Chapter 6
My skin felt like it was on fire. Sweat covered every inch of my body as I laid on my back, the hard metal bed digging into my flesh.
The wall next to me radiated heat from the sun, warming up the tiny cell. Every inch of the prison, including the bars keeping me contained, was built of solaures metal.
When I’d first arrived, the guards had taken me through a long underground tunnel to a staircase leading up to a courtyard.
There were no cells on that floor, so the guards had dragged me up another set of stairs to the second of three floors.
The top two floors of the square building were lined with prisoners on all four walls.
I savored the few minutes I had left before a guard would come to collect me to shepherd me and the rest of the prisoners to the yards.
Lili?
Silence. I’d tried speaking to her over and over through the bond, but I suspected the bracelets melted together around my wrists blocked that too.
For over a month, I hadn’t been able to talk to her or Archie.
My heart clenched at the thought of their worrying.
Holding my hands over my head, I inspected the thick golden metal.
The bracelets were more comfortable than the golden cuffs, as no chain connected the two rings.
But being cut off entirely from my dark powers had been a challenge. I found myself trying to pull the shadows close to me to avoid the guards on numerous occasions, and I’d failed every time.
The door creaked as a guard entered my cell, and instant dread for the day crept up on me.
I sighed but got up at once to follow her out.
Rolling my neck to try and relieve the stiffness from the hours I’d spent on the hard bed, I walked the familiar path to the sewing stations.
I’d been assigned this job the day after my arrival to the prison.
My head spun, the sharp sunlight blinding me as we stepped into the yards on the ground floor. There was no ceiling, so the unyielding sun burned the necks of the prisoners all day long. My skin had darkened at least a couple of shades in just a month.
I greeted Elvira when I reached my workstation, her table placed to the right of mine at the end of a line of at least fifty tables. Her pink hair flowed silkily down her back as she turned to smile at me.
“Morning, Prudence. How did we sleep?” she beamed, giving me a knowing wink. I shot her a discouraged look, wondering how she managed to stay so cheerful despite our situation.
“Fabulous,” I answered, rolling my eyes before smiling back at her.
She laughed before quickly returning her focus to the half-finished prison uniform in front of her. Friendly banter was strongly discouraged by the guards, and if they deemed us too familiar, they’d move one of us.
Her hands worked fast as she skillfully placed the stitches in a neat row.
She told me she used to make jewelry to sell at the market in Erobred before she got arrested.
They allowed her to keep most of her decorations, like they’d allowed me to keep the necklace I’d dug out of my bag before they confiscated it.
I absentmindedly touched the moon hanging from my neck, thinking of my little sister.
They let the prisoners keep trinkets from home, perhaps to enhance the feeling of homesickness. A clever punishment disguised as an act of mercy.
I grabbed the project I didn’t finish the day before and started working.
The process was tedious, and countless times I was pulled out of my self-pitying thoughts because the needle sunk into my finger.
Yet my mind ruthlessly wandered back home, wondering how Lili and Archie were doing.
Even the thought of the small abandoned shed I called home for years brought a pang of longing to the pit of my stomach.
I knew Archie would do everything he could to take care of Lili. I also knew they’d both be struggling to handle my sudden disappearance.
Goddess Lili, please stay out of trouble.
“You’re sewing the armhole shut,” Elvira said, dragging me back to the stifling yard.
“What?” I looked down in confusion, realizing my error. “Oh, mother of—“
“Language,” she said in a mockingly stern tone, reaching over to slap my hand lightly. I laughed, though silently to avoid attracting the guards’ unwelcome attention.
I appreciated Elvira so much; she gave me the breaks from my sad reality that I needed to survive this hellhole. I hoped I did the same for her. Even knowing the fraction of her past that I did, I knew her life had been difficult.
Her arms were darkened inky blue up to her elbows.
When I had asked her how a jewelry-maker in her mid-twenties had managed to do that much dark magic in her lifetime, she’d told me about the institution she’d grown up in.
The kids there had been ruthless, and the adults had done nothing to stop the fighting breaking out in the yards.
She used to live so far away from Erobred that the Defenders didn’t notice the group of darksomes hiding in one of the smaller towns.
I removed the misplaced stitches and placed the finished uniform in the growing pile of garments on my table.
After a few hours of work, my shirt stuck unpleasantly to my back, and sweat trickled down my forehead. I looked up, my gaze meeting nothing but blue skies and the small glowing circle that was the current root of my misery.
I grabbed the provided water bottle from my table and downed most of the content in one go, then splashed the rest onto my face.
Elvira giggled, then did the same. A sigh of pleasure escaped her thin lips as she smeared the liquid all over her face and arms.
“The next water-break isn’t for another hour or so,” I rasped, my throat dry and itchy. Even though the ground was free of sand, the stuff was floating around in the air. With every cough, at least five grains materialized on my tongue.
“We can stick it out,” she hummed, pulling a new piece of lapis fabric towards her. I did the same.
“How many new prisoners are they expecting?” I scowled, cutting the fabric with the dull scissors to make the neck hole.
“I suspect the prison goes through them pretty quickly. Those whips of light will destroy a uniform with a single lash,” Elvira answered, her voice lowering darkly.
