"It's no use," I scream the second Kallisté's water freezes over the door. "She can't remember anything since he wiped her memory again. Usually, we'd be making progress on her family by now at least, but she can't even remember her own name. I hoped that by maybe forcing her to memorize the one thing that she always remembered while stuck here, that it'd boost her memory. But it hasn't! The Eternal talked about remaking her, and right now, I'd say he's closer than ever to doing so. Gods and their Saints be with us in the midst of this...this – insanity!"
Throwing my hands into the air, I look at Kallisté and find her staring at me blankly. Right. I'm talking to the one thing in the world who still thinks that there's hope. From where I'm standing, there's not much to be seen as good fortune for the girl. Or the rest of the world for that matter.
"What am I supposed to do?" I ask her.
Follow.
She turns around and heads to the right side wall. I half expect her to fade into darkness, but she doesn't. Instead, she lifts her paw and presses it against the stone. For a second nothing happens, but her light is illuminating the room showing a part of the wall sliding backward and then opening inward to reveal some kind of dark tunnel. It moves all in complete silence, which explains why I can never hear where she leaves from.
I walk over and peek into the darkness, half expecting torches to magically too. They don't, to my disappointment. "So this is how you've been getting in and out of here...Why are you showing me this now?"
Still the same word. Follow.
She starts walking down the dark tunnel, and with one last glance at the still ice-covered door, I do as she says.
I can't see anything in front or behind me aside from Kallisté, so I stick close to her side as we keep walking. It smells like mildew and moss and rat droppings in here. We pass a few other tunnels that veer off in other directions, but she keeps walking straight, so I don't let myself think about trying to venture down them. As we keep walking and don't seem to be stopping anytime soon, my mind wanders into keeping tabs on the girl.
Her heartbeat is still steady, but it's slower than it was a few days ago. I fear that taking her memory isn't the only thing that The Eternal is doing. Every time he does so he seems to kill her a little bit. Her heart will slow slightly, her skin will become paler and her body atrophy so all you see are her bones and places where the last of her muscle fibers try to hold strong. Her vanished memory isn't the only reason why I think she's soon to be beyond saving. She's beginning to look like nothing more than a skeleton with skin on it. She would've lasted maybe a cycle with her health before he wiped her clean again.
Now...days. She has days before her heart just gives out. I can't do more than heal the wounds that they make. Sure I'm gaining more strength with the food and water that Kallisté brings me, but most of it gets used to fix her after torture. What we both need is someone who has the power to heal her.
If I could get my hands on better materials, I could begin helping to strengthen her whole system, then, maybe, I could get her to hold on a little longer. But I'd need a crazy amount of them and time that the guards won't give me to administer them into her bloodstream. A few she'd have to swallow, and she can't swallow without hiking it all back up a minute later. She's dehydrated, weak, organ failure is rising to the surface, and nothing that I have can help her. The Eternal won't be able to remake her if she's dead, but maybe that's what needs to happen for him to get his "dozen mangled and wrongly duplicated facial featured" monster.
My mind keeps trying to imagine the possibilities. Scenarios in which involve the girl making a full recovery and not having red and black eyes. My head is so loud with them that I don't hear the voices echoing off the tunnel walls until my eyes catch on a light source that isn't coming from Kallisté.
"Is it weirdto say that I miss this place?"
"You mean the place where we went through hell every night-"
"And the place that made us sleep-deprived."
"Hey, I'd take any one of those nights to replace the ones we have now."
"This, my friends, is where we went from being boys...to men."
"Okay, Junior."
"This is not the place where we became men!"
"No? Then what was? The moat? Because I specifically remember all of us acting like sissies because everyone kept making fun of each other's junk-"
"That is enough of that, gentlemen. We're not here to compare cock sizes."
I break into a sprint at the sound of the last voice, my eyes already burning and making my vision hard to tell where I'm going.
"Then why are we here? I thought we couldn't get in-"
Ignoring the other blurry body figures in the room, I focus on just the one and run into her open arms. Gods the number of times that I've wished and prayed to every God and Saint that they'd let me see her one – just once – before life was taken. I prayed that though I was likely to die here alone with no one else but the girl for me to really keep living for, that I would at least know if she was okay. No one knew that we associated with each other because we never talked where people could see. I never cared, but she was always so adamant about not being found. Even this is a typical Aracely move.
"By the Gods, you're a twig," she marvels, pulling back despite my death grip on her. She looks exactly how I remember her. The only mother I've known and remember knowing, though we share no relation in blood. She's always taken care of me and watched over me when I had no one else. Well, not no one, there was Siscilla, of course, but Aracely was different.
"And you're...still old," I say in between sobs. Per usual, my attempts to banter with her are ineffective.
"Oh, come now. The Hira I knew would've never let anyone see her cry." She wipes away my tears. As I feel her own hands rub the edges of my cheekbones, I become suddenly aware of just how much weight I've lost in the passing days. It's not like they provide me with a mirror for me to look at, though I am partially grateful for that. I probably look like a beat up ghost.
