Chapter 9 #2
It was a stone structure nestled between two large, old looking trees, the shape of it barely visible beneath the ivy and rot. It looked half-forgotten, the kind of place that should’ve crumbled years ago, but somehow hadn’t. Something about it felt very, very wrong.
The werewolf growled low in her throat, her head closer to the ground, her tail lowered, but she kept moving, and so did I.
The closer we were to the structure, the more still the air grew, like even the wind stayed away from it.
Yet something seemed to pull me closer, almost called my name in silence .
It was some kind of a temple, or what remained of one. Four towering pillars framed a raised stone platform, and the walls were half ruined, dented in, broken, yet two torches hung on metal hooks with barely any fire burning atop them.
But what made us both stop for the second time was the altar in the center of the platform, in the shape of a spear pointing at the ceiling, made of dark rock—and the man who was chained to it.
The torches on the walls gave off enough light to see that his skin was basically grey, and there was dried blood covering his arms. Strange glyphs shimmered faintly beneath the skin of his chest, like they’d been burned into him from the inside somehow.
Every hair on my body stood at attention. A sorcerer, the voice in my head said. A sorcerer had done this to this man, had chained a living being to be used for magic. For spells and fucking potions .
I wanted to get closer, but the werewolf turned to me and growled—a warning.
“We have to help him,” I whispered as slowly as I could. “He’s breathing. We have to unchain him.” And indeed, his chest rose and fell steadily, though slowly. We were not going to just leave him here to die.
So, I moved again, and this time the werewolf let me. She walked with me, right by my side, her muscles still tense, her head low, that growl coming from deep inside her every few seconds.
When I stepped into the clearing in front of the temple, the man’s head snapped up with unnatural speed.
Why my soul didn’t leave my body in that second is still a mystery to me.
His eyes were almost white—and I’d seen eyes like that before, on that woman. The seer in the queen’s palace. The seer in the prince’s bedroom. Except this man was very different, and his skin was grey, and he wore black clothes, torn and dirty, and the energy about him was all wrong.
“H-Hello,” I whispered, my voice dry as a bone, eyes on those thick chains that wrapped around his wrists, then went behind the spear-shaped stone.
Chained. The man was chained, for fuck’s sake—why was I so scared?
I moved closer despite my screaming instincts, and the werewolf’s low growls. She came with me, stuck close to my left leg, and I tried to look brave, unafraid. I tried to keep my chin up as I approached the poor man.
“Stand still, we’re not going to hurt you,” I forced myself to say. “We’re going to?—”
“You came back.”
I stopped when I was still two feet away from the stone floor of the ruined temple.
“I…wait, what ?” Did he really just speak? Or had I lost my mind for real?
The man smiled.
God help me, I had never seen a more terrifying face, not even on the sorcerers—but the sight of him was nothing compared to what he said next.
“My Queen, you came back.”
His voice was brittle, paper-thin, but it cracked through the silence like thunder.
His gaze locked onto me and didn’t waver for a second.
I shook my head, my body betraying me for a moment when I tried to speak and couldn’t.
But the werewolf was still growling as she slowly went a little closer to the temple, though not close enough to even touch the stone.
“You came back,” he whispered again and again, another three times. Impossible to convince myself that I’d heard wrong.
“I…I think you’ve made a mistake,” I finally choked out with barely any voice, then chided myself in my head.
What the hell was I doing, being so terrified of a man chained to a piece of rock? I could do better than this, damn it!
“No mistake,” he said, a tremor in his voice now. His face crumpled like he was suddenly seeing the sun rising right in front of his face. “You came back, My Queen. I’ve been waiting so long…”
The man suddenly flinched, and his entire body convulsed like he was holding back a scream.
My heart jumped.
“Are you okay?” I asked despite myself, but my feet were glued to the ground and I couldn’t get closer if I tried, not until I knew for a fact that this man wouldn’t hurt me.
A thought occurred to me as he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, and those silver blue glyphs that seemed to be glowing from his very bones burned brighter.
What if this was a trap? What if those sorcerers had seen that I hadn’t died, and they’d set this trap for me here?
The werewolf growled louder.
The man spoke again.
“They said you died, My Queen. They said he killed you. But your frostfire is still here. We feel it. It still sings.”
I moved back a bit instinctively, and the werewolf stepped in front of me. No, no, no, no, the voices in my head said— no to everything. All of this. Those words and the way he was looking at me— and are those tears in his eyes?!
My God, what the hell was this place?
“Look, mister, I just wanted to help you with those chains. Do you need help or not?” I forced myself to say, getting angrier by the second, but…
“They took everything after you fell. The mirror is gone, My Queen. But the vengeance lives. I see it now—it lives. ” And then he let out this sound that could have been laughter, but it sounded like nails being dragged against glass instead.
My hands moved to my ears and I stepped farther away, and the werewolf moved back, too.
“Yeah, we’re getting out of here. Good luck with those chains,” I said because I was not about to get anywhere close to this guy again.
He didn’t seem to mind, though.
“Find it,” he suddenly snapped, those wide eyes on me—and he looked terrified now, not happy. Terrified. “Find the mirror. Find it. ”
It wasn’t just a demand—it was an order.
I shook my head, my blood near a fucking boiling point by now. “I am not who you think I am, mister! You have the wrong person. I’m?—”
“Find the mirror, find it!” This he shouted, and the werewolf growled. “Find it…” His voice trailed off and he froze, like suddenly he turned to stone, those wide unblinking eyes on me. “Before he does.”
Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.
“Wha—”
The man coughed hard. Blood speckled the altar, as dark as the blood that had dried on his arms.
He closed his eyes and his head fell to the side against the rock, and he was suddenly in the exact same position he had been when we first saw him. The exact same.
I don’t know why that freaked me out so much—maybe because for a brief moment there I considered that I’d only made the whole thing up?
Maybe because I thought I’d somehow imagined a dead man opening his eyes and speaking to me, calling me queen, talking about mirrors and frostfire —that’s not even a word, you scary fucking prick!
Either way, I turned around and I ran back between the trees, into the forest with my heart in my throat, and the werewolf followed.
That’s where I promised myself that I was never approaching anyone in this fucking forest ever again, no matter how many chains they had on their bodies.