10 | Kiandah
Shadow Keep
I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all. I feel sick and hurt and just downright strange. I’ve felt this way since I woke up three days ago. And the presence of the Shadow Lord makes it worse. He’s here now. He’s been here a lot and I don’t understand why. At first I thought they’d taken me to the infirmary, but I’m alone here and the room is large and lavish. So then, I was left to assume that I’ve been placed in a guest annex of the castle — which is confusing in itself. I’m no longer on the brink of death and I’m a prisoner, besides — why would they care if I died? Why I’m not in the dungeons with my family is vexing.
Yaron hasn’t spoken to me much. Your family has been recaptured and returned to the dungeons. That was the second thing he said to me right after, Are you well?
Other than that, he’s only come in and out and looked around the room for items that he’s either not found or taken. The moments last a long time, though. He should be able to find whatever he’s looking for faster than this. He’s across the room around a corner now. I don’t know what’s behind the bend, only that bookcases and drapes show on the other wall. Perhaps, a small library or reading nook? I wouldn’t know. I’m unwell, but still well enough to walk — not that I do. I’m terrified to get up. Too terrified to move. And that makes me feel like a coward. I need to escape, to find my family…to beg Lord Yaron to tell me what he plans to do with them…
My lips part…but the words don’t come.
“You can relax,” Finn says, placing a hand on my shoulder and giving me a tight, reassuring squeeze. He’s counting my pulse, his brow furrowed. He’s done this a few times over the last days. He’s been mostly the one to monitor me, kind of annoyingly — ah, em, continuously — though Okayo stops by twice a day to check on me. I like Okayo, and not just because he looks like one of my cousins, though that helps. He’s funny and has managed to make me smile, despite the circumstances.
“Finn.” Yaron snaps from across the room. I jolt, but the Shadow Lord isn’t looking at me. He’s glaring daggers at Finn. More specifically, at the contact of Finn’s hand on my bare shoulder. I’ve been naked for the three days that I’ve been here, wherever I am. I haven’t bathed either, and I’d like to, but only after I find my kin.
I shrink away from Finn, who slowly removes his hand from my skin. I keep my eyes pointed to the sheets, clench my knees together and just wait and wish for the Shadow Lord to go away. “Kiandah.”
I flinch and reach up to stroke my hair…but it isn’t there. I swallow and open my mouth…but my voice isn’t there, either.
“Are you well?” He’s closer — still over twenty paces away, but the distance doesn’t seem to matter. I feel the tops of my thighs begin to tingle. It’s an unwanted sensation. I zipper them shut.
I don’t know how to answer the question. I just feel frustrated. He asks me this question multiple times a day, and every time, we have the same exchange. Fine. Then he leaves. But my frustration and this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach are playing tug of war with my heart.
I blurt out, “Where is my family, Yaron?”
Even though Finn is no longer touching me, I still feel the tension he radiates.
My eyes don’t manage to make it up to Yaron’s face, so I can’t gauge his expression as he says coldly, “Finn, leave us.”
“No, don’t.” Panic subsumes me. I reach up and out and lock onto Finn’s retreating hand. I meet his gaze. “Please.”
And then comes something I’ve never felt before. A hot, invisible wave full of rage. Pure anger radiates across the room. It’s of Lord Yaron’s own making, yes, but that rage…I inhale…it belongs to me. My eyes start to roll back, but I rebel against the sudden pleasantness that threatens to relax me. Gripping Finn’s arm tighter helps me refocus. I don’t know why I feel this way. I must still have a fever. Okayo pronounced my fever broken, but it must have come back.
“Leave us, Finn, if you’d like to keep your arm.”
Finn doesn’t hesitate, but untangles his fingers from mine, shoves away from the bed and moves promptly and directly to the door. He’s still holding his hearing scope, the one he’d been using to check my pulse. I’m sure the concern on his face had to do with the fact that my pulse was beating fast enough for him to believe I was having a heart attack.
My hand hangs suspended, reaching for where Finn was. I watch the door shut behind him. A black, carved piece of wood. It’s beautiful and austere, severe and cold. Everything that is Lord Yaron. But in the icy rain, he was so warm…
Yaron wants me to look at him. I can feel it like I can feel the grime on my skin. I look at the sheets instead until the force of his rage pulses so hot, I have to close my eyes against it. I clench everything together. My sanity, my fear, my fists. He comes to the edge of the bed.
Silence hangs between us like a noose. With his next words, he loops the killing end around my neck. “You do not seem well.”
Rage surges between us, but it’s mine this time. I inhale deeply, feeling the painful tinglings of aches and healing wounds all over. “I’m not well. I don’t know where my family is.”
He shifts his weight between his feet. Another wall of silence and animosity builds between us. “You know where they are.”
“And that’s why I’m not well.”
“Be that as it may, you know I am referring to your healing process. Physically, you also seem unwell.”
“Why does…” I choke. I mean to sound strong, but I’m really scared, angry, and uncomfortable. I turn my face away from him and stare at the curtains. The thick, black outer curtains are partly pulled back to reveal a gauzy, translucent curtain that lets in light but prevents me from seeing anything of the outside world. “I’m a prisoner, my Lord. I don’t see why you’d care about my physical state.”
He makes a sound in the back of his throat and I know it’s because he didn’t like the way I called him what I called him and I know that it was boorish, but I can’t help it. I’m scared and I’m pissed off and I know it doesn’t matter. He’s going to return me to the dungeons at some point. What…happened between us in the woods…that was just once. That was just to sate my heat. I’m nothing to him, clearly, less than nothing — not even a no-name peasant, but an accomplished criminal and a bloodthirsty killer. Right.
