7. Kiera
Chapter 7
Kiera
H ours later, when the day has waned and night has fallen outside the windows, Kalix's words still echo in my head. Bidding everyone goodnight, I leave the Darkhavens in their new chambers and head across the hall to the door alongside Maeryn's. I pause, looking back to the floor and checking my pockets before I reach my door, not finding my Spider Queen. With a sigh, I realize Ara has snuck off again.
It's common for spiders to exude curiosity alongside caution, but in this new Academy, I’m not so comfortable with her wandering. She knew Riviere well, was born and raised there—or so I’d guessed from the memories she’d shared with me in the past. Ortus is nothing like Riviere and had I realized sooner that she’d snuck along for the ride by burrowing into one of my trouser pockets, I might have left her behind.
I stare into the empty eyes of the brass animal knocker on the outside of my door with a frown. I’ve seen a multitude of wild animals from boar to spotted cats ten times the size of the tame street felines in various cities on the continent. I don’t recognize the animal the knocker on my door is fashioned from. Twin dagger-like canines jut out and down from an oddly shaped face, almost like that of an octopus—one of the few animals I’d only ever seen in books. Slitted eyes stare back at me, unblinking, and I’m left wanting to tear the damn thing off the face of the wood and cast it down the long dark corridor.
With a sigh, I twist the handle and enter the room behind. Darkness seeps from the corners of the chamber, keeping the majority of its contents in shadow. What I can see, however, tells me it’s similar to the Darkhavens’ rooms. Large and square with ornate furniture, but smelling of must and decay.
A lone window, wide enough for a body to fit through, but not so wide that it allows in much moonlight rests across the way. An iron frame juts up through the middle of the glass pane with a latch to open it centered unevenly lower than I know it should be. The muted light through the glass is the only illumination that reveals the rest of the pathetic corrosion of what might have once been a beautiful room.
Then again, I have slept in worse places.
The reminder that I was not always here—under the thumb of the Gods as their offspring and their hostage—almost makes me think of my life as an assassin as something out of a storybook.
In just a few short months, my entire life has altered and so have I.
Eyes burning and nose twitching at the dust that coats the furniture as well as the rest of the room, I walk across the stone floor until I come to the bedside. A fairly sizable piece, the bed has two stands on either side of its expanse. Twin candelabras along with matchsticks rest on the scarred wooden surfaces. Striking one, I light the series of candles on the larger of the two realizing that they might possibly be the only things in this place not covered in a thin layer of grit and grime.
Frowning, I lift the candelabra and turn in a circle, surveying the rest of the room.
It's not a school ... it’s a prison. Leave it to Kalix to point out something so terrifyingly obvious.
Riviere had been a school. The rooms had been immaculately cleaned to perfection every day by Terra. The windows had been washed. The walls white with age, but not sagging from ill sanitation. If I had to guess, I’d say no one has stayed in these rooms in a long time, years if not decades or more.
Why, then, are we? I have to ask myself. Why now?
Not for the first time, I wonder if it's my fault. The thought, however, makes me scoff at myself in shame. As if everything in this world revolves around me— ha. It’s the height of arrogance to think that all bad luck that befalls the Mortal Gods of the realm is because of me. It can’t be. It must be something else, some ruse or plan the Gods have created, but for what?
My head begins to pound behind my eyeballs and I reach up, pinching the bridge of my nose. It alleviates the impending headache but only marginally. There's no doubt that if I don't sleep soon, the pain in my skull will keep me from doing so for the rest of the night.
Carrying the candle flame to the opposite side of the chamber, away from the bed, the firelight glints off a shimmering surface. A standing mirror edged in gold filigree is propped against the wall, facing outward. The reflective glass is dull from lack of polish, but it showcases the old-world art style. Touching a fingertip to one of the delicately molded leaves at the side, I nearly jolt when a curious little face pops out from behind the mirror.
Half a dozen beady black eyes stare up at me, unblinking. Biting down on my lower lip in amusement at my own skittishness, I hold out the tip of one finger, allowing the creature to decide if it wishes to trust me or not. The spider quickly crawls onto my finger and then up my arm, traveling with speedy movements until it touches my shoulder where it pauses. A shifting movement from beneath my clothes and a known little beady-eyed spider appears from the pocket of one of my trousers.
Ara scrambles up my side to join the first spider on my shoulder, and together, the three of us look back at the mirror. My face appears sunken in the reflection, sallow and cold. I look startlingly like the servants that had taken our luggage when we first arrived—skeletal and half dead.
Scowling at the reminder, I turn and glance around the room, only then spotting the bag that I'd brought with me placed at the end of one of the bed's legs. The new spider reaches out and taps the side of my neck as I march back towards the bed, setting the candelabra down on the floor as I go to my haunches and rip open the satchel. Emotions pour through me at the new familiar's little touch. Confusion. Curiosity. Wonder. Hope.
My hands pause at the fastenings of the bag. Hope?
With a frown, I reach up absently and tap the small spider on the head with affection before quickly stripping out of my clothes. I find a bowl of standing water sitting in the corner of the room as a makeshift washstand. No private bathing chambers here, it seems.