"You stay here as long as I have with no one of familiarity to speak to," I retort, suddenly embarrassed and ashamed and annoyed. "See if you don't cry at the first sight of a familiar face – and that's not even going to mention the things I've had to witness and follow me into my nightmares."
Her face instantly softens and she pulls me to her again. "I'm sorry, child. I've only missed you is all."
"I missed you too." My voice cracks, and then I'm crying like a lost child all over again. She squeezes tighter, and this time I can hear my back crack when she does so. I don't mind it and squeeze her back as if it's the last time I'll do so. For all I know, with my luck, it could be.
There's a pointed cough, and I look up to find several men and a strange woman standing around us. "Aracely..."
"They're friends. They won't harm you. You can trust her," she tells them. I relax a little, but then my body tenses when one of them raises his hand. I mentally slap myself for the reaction. I'm used to raising hands ending up causing pain, and I'd flinch if I hadn't been practically trained to make my reaction near nonexistent.
He ends up just lowering his hood, but I didn't need him to do that to know that he's the Sinister Fox. That was made clear with his mask and the blue coloring of his cloak. He's her brother. My eyes start to burn again, but I manage to swallow them down. Sadly, my effort does me little good when another one of them lowers his hood, revealing Prince Darius to be beneath it. The others follow after that and I find all twelve men in his guard standing before me. The same twelve men she risked her own life to save by quite literally throwing them out of harm's reach.
Another detail I seemed to have missed in the ballroom while watching people being chased by water wolves.
"Oh, Gods." My knees give out beneath me. I don't even feel the pain as my knees slam into the stone floor, I just bury my face in my hands in a rather useless attempt to muffle my uncontrollable sobbing that has my diaphragm spasming.
The girl told me every detail she could remember about each and every one of them so that I could recite them back to her when she'd forget. Even the details that some would prefer she had kept private she openly shared out of fear of the worst. I felt bad that she was so scared of forgetting again, so I committed each of her little facts to my own memory so that I could help her heal in more than one way. So much good it's doing me now.
I know all their favorite colors and which ones are the most likely so naïve that you could get them to do practically anything. I know that Darius knows how to fashion hair – and that he's good at it and she secretly loved the feeling of his hands combing through her hair when he'd plait it into braids. I know that her brother has this pet peeve where he can't sit in the same room as someone who chews too loudly and that he flips knives when he's trying to think things through in his own head.
Benny has a crush on one of the Queen's servants, and he really does try to hide it, but only she knows because she caught him staring at her whenever she would walk by or they were in the same room. Alister's right pointer finger twitches when he's nervous, and Winston has the best ass out of all of them.
I could go on and on with facts that she told me, relaying them in the same amount of detail as if they were my own, and through her memories I know all fourteen of them like the back of my mangled hand despite only ever having the barest interactions with them, and that makes it so much harder to now look at them and not see how she once saw them. Strong and loyal and funny and smart but astronimically stupid at the same time. She loved all of them more than she could put into words, and that scared her. It scared her so much that she pushed them away as far as she could throw them. Literally.
It scared her so much that when it came down to it, she would never be able to choose which one of them was her favorite. If they ever did ask her who it was though, then she'd tell them it was Garrison because he reminds her of a grey cat who sat at the window of the inn next to the House of Jade, and how that cat always looked to be contemplating someone's murder. She couldn't pick just one of them to save, so she'd choose all of them, and here they are, making me look like a lunatic crying like a lost child with asthma.
"Hira, it's alright," Aracely says, rubbing my back in a soothing motion. I can tell she has no idea why I'm crying, which only makes my progress to slow the sharp breathes shutter back into hysteria. I have to pinch my nose and force my breathing to go through my mouth to get my body to gain control once more.
"No, it's not alright," I say, choking on another sob that threatens to lash out.
I lower my hands and shove them in my lap out of old habits when I get nervous. Aracely takes note of it, and stands back up, folding her hands in front of her. It's Aracely's way of showing you that she'll wait for you to give you an explanation. She won't push and won't force you to say anything, but her disapproval and disappointment will be written all over her face if you end up not saying anything.
I try to calm myself down to stop the shaking, but it doesn't work and I feel like a grand failure - to everyone. Kallisté comes up beside me, forcing a few of the men to take a step back. She lays down at my side and puts her head on my lap. She knows that her presence as well as petting her tends to calm me down. I've had three mental breakdowns since she came into my cell, and after a panic attack after the last session before today's session when I yet again lost hope in her returning memories, this seems to be the only thing to work. I'm more grateful for it now than ever.
Running my fingers through her watery fur, I keep my eyes on the ground as I force myself to speak. "Kallisté told me that her alpha was bringing more people to help save her, but..."
