Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Dim mystlight filtered down as my vision focused. I braced my palm against the floor, clenching my eyes over a wave of nausea.
Metal, not rock, chilled the side of my body, and my fingers brushed something flaky.
Dried blood. However long I had been unconscious—for the second time in as many days—had been long enough for the blood dripping from the wounds on my arm and head to solidify beneath me.
I scraped it with my nails while my brain caught up to my senses, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
Lucidius. Malakai. The Engrossians. Was it all true? The deluge of information the Revered—no. He did not deserve that title.
The deluge of information that man had poured into me overwhelmed me as I pushed myself to a seated position. I touched the spot on my arm where Lucidius’s dagger had sliced. The wound had already healed over, tender pink skin replacing the blood.
Bars surrounded me on three sides with rock at my back.
Metal barriers and solid granite. Caged.
Like an animal, Lucidius had thrown me into this metal box, wounded and unconscious.
Every inch of my body throbbed when I struggled to my feet.
Though I was healing, my muscles were exhausted.
The cracking of my body against that wall reverberated through my skull, but nothing critical must have broken because I was able to stand.
My vision flickered before me at the sudden movement, and a wave of dizziness buckled my knees. The bars caught my fall. Cold metal—so out of place in the volcano—bit into my flesh as I wrapped my hand around one.
“You should sit down.” Malakai’s voice was gentle as he spoke, and the familiar sound flooded me with relief, before my memories caught up with me, burning a hole in my chest and filling my throat with a rotten taste of betrayal.
I turned to my right. A cage identical to mine was built into the rock wall.
Malakai watched me from inside of it. He appeared much more alert than he had been in the cavern, but wary.
Not from the drug—which had passed through his system by now—or from any newly sustained injuries, but from the look of fury on my face when my eyes met his.
“Ophelia…” he began, his voice utterly broken.
“How long have I been out?” I interrupted.
His face fell at my dismissal. “It’s hard to tell without windows. Maybe half a day.”
“Half a day?” I turned away from him, inspecting the bars of my cage for weaknesses.
“Could be more or less.”
“Helpful,” I muttered in a tone I had never used against Malakai before.
The rage that had pooled within me since he left mounted again, feeling familiar and foreign all at once.
I thought I had escaped the shadow of fury that followed me, but it was like an old friend lying in wait.
Malakai’s lies had opened that door again. This fresh wave of anger was for him.
But I wasn’t ready to face it, yet. I needed to survive Lucidius first, though a part of me wondered which was more likely to kill me: Malakai’s betrayal or his father.
“Where are my weapons?” I asked, still not looking at him.
“Lucidius took them when you fell. Unstrapped the ones from your belt and thighs and the…spear.” He stumbled over the word.
“The spear. It’s mine?” Mine, not his as I was led to believe my entire life.
It had felt like an extension of myself from the first moment I held it, felt that pulse pass between us.
I attributed that to Malakai’s lost presence, but I should have known.
That feeling went deeper, the weapon calling to my blood. Awakening something within me.
“Yes.” My heart cracked further, a hole widening within it.
“Okay.”
“Ophelia, let me—”
“No, Malakai.” I finally looked over my shoulder to find his gaze burning into me. “I’m not ready to hear any excuses from you. I don’t want them.”
Silence.
“How do we get out of here?” I asked, turning away again, unable to face the conflicted pleading and ire that mingled in his expression.
“The bars are sealed magically. Only fire melts them. I’ve seen them used. If we get out of the cage, I’m not sure where to go. But we can find our way out, together.” His voice was stronger than before, as though finding a way out of this would fix something between us.
Together. I had longed for together for so long. But now that it was here, just an arm’s stretch away, I was not sure if I could feel it.
I walked to the side of my cage that faced Malakai’s and knelt down, the metal sending chills through the knees of my leathers. Malakai scrambled to me, gripping the bars on either side of his face, awaiting my next words.
I took a ragged breath over the hole in my chest. I wasn’t sure if there was a future in our together, but that didn’t wipe away the past or the present.
“And you’re…are you okay?” My voice cracked over the words. They sounded ridiculous, because I knew there was no world in which he was okay at all. But, Spirits, please let him survive. Despite everything—no matter what came next for us—I needed him.
He sighed, shoulders drooping as his hands slid down the bars. “I don’t know,” he admitted. I waited for him to continue. “Physically, I’m fine right now. The magic here heals all of my injuries and pushes drugs through my system quickly. Mentally…emotionally…I don’t know.”
My heart cracked with each word. I looked into the green eyes I had missed so desperately, but lies and deceit clouded my view of them.
I thought back to the utter perfection our lives had been before he left, and it felt tainted.
Like we had existed in our own realm. The spotless glass that held our relationship shattered, and I was left standing among the shards.
Perhaps it had always been an illusion—that bliss nothing more than a figment of young love.
I pushed away from the bars and settled against the rock, letting the solid presence of something natural steady me.
Questions continued to fall stoically from my lips.
About Lucidius’s past. About what he planned for us.
About who else may be here. And I told him about the Curse, about Damien’s quest, and about the journey to the mountains.
But we never spoke about us. Never spoke about the betrayal Lucidius revealed, and never spoke about what would come next, should we survive.
Anger lifted Malakai’s voice every so often, but he stifled it—answering my questions quickly and obediently like a lashed creature. It twisted my gut, because he had been lashed, and here I was, salting the wound instead of nurturing it.
But I was also hurt, and there was a long road before healing.
Despair sank into my bones as I wondered if we would ever heal.
Could things ever be the same, or were we destined to be torn apart?
I ran a thumb over the tattoo on my arm, feeling his dampened spirit twisting along that thread in my body.
As I looked at the bars towering above us, one realization came to me. I at least wanted a chance to decide if healing was possible. A fierce determination sparked within me. Because healing would not matter if we died here.