Trying to rinse the dust that seems to have transferred from the rooms onto my skin as quickly as possible, I redress in my trousers and shirt. Even if I’d brought something to sleep in, the deep-seated anxiety in my bones at being housed in a prison of Brimstone wouldn’t let me relax quite that much. Not expecting to actually sleep, I still crawl onto the mattress, feeling it dip lightly beneath my weight. I’m shocked to feel how comfortable it is despite what I suspect is lack of use. Both spiders, Ara and her newest companion, crawl down my arm and settle onto one of the pillows next to my head.
My lips curve upward as I look at the two of them. Ara’s much larger and far browner frame rests against the smooth pale pillow and a black spider half her size cuddles closer. Spiders aren’t normally pack-like creatures, but around me, I wonder if they become so. As if I’m some sort of alpha spider speaker and they can relax their guards around me and become almost like pets.
Turning away from the side, I lean across the bed and blow out the candles before resigning myself to a night of staring into the darkness, waiting for some inevitable shadow to attack me. I count seconds into minutes and minutes disappear into hours. After what feels like an eternity, my eyelids begin to droop and I fall into oblivion.
Whispers rouse me from my slumber, but I don’t wake into a crystal-clear reality. Instead, I feel as if I’m rising slowly from some deep underwater bedchamber. The sounds and smells and feeling of air on my skin happen in increments. Not growing louder until I finally open my eyes and peer around.
No longer in the room I’d been given, I stand in a long dark hallway shrouded in smoke and shadows. A shiver cascades down my spine and I quickly wrap my arms around myself protectively. Taking a step forward, I blink and try to clear away the blurry tinge of the corridor.
It doesn’t go away. Instead, the hazy outline seems to grow until it encapsulates the entirety of the hallway, and then the image shifts.
Wide and curved, as if I’m viewing the area through eyes that are bulbous and protruding. It takes me a moment longer than it normally would to realize I’m not myself and these are not my eyes I’m seeing through, but the eyes of a spider. Once I’m aware of that, however, relief curls through me and I release a sigh as the creature skitters down the hallway, everything becoming pillars of giant proportions.
The spider’s emotions are a riot in my mind. Anxiety. Fear. Curiosity. Love.
It’s the last emotion that gives me pause. Love?
Before I can truly consider that odd emotion from the creature, the corridor changes as the spider turns into a darkened alcove and then we’re leaping, air beneath me, brushing against a fuzzy stomach as a silken string shoots out and latches on to a nearby wall. Down and down some more, we fly into obscurity until a soft orange glow at the very end comes into view, making me realize we’d been descending above a set of stairs.
Frost covered ice oozes from cracks in the walls around the single torch attached to the wall. Casting a look around, I see more unending corridors that disappear into darkness far beyond both my ability to see and the spider’s.
The farther we travel into the strange lower corridors, the more I realize that it’s nothing like the old and dusty, but opulent levels above. This is still Ortus Island, but a lower floor that, if possible, is even more poorly kept. One good thing about it, though, is the fact that there are cobwebs aplenty in these dank quarters and that makes it far easier for the spider I’m with to glide up to them and use them as hook points as it examines the space.
Rows of open rooms—no, cells, I realize as the bars of blackened brimstone become visible against the flicker of flame from the single torch.
The rattle of stone on stone and metal chains echo into the empty air along with a hacking cough. My head—and the spider’s—turns towards the noise. More nervousness suffuses the spider’s emotions. It taps its little feet in a procession against the sticky quality of the web we’re perched on. Soothingly, I spread my own emotions into the creature’s mind, sending out thoughts of confidence and safety that I don’t truly feel.
A moment later, as the poor thing’s uncertainty eases, I prompt it with a desire. The spider responds quickly and begins to skitter away from the web, onto the wall, following the sound from before.
I wait, impatient, but forcing myself not to nudge the spider to go faster as we creep into the darkness. Shadows of orange disappear into hues of gray and green. The brimstone bars look like juts of teeth clamped shut on the opposite side of the corridor and every time I glimpse them in the near absent light, a cold weight settles heavily in my stomach like a millstone.
Prison. There’s no doubt now that Kalix’s hypothesis is correct. This is no dream, but a melding of minds between me and most likely the spider from my room. It’s showing me the hidden slivers of this place and revealing its secrets. These are cells meant to house Divine Beings or those of Divine blood.
The spider draws to a slow stop along the wall before dropping to the floor in a lithe, practiced movement that I couldn’t replicate even after all of my years of training under Ophelia’s tutelage. There’s only so much one can learn, but the natural inclination and abilities of ancient creature’s genetics cannot be replicated.
Closer. Closer. Closer. Another hacking cough. A low moan. The length of chain being dragged against stone.
Snick. Snick.
“Oh, fucking stop it, Caed,” a disgruntled, dry feminine tone echoes into the shadows. “It’s pointless. The stones are wet and the sound is getting on my nerves.”
A masculine sigh erupts and then the curious snicking noise ceases. The spider creeps closer, but we’re so far from the torch that nothing but gray shadows swirl around us, disrupting the arched surroundings. I strain to see past the gloom to the outline of the two figures side by side in matching cells.
“I’m sorry, Ari,” the man says, his throaty voice hoarse and deep. It’s almost lyrical in quality, but that’s not what causes my reaction.
That voice. Male. Deep. Even. It’s the voice of Caedmon, God of Prophecy.