"But what?" The Fox asks gently. Of all the things she told me, his name wasn't one of them. I wish she had. Calling him The Fox doesn't seem right when I know nearly everything about him.
"She...he..." I sigh up at the dark ceiling in an attempt to stop more tears from falling. "Gods this is really hard."
"Hira." I don't want to, but I look straight again and find Aracely's stern eyes. "You need to tell us. We need to hear it."
Dammit, don't you think I know that? I know that I have to tell all of them what remains of the girl they knew. I have to tell them that she's dying and won't make it for much longer. I have to tell them everything, and I have to do it without stuttering or breaking down or losing my damn mind - again.
"How long have we been here?" I deflect, trying to calm myself down enough to talk.
"Two months."
TWO MONTHS-
Aracely's head tilts ever so slightly. I instantly close my jaw that had fallen to the floor and go back to staring at the floor.
"Well then..." I stop, trying to figure out the best way to put it. I end up deciding to just rip the whole bandage off like a waxing stip. "For two months I've been forced to watch and listen as they tortured her in more ways than one. I've heard her scream so much that her vocal cords rupture and bleed and then listen to her choke on her own blood. I've had to heal them multiple times."
A few harshly whispered curses go around the room. Maybe ripping the bandage was a bad idea, but seeing as I already started, I just keep going.
"One of the men breaks her physically, shattering, or slowly breaking her bones. He's been able to snap them with his hands recently since she's entirely too malnourished and her bones as brittle as a cracker. He'll tear her tendons and ligaments, skin her in certain areas, tear apart her hands - he...he doesn't stop until there's nothing left to work with, and then I'm forced to do the cleanup." My head shakes, remembering the messes he leaves. "Even after I've healed everything he broke, she still shakes and winces in pain. She won't take the pain relievers I try to give her, and even if I could she'd just end up throwing them up or getting sick rather than healing because of it. I wasn't able to track day and night until recently, but there are about three to five sessions of that every twenty-four hours. And that's not even the worst part."
"There's something worse than that?" One of the men exclaims. I flinch at his shout but don't look up to see who it was, just glance at his shoes.
I wait until the room has come to a somewhat tranquil state, though if feels more like a snake coiling slowly, readying to launch forward and sink its teeth into your flesh and administer its deadly poison.
"There's another man who breaks her in ways that...he gets into her head...and...he takes her memories." My voice cracks at the end.
"What do you mean?"
"I...I was able to get her to remember everything that he thought he took before. Last time it took longer for her to remember, but she did." I look up at them with desperation, begging them to understand that I tried. "She told me everything she remembered. About all of you and everywhere she went and who she met-"
"Why would she do that?" the Prince asks. The low promised tone of violence in his voice has me pausing.
"Because she didn't want to forget again," The Fox answers.
"You should've been here a cycle ago," I say, my hands shaking again. "You should've come sooner when she wasn't...you should've come sooner."
I close my eyes as tightly as I can, hoping that this is all just a dream and I'm not really telling the girl's closest friends that she's practically an aimlessly wandering ghost. I pull Kallisté closer to me, hoping that maybe she can tell the rest so I don't have to. I hate my power. I hate how it knows that her heart is still beating but doing it slowly. I hate how it's too weak to make it stronger, and I hate how it senses that it's Prince Darius who kneels in front of me and waits for me to look at him. Then I hate myself for being weak to people's needs and open my eyes to see how unnervingly calm he looks.
"Why should we have come sooner? What did they do to her?" His earlier dark tone is gone, but this sedated one is somehow even more unnerving.
"Please," I beg. I really don't want to tell them.
"What did they do to her?" He repeats with the same gentleness.
I look over his shoulder to Aracely, hoping that she'll save me from having to say it. She just waits patiently, her face as relaxed as his. I search the room to see if anyone will help me, but everyone's just looking at me with glossy eyes and pained expressions that make it ten times harder to look back at Darius.
"I thought that on the third day of us being here that she was already so broken inside - that there was nothing they could do that could make her eyes look any more empty than they did that day. Before that she would spit and yell and curse in their faces, but after...she kept staring straight ahead with this blank expression on her face. All that she would say or do was scream, but soon enough she just went mute. Her body started losing its strength, her muscles atrophied and her face began to hollow out. They'd give her food but she wouldn't eat it, and then she couldn't eat it nor hold it down long enough for her body to gain the things it needed. That's when he started taking her memory. When she was too weak to fight them off in any way.
"Every time he did so, she'd end up dying a little bit more. Her heart has slowed to a pace that shouldn't even be possible to be stable. Her organs are on their last days of being functional, and once they fail...Even if I can't keep her alive, they will. They've only just gotten her to the point they wanted her at, and I don't see a way to get her out of it."
"Tell us what you know, Hira," Aracely demands.
I look at Darius, hoping he'll be the one to understand that I really didn't want to tell any of them this in the first place. "He took her memory completely two days ago. She doesn't remember any of you. She doesn't even remember her own name."