Chapter 64 #2
"I will speak. Not for y-you, though," Luella forced out quietly.
Caliban’s eyes filled with a more pressing darkness. "Smart, but in time, your allegiance will shift. You will begin to do things to please me and no longer care for anyone else." He sounded certain of this.
She grew quiet. She had given him what he wanted. He would get no more.
"I do not wish for you to crawl, but I will make you if you cannot walk well enough."
He pulled back. She didn’t move.
"Don’t test me," he said harshly.
Luella slowly sat up, stilling when her body protested.
She threw her legs over the side of the stone table, the hem of her rough shift rising up her thighs indecently.
His eyes dropped to her legs as her feet touched the stone floor.
Hunger flashed in his eyes, but it felt…
odd. As if he were not starving for her flesh, but for what was contained within her flesh—her magic.
She would never give it to him.
That was even if she was able to control it. She could not. And she was understanding what a blessing that was. For it to remain locked away.
She placed her full weight on her feet, wincing as her ankle throbbed, pain shooting up her leg.
Caliban walked back, eyes on her. "Come."
She gritted her jaw, her right arm cradled to her chest. Her fingers were curled inward to her palm; she could scarcely move them.
She walked to him. Each step felt like she was betraying herself.
"Good." Shadows flickered in his eyes. He turned his sights on the healers. "You won’t die today."
They both breathed a visible sigh of relief, but Luella saw the conflicted look in Desara’s eyes. She caught Luella staring and looked away, but not before Luella saw the slight shake of her head.
Sometimes, it was a mercy to die.
"You will come with me now," Caliban said to Luella.
He turned and headed to the darkened doorway, and she had no choice but to follow. Her left ankle twisted on the stone, making her limp awkwardly.
She felt the healers staring after her. She couldn’t bring herself to glance back at them as she ventured out of the only room she had known in this cold stone prison.
Beyond, the walls were made of stone. Grey and dark marble.
The floor was cool beneath her bare feet.
She felt the chill against her exposed back.
It seemed to ricochet off the walls and seep into the very marrow of her bones—so different after the warmth of the Isles.
At the mere thought, her throat closed up.
What had become of the Fallen Isles? Had it fallen to the Umbra entirely?
What about… Graves.
Her right hand spasmed against her chest.
He had been hurt. She had felt it. What if—what if he had been killed, and she would never know?
Her eyes stared, unseeing, at Caliban’s back as he walked in front of her.
He didn’t seem to care that she was left unwatched.
She could run right now. She could turn and flee.
But where would she go? How far could she get before he caught her?
She was in no state to escape. She could barely manage walking in a straight line now with her ankle.
Every step made her back twinge with discomfort.
She imagined her wings were scraped and raw. They certainly felt like it.
He led her through an endless loop of stone halls, the ceilings curved overhead, making her breath rattle in the air as it echoed past her chapped lips.
One step. Then another.
A distant roaring sound made her freeze.
She gasped softly, and Caliban finally turned to meet her eyes. He was haloed by the softest rays of white light, radiating behind him from a break in the stone halls. It was a mocking contrast.
His hands were loose by his side, posture at ease. His dark clothing was stitched impeccably. Stolen clothes for the false King.
"Do not tell me the sound of your storms frightens you.
I would assume after all the havoc you have wrought, this would be a mere lullaby, soothing you to sleep like a babe.
" His hand rose in the air, fingers curling until he made a lazy fist. Shadows drifted over his knuckles.
"As soon as I brought you through the portal, rain unlike anything Luna has seen in centuries arrived. We’re already seeing the devastation from it. "
He took a step toward her, and the light grew brighter behind him as it was no longer blotted out by his frame.
"I wonder what would happen if it continued.
Famine? Flooding? If the fae in the outer villages see their crops flooded, what would happen if they are trapped by water and cannot escape?
Hungry." A step closer. "Starving." He was right before her now.
The light behind him was nearly blinding.
"Would they turn on each other to fill their empty, aching bellies? "
She flinched as he reached for a strand of her hair, brushing it away from her shoulder. Her magic was curled so tightly within her she could barely feel it.
