15. Trapped
After Zalina left, Killian studied the room from his prickling bed. Breathing hissed from the steps, although he couldn’t see the creature from his blackened, rusty cage. Each bar plunged into the stones above and below, and the cage’s door swung on thick, solid hinges. The stone floor was covered with slick brown mildew that crept up the edges of the metal, growing thicker toward a pile of bones and refuse in one corner. A slight slit on the side wall might have allowed archers to defend the castle at one time, but now it provided Killian his only sense of passing time. The wind howled from outside the window. The room was lit by a crackling, flickering firelight from the torches that lined the stairs. Water dripped loudly on the stone from the ceiling above.
The stairway leading up was the only way out.
The room was darkening, and he began to shiver. Rising, he touched every bar, shaking them to see if there was any weakness. The door didn’t budge no matter how much he pulled on it. He shuddered again from the cold and dropped to the ground to do pushups—anything to warm up his body. The floor smelled horrific: mildew, urine, food rot, and something metallic, so he didn’t continue the movements for long. His breath quickened, but he stopped before breaking a sweat to prevent true cold.
Staring grimly at the pile of bones in the corner, he grimaced when he noticed the patches of fur that covered some. Many pieces were tiny, but other bones were larger than Killian’s. He turned away to stop the dread of his own demise.
Killian switched to squats. Anything to keep his body warm and his mind from thinking. But his mind was restless, each memory more intense than the last. His father’s horror at his decision. The hurt on the Walworth king and queen’s faces. Phineas’s confusion and desperation. His father’s last words removing him as heir. Raela’s look of betrayal.
He tried to think of L’Turetian words, murmuring them under his breath with each squat, but that only made him think about her.
Raela.
How she must hate him. How confused and hurt she must be by the kiss. He didn’t have time to right it, to get her out of the forest, and to tell her he had chosen her over all else. And now Zalina had trapped him, so he couldn’t tell her the truth. Couldn’t tell her that he loved how her stunning smile lit up the world. That he wanted to reach for her touch like flowers reach toward the sun. How impressed he was with her cleverness and quick wit. How he loved watching her purse her lips together when she was thinking and memorizing. He loved her humor, her confusion over foreign concepts like courtship. He could hear her laugh echoing though the room. Killian grumbled before he collapsed on the prickly bedding. His head felt heavy. How many mistakes could one man make?
“What? Stopping already? That was the most entertaining thing I’ve witnessed in years.”
Killian stood and whirled toward the cage beside him, where a mass of brown and matted blankets rose up and blinked at him. The voice was haggard and came from a wrinkled face caked with mud. Ten nubs stuck out from the base, which he assumed were feet but appeared as mildewed as the stones they rested on.
An arm, more like the leg of a gangly stork stuck out the side and waved him on. “I particularly appreciated the exercises. I try to do my own to maintain these muscles.” She flexed the rail-thin appendage.
“Excuse me, who are you?” he interrupted.
“Some old forgotten thing. You may call me Meshougi.”
“Meshougi? What does that mean?”
“The Crazy Lady.” From beneath her matted gray locks, she winked at him. “But you are quite muscular. We can’t have you losing those in the future, can we? Mm? Carry on. Don’t let me stop you. Here, together.” She grinned, displaying a wide, toothless, turtle-like maw as she started doing squats, her blankets sending puffs of dust around her with each descent.
“I—” He shook his head, trying to clear his head. “I’m Killian.”
She paused. “I know. And a prince.”
His brow furrowed. “Are you a seer?”
She tapped her fingers together with a mischievous glint to her eye before she giggled. Giggled. “She did say your name and standing, my dear.” She huffed a wheezing laugh … or maybe a cough? “I am a pretty good guesser of the future, but I shan’t claim that one.”
He settled back onto his bed, shifting so his back was on the stone before realizing how much faster it pulled the heat from his body. Wrapping himself in the tattered, scratchy blanket, he looked over at her grinning form. “So you are also imprisoned?”
“I am currently here, yes.”
Killian nodded and looked to the ceiling, wondering what she had done. He searched for a clue as to what day or even what time it was. The slit in the wall had shifted from yellow to a dull, lime-green hue and was now darkening to a blue.