Those words reawakened the pain from the wounds on my back and thighs.
The scabs had mostly healed, leaving angry red lines all across my skin.
The guards were quick to punish even the slightest misbehavior with a lashing, performed in front of every prisoner on a raised platform in the yards. Then the punished hung from their wrists the whole day, and sometimes through the night, depending on their offense.
I shuddered, thinking about the last whipping.
Ashton. His striking white hair and angelic face was a startling contrast to his unhinged personality.
When he received his punishment, he’d laughed.
He’d hung for two days without water, straight lines of pearly-white teeth stained in blood because he’d bitten off part of a guard’s ear.
When the workday was finally over, we were all ushered into the dining hall.
I grabbed a tray of the gray mush that we had the pleasure of eating two times a day and found a seat across from Elvira at one of the long stone benches.
The surface burned hot on my bare thighs, but it was a familiar unpleasant sensation by now.
The bland taste hit my tongue as I scooped a bit of the goop into my mouth. When I’d first arrived, I wanted to puke after every meal. Even if I was never used to good food, it was mostly fresh. This tasted like it had been in a bucket in the corner for ten years.
Amari sat down next to me, her dark skin glistening in sweat. We usually sat together at meals, so I was used to her mood. She growled and shoved a huge spoonful of mush into her mouth and chewed it with such force her teeth clattered.
“Bad day at the gardens? Tomatoes rebelling again?” I teased with a sideways glance at her black eyes now boring into mine.
“I am not gentle enough to work with fragile, little plants,” she hissed, stuffing her mouth to the brim again. As if proving her point, she stomped so hard on my toes I almost jumped off the seat.
“You did that on purpose,” I said, stealing her plate and sliding it down the table to Elvira. “Those heels are sharp, you know.”
“My nails are sharper,” she muttered, grabbing her food back in a swift movement. Her lips curled into an unwilling smile at our teasing and a warm feeling spread through me.
She’d moved from workstation to workstation, trying to find something she could do without destroying it in the process. Before the Defenders captured her, she lived in the forest by herself for years. They stumbled upon her by pure accident. Worst luck of her life.
I caught a flicker of white out of the corner of my eye. Whipping my head to the side, I found Ashton’s icy blue eyes staring at me. He crouched down until we were almost nose to nose.
“Have you been causing trouble lately, Prudence?” he whispered, unblinking eyes staring at me. I tilted my head to the side and narrowed my eyes at him.
“What do you mean, Ashton?” I said, copying his mellow voice. He straightened up, only to squeeze down next to me on the bench.
“I heard the guards talking about you a lot today.” He leaned in closer, his breath tickling my ear. Ashton was on constant watch, which meant he usually heard all the rumors first. “If you’re plotting an escape, surely you’d include me in your little plan?”
I gulped, trying to make sense of his words. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not plotting anything.”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me, trying to read the expression on my face. Apparently deciding I was telling the truth, he pushed back up from his seat and walked away without another word.
Dumbfounded, I looked around at my dinner companions, who looked just as confused as I felt. “What was that about?” I asked, casting a sideways glance at Ashton’s receding frame.
Amari shook her head in irritation. “That man is insane.”
Ashton’s inquiry kept me awake most of the night. Did I cause trouble unknowingly? Did Kenric tell them about my abilities, and they’d finally decided what to do with me?
Unpleasant scenarios played out in my head as I stared up at the dirty ceiling in my cell. What were they going to do with me?
My hand found the pendant resting at the hollow of my neck. The birthday gift for Lili that I never got to give her. It almost felt like a part of me now.
I rolled onto my side and accidentally grazed the back of my hand against the scorching wall. Jerking away, I looked down to see an angry red mark taking form. How Ashton thought I could ever escape this place still baffled me.
I swirled in and out of consciousness, uneasy sleep offering nothing but horrible images of Lili, Archie, Annora, me…
A loud clang interrupted my nightmares, and I sat up straight, staring into the darkness. I couldn’t place the direction of the sounds or whether they came from my cell or not, but Ashton’s words rang loudly in my head once more. Have you been causing trouble lately, Prudence?
Goddess, I hoped not. The clanging continued, but when morning approached and no one had come for me, I fell back into an uneasy sleep.
I stood beside Elvira again the next day, listening to her talk enthusiastically about her jewelry. She also told me that Amari convinced the guards to let her try sewing.
“She’s going to destroy every uniform she touches,” she laughed, folding up another finished one of her own. “Poor thing.”
“She would probably excel at mining or something,” I said, stifling a laugh.
I truly felt bad for Amari. She’d tried every workstation during her years in prison and had never found anything she was good at.
She had told us that she did enjoy pottery, until she accidentally smashed three days’ worth of work.
“We could teach her,” I shrugged, poking the needle through the fabric over and over. “It’s not that hard.”
Elvira scoffed beside me, pointing to my pile of uniforms, then her own. “You’re not teaching anybody just yet. Maybe—” she trailed off, her eyes focusing on something behind me.
I whipped around, feeling my face drain in horror. I was staring into the eyes of the most feared man in this prison. My scars tingled at the familiar face.
“Hello Prudence,” Elio Boaz, the Chief Warden, greeted me with a sinister smile.