Chapter Forty-Four Rhea
“Sunshine.” Nox’s voice rings out in the dark as I spin where I stand, turning round and round while searching for him.
“Where are you?” I shout, blindly reaching out in front of me. “Nox!”
“I’m here,” he whispers, sounding even farther away than before.
I take an unsteady step forward, my bare feet hitting cool, wet stone when a flicker of golden light catches my gaze. It’s in the distance, just out of reach, but if I move a little more—
“Rhea!” He screams this time, propelling me into a sprint.
Tears crest my eyes as my chest heaves, but I can’t stop.
I’ll lose him if I stop. The golden light grows brighter as it moves like a tattered flag in the wind.
My hair whips behind me, and I pump my arms harder, stretching a hand out—to reach for what, I’m not sure.
The light sharpens the nearer I get, morphing from a simple golden glow into something linear. Something that looks like… like a rope.
“Nox!” I scream, limbs tingling with magic as I reach towards that tether. Its warmth brushes along my fingertips, a pleasant hum emanating from the light, but right as I’m about to grasp it, sure that it must lead to him, I’m yanked back.
Cold, slithering magic wraps around my torso, pinning my arms into place at my sides.
I struggle to get free, screaming for Nox.
For anyone to help. But my pleas fall on deaf ears, and as I’m dragged farther away, the light once more shrinking into something undefinable, darkness creeps in until it suffocates me completely.
I suck in a breath as the shadows fade until I’m in my room.
How did I get here? Staring at the ceiling, my brows furrow when I try to swallow, my mouth parched and tasting of something herbal.
Its bitterness makes me gag, but when I attempt to sit up to go to the bathroom, my vision swirls as white sparks across it and my body stays firmly in place.
“Ah, she’s finally awake.” A silhouette appears at the foot of my bed, backlit by hazy silver moonlight and shadows that dance along its edges.
But I don’t need to see his features to know whose voice this is.
This scenario has played out enough times in my dreams for me to understand.
Simon picks an instrument up from the metal tray that is always at the bed’s corner, and I force my eyes closed as my heartrate spikes.
“I had wondered if perhaps using so much magic today would leave you in a catatonic state. I’m glad to see you only needed a few hours of rest. How are you feeling? ” he asks.
“This isn’t real,” I whisper, startled that my voice carries sound. It hasn’t the past few times he’s haunted my dreams. Clearing my throat of that bitter taste, I repeat, “This isn’t real.”
“Surprised you can talk?” He sounds closer, and the question prompts my eyes back open, the swirling darkness of my bedroom making my head pound.
Simon stares down at me from where he now stands at my feet.
“Did you know that the fae have their own version of gelsemium? They call it belladragis. The flowers are beautiful and quite deceiving in their strength.” The right side of his mouth lifts. “Somewhat like you.”
The tool in his hand glints, its flat shape like a blade except it’s thinner than any I’ve ever seen before. “This isn’t—”
“When you slice their little petals open, they secrete a liquid that, while awful in taste and smell, works as a true paralytic.” My blink is slow, and Simon moves from my feet to my hip in the time it takes my eyes to open again. “What will we see when we slice you open?”
His silhouette lifts an arm over his head, and even though I expect the pain to come, as it has in every dream, nothing prepares me for the way it erupts over my thigh when he plunges his instrument in.
My scream echoes out and reverberates in my head, as if I’m trapped in a cave with my own nightmare.
“Are you paying attention, Princess Rhea?” I groan when he yanks the blade out, prompting more white stars to flare across my vision.
“Today, you did something that could be considered miraculous. Spectacular. Godly, even.” My eyelids flutter as I stare at the ceiling, a dark green glow washing over it for a moment before the sound of Simon playing with his metal tray again draws my gaze back down.
I look over my body, attempting to wiggle my limbs beneath my velvet dress. But I don’t move. I never do. “Wake up,” I rasp, Simon once more hovering near my hip.
“Tell me what secrets you’re holding within.
” He shows me the new tool he’s plucked, but I can’t focus on it, not as I watch him raise his arm over his head again.
“What else can your magic do?” He doesn’t even give me time to answer before he plunges the newest weapon down, hard enough that I’m sure he hits bone.