"Why so quiet, Luella? Is my presence that unnerving to you? It should not be. We have known each other since your birth."
She didn’t speak. If she spoke, it would make it all real.
Sharp, vivid anger befell his face, turning the otherwise softer beauty into a deadly rage—with her as its recipient.
"Speak!" he roared, the word echoed and echoed, bouncing off the stone.
Speak.
Speak.
Speak.
"I-I do not—what do y-you—" The elixir she had been given thrummed in her blood, coiling around her heart. She felt faint. Her tongue wouldn’t work again, heavy in her mouth.
The rage was snuffed out like a light. "You are pitiful.
Weak. I thought I was doing you a service by allowing you to grow up away from me, but you have only become a product of those around you.
If you had been with me all this time, perhaps I could have molded you into something far greater than the tragic, guileless Princess standing before me. "
It was a relief, in a way, to hear such words from her enemy. For she knew he wouldn’t lie—he had no reason to. It was the truth, laid bare.
She was weak. She was nothing.
Caliban’s head turned, blotting out the light once more. "Come. I will not allow you to make me late when it is our first appearance together."
She had no time to focus on his words, for he grabbed the elbow of her good arm and tugged her onward.
She limped as he led her into the light.
The hall opened up into a bright, moonlit conservatory, encased entirely by glass.
The roaring sound was deafening here. Darkness stretched far beyond the glass; it was night.
She tried to find the moon, but it hid behind the clouds, rays struggling to break through.
Sheets of rain pelted against the glass, sliding down the surface and obscuring almost everything beyond.
It made her feel like she was standing far below the ocean, stuck in a whirlpool, spinning.
Her head lifted to stare.
"This is—mine?"
Caliban huffed lowly, drawing her attention. She could not quite understand his moods. He switched in the span of a breath. It made her feel as though she had to tread cautiously around him.
She was so tired of being hurt; she didn’t want to be hurt anymore. Maybe if she were quiet, she wouldn’t be.
"Yes," he answered plainly. "It seems your magic is stronger than I had thought it to be. No matter."
They left the conservatory, and a part of her wilted as the thundering sound of the rain receded and the faint moonlight was soon blotted out by the pressing darkness of stone, ensconcing her within its depths.
The halls opened to a large room that rippled and echoed with faint, trickling water. An ever-present drip drip drip.
The smell greeted her first.
She stumbled, pressing her good hand over her mouth to stifle the bile that rose.
The decaying stench of bodies. Iron blood. And something else—something starker.
Phosphorous and metallic. Like minerals.
The air was heavy with humidity and biting with chill. It seemed the stone walls didn’t allow for any warmth to last long within the grand room.
Lights shone, glittering faintly with threads of blue and white. Clinging to the walls and tucked deep within the stone.
The room had the appearance of a large cavern, blended with regal touches. Arches above, cut from the marbled stone. Pillars with emblems of the moon and its phases carved into the sides.
And hundreds of bodies, converging right in the midst of it all.
They were all silent and all staring at her.
Luella’s wings shuddered, as if to retreat within herself.
Caliban’s hand traveled up to the back of her neck, holding her captive. He stalled at the precipice of the room. There were too many in attendance to see much beyond the press of the bodies.
An evil smile touched his lips. He was silent as he dragged her into the room, and the bodies parted like water against the wave of his hand.
She saw shadowed eyes as she passed. She didn’t hold their eyes long, unable to bear it, ripping her attention away. She stared at the high, domed ceiling, the arches dripping with green vines and glittering dots of light.
The stone was slippery with water beneath her bare feet. She looked down at the feel of it under her toes and against her heels—and found the water tinged with pink. Blood.
Her feet itched with the desire to scrub them clean.
She felt so exposed in her gown. Her nipples brushed against the rough fabric. She knew they all could see.
At the side of the room, a thin pool was set into the floor, thick red blood lapping against the stone.
Steps led out of the cover of blood, straight up into a large arch carved into the base of a stone wall, and set within: a grand white throne.
A white moon crest gleamed above it, jutting out of the stone wall.
A smaller throne was by its side. She was distantly aware that was where her true mother and father had sat—before.