The old lady bounced on her bed, and pawed on it, like Jax circling his napping place. “Settle in, my dear,” Meshougi said as she snuggled back into her bedding, and the wafting odor of rot and sweat assaulted him. “The storm always gets worse before it gets better.”
Killian couldn’t repress the shudder that rolled down his spine.
“Rest.” She eyed him over the rolls of dirty blankets, her voice croaking like a rusty hinge. “Rest now, little prince. You are currently in the eye.”
Water dripped from the ceiling, loudly pattering out the seconds on the stone below. He had started to count them in an attempt to assess the time. But after he had lost count, yet again, the task only ratcheted his sense of hopelessness.
The light from the slit in the wall wavered from blue to green to yellow. His muscles ached from lying down, pacing, and the cold.
The firelight crackled and echoed up the stairs where something … or some things breathed, every exhale rattling and wet.
He tried again and again to find a way out of the cage. But the metal was solid and the stone unyielding.
The rotting, meaty smell from the pile of bones burned his nose. He avoided looking at the stack, afraid he was looking at the previous occupant … and his own future state.
Time passed painfully. Eventually, he fell asleep in a fitful rest. His dreams were torrid, violent, and terrifying. Once, he swore he felt icy fingers on his forehead and heard the crooning of his crazy cellmate. But it was only for a moment, and then he was thrown into nightmares again.
He awoke.
But the nightmare seemed to continue.
The window slit was dark olive green upon his awakening. The pattering of the water hitting the floor smacked dully. His senses thickened, probably because of his poor sleep.
A scraggly crow brought a sack of hard and moldy foods with a bladder of sour wine. The first time, he had sneered at the old lady as she scrambled to the ground and ate it all at once. He thought she should save some to consume throughout the day. But then the rats came and ate the food he had stored on his bed, leaving him with nothing. The next time a meal arrived, he found himself racing across the ground himself. Better to eat all the food at once than to lose any amount later.
It was never enough. Killian was hungry. He shivered from the ache in his belly and the ice that seeped into his marrow.
One day, a giant fox entered the dungeon. He walked on two legs, was clothed in leather, and was armed to the teeth. His chest plate was held up by leather straps. A single red stone decorated the center. Holding a crossbow, he tugged open the cage, shoved Killian out, and pushed him to the stairs. A hall opened partway up the stairway, and at the end, the fox tossed him into a massive room, as tall as the pines of the Forbidden Forest. On a platform twenty feet high, a chair overlooked the empty room—empty but for a stool that sat before a crank connected to a massive wheel that plunged deep below the stone floor. The huge fox shoved him onto the stool and prodded him to turn the crank. Each spin of the crank turned the wheel … and did nothing else. No water was pumped. No flour was ground. Killian could see no reason for the wheel at all.
A chain fastened his ankle to the floor beside the stool.
Zalina walked across the platform above him, taking a seat in an elaborate chair. Her gaze was as piercing as a sword.
“Will you marry me?”
“No,” he said, his voice rough and sore.
She shifted her hand. “Then continue.”
The fox pointed to the crank with the sharp tip of the crossbow, and Killian turned it. He turned the wheel until his arms trembled. Every time he tried to stop, the fox prodded his back. So, he continued until his grip slipped off completely.
Then he was brought back to his cage.
After what felt like only a few hours, he would be brought back to repeat the work at the wheel. This continued for days or weeks or months. He couldn’t tell. His life was hunger, cold, and pointless work. Threads of hope thinned to whisps.
Time passed like this.
The drops of water made no noise.
The window’s light never wavered.
The fire burned silently.
Killian churned the wheel, spinning, pushing, pulling, endlessly, fruitlessly. He was thinning, but his muscles were forced to function until they broke. Sores lined his lips and hipbones and heels where they struck the hard stone beneath the sleeping sack. After one crank-turning session, he returned to the cage and heard the mass of blankets speak again.
“Why are you here, Prince?”
He blinked at her. She had remained silent for so long, he’d nearly forgotten about her. “I’m sorry?”
“Why are you here, Prince?”
He shook his head at her stupid question and cleared his throat from the foul, thick saliva that coated it. “Zalina brought me here.”
“She did.” Her round head bobbled in a yes. She leaned forward, pointing at him with her twiggy finger. “But why are you still here?”