I scream, the horrid noise wrenched from me as quickly as my lungs empty of every speck of air. “Wake up!” I heave, tears streaming down the sides of my face as shadows swirl above me. “Wake up!”
Simon pulls his tool free, examining my blood that coats it as a sadistic smile lifts his cheeks. “Is that what you think is happening right now? That you’re in some sort of dream?”
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
“Oh, I’m afraid that this is very real and, until you give me the answers I want, so too is the pain I will inflict on you. So before we continue, do you want to confess what else your magic can do?”
My lips quiver as I track his movements, tears blurring his figure from one to two then back again.
“What else can your magic do?” Simon asks again, his sharp voice piercing my heart.
“I don’t— Nothing beyond normal mage magic.” His movements are a blur when he drags the blade over my knee, warmth spilling from the split skin as metal scrapes against bone. I scream until my throat is raw, until my own voice vibrates in my skull. Wake up. Wake up. Wake. Up!
“Don’t lie to me,” he says curtly. “I will always know if you do.” Again, he cuts into my skin, agony filling every empty spot within me as my vision glows white around the edges.
A soft, unintelligible whisper plays in my ear, there for only a few seconds before it’s gone again, replaced with Simon’s voice. “Tell me everything your magic can do.”
My consciousness begins to dwindle, and I silently beg for it to take me out. To ease me into a space where I can be numb. Through a hazy white veil, a green light forms over my leg. Right where Simon’s hands are hovering. It doesn’t make sense, but then again my dreams lately never do.
“I want to tell you a story.” My eyes threaten to fall closed as warmth flares at my thigh, a pleasant sensation trickling there.
But I’m stuck here, unable to move. Unable to leave.
“Roughly five decades ago, a boy was born into the Mage Kingdom. He was a curious one, always tinkering with the world around him. But nothing fascinated him more than the intricate nature of the mage body. He could read all day about how it functioned, and he did. While his friends played with their magic and studied things like politics or history, he learned about the brain and the nervous system. He found himself eager to learn if the magic mages wielded was the reason they were so superior.”
“He wanted to know if what made them different could be seen within the body. If it could be dissected. His obsession drew him into a relatively reclusive life, but one that fulfilled him enough because he let himself explore those curiosities. For years, he did what he knew he was born to. He memorized the inner layout of the body, and it was even more marvelous than he imagined.”
My awareness sharpens when Simon’s voice grows strained, that green light flickering beneath his palms. The sensation of something familiar—something I’ve felt before—wanes from my muscles and the once aching bone until there is… nothing. No lingering pain. It’s almost as if…
“But something else happened as he pursued this knowledge. He discovered a certain kind of joy in pushing someone to their limits. Each individual had a breaking point, and once they were past that, well, they’d tell you anything if it meant finding relief.”
He draws in a deep breath as he turns his head towards me.
Even with the silver light from outside cutting a line over his face, his dark eyes don’t look mage.
But I knew there were those in the Mage Kingdom who didn’t have gray eyes.
Cass, Daje, and Councilman Arav to name a few.
But Simon… I swallow the bile that rises in my throat.
Gods above, the reason I awoke without evidence after our encounters wasn’t because they were dreams. It’s because Simon healed me of all that he was doing.
He healed me. “You’re mage,” I grit out.
He smiles as he moves to that metal tray again, fingers trailing over the instruments there.
He ignores my question. “As you might imagine, finding subjects to experiment on was a task all its own. It’s why I became so knowledgeable of the plant life around me.
It’s harder to convince someone by getting them drunk or cornering them in an alley, but when I can slip something in their drink so that they can’t fight back?
Well”—he plucks a thin steel pick—“that’s an entirely different sense of euphoria. ”
“This is madness,” I whisper, trying to mask my fear but failing when my voice breaks. “If the king finds out what you are doing to me, that you are mage—”
“I am the king’s greatest asset!” he screams, rushing to me between one blink and the next, his profile outlined green from his magic.
His lips peel back in a snarl, white teeth flashing as he hovers over me.
“I fled here when my own kingdom tried to execute me. When they turned my own family against me. King Sadryn did not even consider seeing how my research could help our people!”
A sob claws its way up my throat, a leaden feeling blanketing me and my useless limbs.