you do to me," Seth spat.
"Oh, I thought you understood."
Without warning, a seizure pulled tight in Pasiphae's stomach. She choked on air, gasping at nothing. It was pain but it was also absence, like her intestines had been pitched into a void and now they had to destroy themselves in order to feel real again.
"Little prince, it's not you I'm going to do anything to."
Pasiphae felt her own scream sitting heavy before she released it, lingering like a dark plague at the back of her throat, before it tore into the room and curled around the queen.
Morgana breathed in, absorbing the sound.
A cold sweat broke out along Pasiphae's forehead. As the next wave of magic struck, she forced herself to swallow her shrieking, unable to bear the grief marking Seth's face.
"Wait," he demanded as the queen raised her hand again, and Pasiphae cut in immediately, rasping, "NO!"
He stared at her with a strange pleading, asking her of something that she refused to be responsible for.
"Seth," she whispered, hissing past the burn in her throat. "We know what she's doing and it's not going to work."
He jerked in his chair with no result. The chains were still tight.
Life is life and death is death but information can destroy the world and tear it from its very unearthly seams.
"You know what I'm doing?" Morgana repeated with a laugh. "Right, right. I did search my A.I.s. You saw the footage in the control centre."
You can't forget what we talked about that day, Pasiphae silently begged out of Seth. There's not a single life that warrants the doom of others.
Pasiphae spat onto the floor, a curl of blood staining the ground. She glared up at Morgana.
"Your information extraction won't work this time."
An iron fist closed around her throat again.
Pasiphae struggled, but there was nothing there, only the queen's imagination and her unflinching ability to make it into reality. She shook her head at Seth desperately, telling him, Shut up, shut up, shut up.
"Saf," he begged.
The fist disappeared. Pasiphae gasped for air, still shaking her head.
"I don't care if you kill me," she hissed at Morgana. "I don't care: anything to keep you from obtaining what you want."
Morgana didn't seem threatened at first, but Pasiphae, with her bloodied face, stared at Seth until he understood the truth in her words.
His eyes hardened, nodding once.
That was when Morgana became angry.
"Please," she sneered. "Don't you think I've done this enough times?"
Seth didn't offer a response.
"It's you, isn't it?" he asked instead. "Pluck the feathers off your headless husband and send the sylphs to distribute them across Callistra. Let the strands suck up the magic and absorb it yourself. What's the point? The Seelie Court would never invade you if you didn't attack first!"
"Truthfully, I am surprised it has taken this long for the Seelie Court to catch up." Morgana picked at her fingernails. "I suppose brainwashing your own people is a cumbersome effort."
"You—" Seth bucked in his chair violently, unrelenting in his quest to slacken the chains.
"The witches too," Morgana continued, facing Pasiphae. "You have unprecedented levels of magic, perhaps the strongest connection to Callistra in millennia. And yet no one felt my first, clumsy mess of an experiment, no one suspected my spy. Really, you should be glad you were the only one who kept your life."
Spy?
If Pasiphae had any vigour left, she may have lashed out. She may have screamed at the queen, or made an attempt to hurt her.
Instead, she simply sagged where she was, tied up and powerless, and with Morgana's slow, simpering smile, it was clear that the queen could see this resignation.
"Well, then," Morgana said. "Let's try this again, shall we?"
She pressed her nail into Pasiphae's wrist.
With that prick, Pasiphae was frozen in a state of suspension. Her skin, muscle, sinew—everything paused, trying to register the feeling and simply being unable to, for all she could gather was that it rocketed off the scale and burst into unknown territory. It was pain that she had never felt before.
She could not react except for a few startled retches.
It wasn't the feeling of a blade that had simply slit her skin. It was eating at her, burning and charring and then tearing for food.
"Don't, don't," she mouthed at Seth, desperate.
A single tear crept down his cheek, slow and heavy while the rest of him remained achingly still, and somehow, that hurt Pasiphae more that anything.
"Last chance."
Pasiphae looked up. "Go to hell."
The queen's mouth clenched tight, and then she sheared down on Pasiphae's arm, stabbing something deep into bone. Blood streamed down from her arms and onto her neck, splitting into two paths along her shoulder blades. It crept into the thick fabric of her dress, darting into the threads and painting intricate pictures.
The queen pressed harder.
This time, Pasiphae did scream.
***
Four shimmering rings were stuck to Circe's fingers, each fitted like they had been crafted to her sizing. The only one missing now was the one for her pinky finger. She needed number 5.
She had been running the maze like a malfunctioning synthetic animal for hours now. It didn't seem possible, but Circe hadn't seen a single witch down here since Suhai, and that in itself was something to be suspicious about. The maze couldn't be that big. It could be built to stretch across a field at the very least, but any bigger and it would be too much of a strain on resources.
With fifteen others down here with her, the chances that she hadn't run into another yet was slim.
Circe splayed her hands along the dead-end she had come up against. There was nothing in the linings. She hesitated.
Enough time had passed now that all the walls of the maze had to have been covered by someone. They would be expected to steal the rings from each other, just as the first witch had attempted.
There are no rules, Hilstan had said.
Circe backed away from the wall, jogging in dead silence.
Witches should be looking for her, attacking her, stealing from her.
Something was wrong.
***
The Council had scatted three sets of five rings in the maze.
Two of the contenders had found four already.
One was running around mindlessly, hoping to stumble upon the last one like she had come across the first, with 1, 2, 3, and 4, shimmering off the bands pressed to her flushed skin.
At the other side of the maze, the other held a bloody, needle-point stiletto, tearing through the maze with 1, 2, 4, and 5, just begging to come into contact with another witch.
It was a war zone.
Worried parents huddled around the building above the maze, kept out by the fence as their children fell dead below their feet. The other contender had figured that each witch would find at least one ring, inevitably stumbling upon the one planted closest to their trapdoor. Fifteen witches, scattered in a labyrinth, with only three who could gather all five rings and be allowed to pass onto the next trial.
So she attacked first and asked questions later. From afar, perhaps it would look like she was wearing scarlet gloves. Satin fabric up to her elbows that would dissolve on her tongue, tangy and salty.
She didn't enjoy slitting throats and stealing jewellery. Frankly, that would be gruesome, but if heads had to roll to gather the rings, then the end justified the means. After all, the Council had announced the lack of rules for a reason.
They would never admit it, but they wanted to see this happen. A leader had to be ruthless; a leader had to sacrifice a few to lead the many into greatness.
This act in itself was a sacrifice too, the other contender thought to herself as a blur of a cloak came into view. She spun on her heel and chased after the colour, not sparing a moment's hesitation to hurl her knife. It sunk deep into its target, resounding with a squish and pinning the victim down.
She paused, a whisper of a breath sneaking from her mouth.
"Why?" Embess croaked plainly as she collapsed, the blade impaling a symmetrical line down through her throat. The trickle of blood that came from the wound was almost black in the lighting. Embess raised a hand and tried to reach for her magic, but she had already become so weak that she only managed to snuff out the fire in the lantern above her.
"I'm sorry."
A hand clad in scarlet reached down and tugged the knife out, tearing the wound wide and open. The blade stuttered, buried deep in tissue and tendon and ten years of friendship.
This was a sacrifice, one of the most sublime. It was the only way to best another one of Meira's spoiled granddaughters.
Five fingers glinting with metal raised to the ceiling, awaiting.
Perhaps, perhaps there was a more noble way to win, but Arche of Eo had sacrificed far too much to lose the competition for Divine now.