“You are also an Omega.” Riiiiight. That, too. “It is the duty of an Alpha Lord to ensure the safety and security of the Omegas in his charge.” He recites the words as if he read them somewhere once and has them memorized.
I snort even though I don’t mean to. He growls low, but I don’t react to it except to tense further, knotting my arms across the blanket I have pulled up to my chest. “I am safe and secure, so you don’t need to worry yourself. You can leave me to rot in this prison, knowing you’ve upheld your duty as Shadow Lord.”
I’m speaking to Lord Yaron petulantly. It makes me want to bite off my own tongue. I’d never disgrace myself in this way. Never. My family would be horrified. But there’s a good chance they’re already dead, tortured, brutalized…and even if they aren’t, it doesn’t seem like Yaron has any intent to reunite us, so they’ll never know anyways. I don’t cry. I won’t cry. I refuse to cry in front of him.
He takes another step. It’s loud. Leather-soled boots, I’d imagine. They’re huge. He has enormous feet and hands, and that’s without the claws. Everything about him is larger than life. And yet…this male, imposing in any form…I’ve seen him kneel before.
“Does this look like a prison to you?”
“I think…” I swallow and when I answer, my voice is soft, a direct response to the sudden flash of vulnerability I thought I heard in his tone. “It feels like a prison. It could look like anything.”
Quiet falls like an axe this time, the one he carries. He shuffles again and I spare a single glance up to see him roughly running his hand over his face before carding his fingers through his hair. He glances around and I look down quickly, scared to get caught in his steel-eyed snare. “Is there some…temporary adjustment that could be made to increase your comfort?”
“You know what I require to be comfortable,” I mumble, though what I really want to say is, why do you care? He’s told me already that I mean nothing more to him than the obligation any other ruling Alpha would have to an unclaimed Omega in their territory. His asking me now…borders on cruelty. I didn’t think he’d be cruel, our Lord. I thought he’d be severe, sure, and fair, but not cruel. But it’s been cruel, his questions, and his visits, keeping me constantly on edge and yet depriving me of information, of assurances…
…of clothing and a bath…
…of sunlight.
I glance to the window, but he steps between it and me, scattering the little light that there is and casting a shadow that covers me completely. Another cruelty, this one slight. “You know I can’t do that.”
I fist the sheets over my thighs. “You can do that, but you choose not to, Lord.”
“You are not a simpleton. You understand why.”
“I must be a simpleton, then, because I don’t understand.” And this is the part that I’ve been trying to avoid. The one coming on for days now. The part where I start to cry. I bite my bottom lip hard enough to hurt so that I don’t choke. “You believe us killers, fine, but we are a family of killers. A family. I should be at their side.”
“You’d rather be with them in the dungeons than here…” He scoffs and looks away. I glance up again. His cheeks are ruddy, likely with anger. It makes me nervous. I don’t like it. I’m afraid of it, of him, of this.
“Yes. I’d rather to be anywhere with them than anywhere else with anyone else.”
“In lieu of my locking you in the dungeons, is there something else?”
“Just to see them would be enough.”
“I’m not taking you to the dungeons and my word is final.” He raises his voice and I jump. My lower lip quivers. I stroke my hair again — my head — and shiver. “Something else. Anything else. Please.”
Please. He said please.
I shudder violently now and cover my face with both hands. I press the heels of my palms to my eyes and try to remember that my family committed crimes, heinous crimes, and that justice needs to be doled out. He is their Lord. How he deals justice is his prerogative and if he chooses not to include me in this…part — or if this is my penance — then I will have to bear it. And he said please. I truly am a simpleton if I’m swayed by that.
“The windows,” I whimper, doing nothing to keep the tears from my tone, just as my palms do nothing to keep the tears from my eyes. I cry. Tightly and terribly, I cry.
“The windows,” he says, voice stilted. “You’d like the windows…to…” It takes him a while to figure it out, but I don’t help him. “You’d like the window curtains opened?”
I nod.
He balks. “You’ve been here three days. After the first, your injuries were more than healed enough for you to walk this short distance to open them yourself. Why have you…” Another realization changes the accusatory nature of his inflection. I don’t know what to make of it when he says, “Have you left the bed for any reason? Other than to use the washroom?”
I shake my head.
“Have you even washed?”
I shake my head.
“And you’d like now…to look out of the window.”
He doesn’t seem to be asking a question, but I still nod.
Rage pulses out of him again, this time like a cold wind against the Cliffs of Oblivion, carrying hints of frost. “Don’t do this to me,” he says, voice all but a whisper. I have no idea what he’s talking about. He comes right to the edge of the bed, thighs pressed against its elevated platform. He reaches for me, as if to touch my shoulder, but I wince.
He snarls and pulls back, whirls around on his hard-soled heel, advances to the window like it’s a traitor he’s been itching to strike down his entire reign, rips the curtains all the way open and then leaves. He doesn’t look back as he storms out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
I turn to face the window fully and notice how huge it really is. Nearly twenty feet tall, it stretches two thirds of the way up the outer wall and it looks out over the entire courtyard of the keep, down the rolling hill — I can even see Orias Village in the distance. Smoke rises from chimneys. The village square is bustling, people whisking their wares to and fro. I can even see horse carts disappearing over the rise of the hill, climbing the Orias highway line towards the ports.
My mouth drops open as I realize where I’m sitting, relative to the castle. My vantage is from a position that I know well. That everyone knows. I’m currently positioned in the east tower of the castle that stands slightly taller and slightly apart from all the rest, in the tower that everyone knows no one is allowed to enter. Because this is Lord Yaron’s private wing and I’m in it — not in his guest quarters, but in his quarters, in his private area, in his bed…
I’m his prisoner, but I’m sitting where his queen should be.