He snarled, his belly, body, and soul too sore to tolerate inanities. “Why are you here, Meshougi? What did you do?”
Her eyes widened. He frowned. They widened even more and sparkled with glee.
She really was crazy.
She lifted a single finger and patted her nose on the side before she settled back onto the bed.
Killian no longer looked for a window to tell him the time of day. It was all meaningless. He no longer watched the drips of water. He no longer heard their pattering. There was no escape. There was only dimness. And an odd neighbor.
The pile of blankets shifted, and white eyes peeked from their depths. Meshougi spoke again. “Prince, what do you fear?”
He sat up, delicately setting his back against the wall and glancing at her through their shared wall. Before he restarted his count of the 1,433 stones of his ceiling, he answered, “Nothing.”
“Why?”
He shrugged a bony shoulder. “I feel nothing. Why would I feel fear?”
The mass of blankets shifted. She leaned toward him. He couldn’t even smell her anymore. “Did you feel nothing your whole life?”
“Well, no.” He scratched at his oily head, his fingers tangling in their mats.
“Then what did you fear?”
Killian struggled to think back. To remember through the fog of his mind. “I feared losing a fight.”
“So do mice. What else?”
He frowned. “I feared being a poor king.”
Her hand flitted before her, a twig on a bush, waving in a gust. “Nah. What else?”
“I … what is the purpose of this?” Killian sat up, a spark of anger flared like a dying ember, dull but present in his chest.
“These are comfortable fears, Killian. You are not ready yet.”
Killian scoffed and spat on the ground before he rolled away from her and covered his head.
Flies buzzed around the wounds on his feet.
“Leave those.” Meshougi said as he went to brush off the maggots. “Leave them. They save lives. They may not be pretty, but they clean wounds. They have a purpose. You have to deal with the toxic rot before you can heal, Prince.”
Killian stopped brushing at his legs. What did it matter anyway? His calves were thin, mere bones attached to his paddle of a wounded foot. His feet had become as mildewed as hers.
He was cold, hungry, aching—this was his whole identity. The wheel was his whole world. He was taken there again.
Like she did every time, Zalina asked, “Prince Killian, will you marry me?” But today she said added, “I will spare you the wheel, and we shall feast.”
His eyebrow twitched, but he said nothing. His stomach growled loudly, and she smiled. He felt nothing.
He started from the memory as if it was real. He could still feel the warmth in his hands as he had held hers. He could smell her sunny meadow scent. The glint from her hair still flashed and waved in the wind. As radiant as the sun that heated his skin, Raela had warmed his heart. His heart stumbled at the renewed sense of loss.
Killian sat up and held his head in his hands. Hot tears burned at the corners of his eyes. One slipped down his cheek.
The woman stood right behind him, holding onto the bars. “Who was she?”
He sighed. “She was special. I was going to marry her.”
The mass of blankets pressed toward him, her voice quiet and without the usual amusement. “What was she like?”
He swept together all the memories of her. “She had a voice that called the animals … literally.” He chuckled. “I thought her bear was going to eat me. But it turned out I should have been scared of the magic light instead.” He scratched his bearded face. When had he grown a beard? He continued. “She was the sun itself—warmth, happiness. She radiated life. And this sounds crazy, but the trees bent to her as she passed. The wind picked up and swirled when she laughed. She felt real.” He chuckled bitterly. “I felt real, like I finally mattered to someone, like I could do something right for once in my life. She was my princess. The one I chose. Or would have.” He sighed as he rubbed his eyes. “You probably think I’m crazy.”
She smiled in that old turtle way. “As an expert on crazy, yes, I do. But not for this. Not for her.”
His cheeks cracked into a real smile.
Meshougi leaned forward further. “So what did you fear?”
His smile faltered into a sad sort of grimace. Naked and exposed, he ventured the truth. “I feared becoming nothing and no one. Being unimportant. Forgotten. I hated disappointing my father, but at least … at least he still saw me. Even if it was, I don’t know, even if it was in a bad light.”
She pointed a bony finger toward him. “And what have you become now?”
His chest seized. “Nothing and no one.”
“Is that really true?”
He stared back at her black eyes. “Isn’t it?”
Her wiry brow rose, and she settled back, staring at him with her unflinching gaze.
Killian looked away, uncomfortable.
Isn’t it?