CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The cemented cell moved like a breathing being, contracting and repelling. Over and over. Water dropped from a calcium formation in the corner, the dripping sound one I couldn’t keep myself from focusing on, trying to drown out the screams and cries through the chambers.
Rough and calloused unknown hands had thrown me into the cell during the utter void.
It took me only minutes to realize the walls reacted to my emotions.
The stone around mimicked my own panicked breathing, frantically squeezing me so small my shoulders touched each face.
I listened to the falling water sound, counted their hits into the puddle below until I lost count and started again.
When my nerves calmed hours later, the walls slowly inched their way back to their original positions.
The gash running along the length of my face from when I’d collided with the floor seared, grime and mud burning the wound that would soon cause infection.
Wyrmsteel shackles cuffed my wrists, disconnecting me from talking to Noctis and summoning my powers.
It’s what they were intended for, yet I wouldn’t tell them I was powerless.
They didn’t work on me. Just like my body didn’t work for me.
Seven hundred and sixteen, seven hundred and seventeen, seven hundred and eigh—
A slit in the wooden door frame offered little light from the torch-lit corridor; however, it also presented the multitude of prisoners beyond my own cell.
My stomach lurched at the smell of rotting flesh, green sludge pooling from the cell across and into my own.
Their wailing waned with the hours, some going completely silent when they gave up… or died.
The chamber door crashed into the wall.
“Get up, sea scum,” a brute guard demanded, standing in the door frame, iron links chained along his torso.
Absolutely fucking not.
When I was first captured, I had beat at that door for a solid few hours, but ultimately, they left me like all the other prisoners––alone, drowning in fear and panic, my throat raw from screaming. They’d have to drag me out themselves if they thought they would take me elsewhere.
The walls closed in, grinding against the stone flooring, rattling as they shifted toward me. They would crush me if I couldn’t keep my emotions in check.
I’d have to get out of the room and then fight.
I rose to my feet slowly, making sure not to look at the walls. They taunted each step to the opening of the chamber, grinding little by little with every inch I traveled.
The guard huffed when he noticed them enclosing. He knew I was scared, and that terrified me even more.
He reached forward and yanked me by the tarnished chain trailing the wyrmsteel shackles, and I inhaled sharply. Brutal scars covered his face, shades of white and light ruby freckling the healed marks.
I hope the pain and memories of the injury haunt him.
The corridors beyond the ones lined with prisoner cells were illuminated far more than expected. Pristine, white, gleaming walls starkly contrasted the filthy, grime-filled stone chamber inside my cell. A silent message that spoke volumes.
“Walk faster,” the guard grunted, shoving me forward. I tripped over my weak ankles, having sat on them against stone for hours.
Where was he taking me? I kicked back but only hit air.
My shackled hands reached at my sides like muscle memory, only to find emptied sheathes. I awoke to my blade gone. Duscharne wasn’t stupid enough to leave me armed. Figures.
I lunged forward, but the shackles dug deeper within my skin.
My feet shoved backwards again, any attempt to catch the man’s ankles, but he jumped backward, his hold on the chain firm.
He let out a harsh, guttural laugh, low and ugly, like something pulled up from deep in his chest. He stepped past me, circling my flailing, writhing body, then used the chains to drag me along as I fought against them.
We rounded a corner and approached two guards perched outside a set of wooden double doors.
Scowls were permanently implanted on their faces as they stared straight ahead, staffs in one hand and grasping the hilt of their swords in the other.
The left armored one beat his staff along the lower etchings of the door, and they opened as if conducted by magic.
Glass cylinders dotted the vast room, each one filled to the brim with still, lightless water.
Inside, merfolk hung suspended near the surface, unconscious, unmoving, limp bodies pressed just behind the glass.
Men, women, children. I couldn’t tell if they breathed or lived, only that at the end of the line sat a cylinder devoid of a body, and I was sure it had my name etched in the glass.
I stood slowly, nose twitching.
Fuck this.
The guard shoved into me, his fist meeting my shoulder blade, but I pushed back.
The tubes were how the Royal Vanguard powered the Oricaan beasts. It was how they harvested my people’s powers, leaving them dried out like husks. It had to be. Duscharne worked for them, betrayed me, along with Laziel for their own selfish reasons.
“No, no…. no,” I breathed. It was the first words I’d said in hours. I writhed against the buckling strength of the male, but he overpowered me, spewing curses as he slammed his fist into my spine.
My body whirled from the guard’s strength as he pulled me through the threshold, my feet and knees dragging behind. My shoulders screamed back, nearly disconnected from the joints.
My heart shattered as we passed the second glass prison cell holding a mer child.
Her tiny eyes barely cracked open as she drifted to sleep.
I prayed to the gods it wasn’t permanently.
Her freckled skin was ghostly pale, riddled with red, veiny lacerations.
She was covered in them from her hairline to the cartilage of her semi-translucent, sick tail.
I shook violently, pulling at my arms to be free, but the man held firm.
The third held a silver haired mer, the same veiny gashes across his body.
The fourth carried a middle-aged lady mer.
I stopped looking after the twelfth, eyes focused on my feet as they bounced over the cracks in the flooring.
It was much worse than I’d ever imagined. The reason Jun couldn’t speak of it…
All the way in the back of the room—in solidarity—was the empty glass cylinder.
Flashing white lined the hinged door that creaked as it opened by magic.
The guard threw me inside, one hand gripping around my throat and the other around my ankles.
I crashed into the solid metal ground, and the door sealed with me inside.
This couldn’t be… no…
I scrambled to my feet, pounding on the glass cylinder that became my new prison cell.
My fists beat the glass column relentless for an hour, skin splitting and bruising with each strike, but still no one answered the call.
The merfolk around did not wake. I was left alone, breathing labored, hands aching, sore from the lack of fingernails and my useless attack on the cell.
I collapsed, metal fittings digging into my backside.
Would they come for me? I told myself they wouldn’t—that they shouldn’t—but the thought of them not coming hurt worse.
Water exploded into the tank in a single, violent heartbeat, flooding in from below like something alive forcing its way through. It roared upward in a choking surge, slamming against the sealed roof in a deafening crash as spray burst outward in frantic, chaotic sheets.
I panicked. Water alone would not kill me, but what approached just might. Icy cold bit into my skin, and I shivered as the water raised past my waist. My legs dissolved, merging into my cobalt scaled tail.
The chamber filled, the water sealing me inside it, complete and inescapable.
Muddled footsteps sounded, nearly incoherent in the cylinder. I frantically searched for their whereabouts.
“It’s so good to see you again,” Raoku drawled, the words slow and slithering.
I’ll kill him. For everything he did to Jun. For everything he did to anyone.
“Let me out,” I seethed, but my confidence waned.
“I don’t think that is going to be a possibility. You know, I did offer you that choice weeks ago. It really is a shame you didn’t want to fight on our side.”
“I only fight on the winning side.”
“Then, you should have taken my offer. Because now, I have the entire royal bloodline to fight Thal’Maruun—your aunt. I have both of the goddess’s nieces, sister, and brother-by-marriage.”
The attempt to contain my shock was impossible. He was right at the temple of the Shadeborne Bound entrance. He did have my entire family.
Raoku smiled. “You really think your bloodline slipped past us? It was obvious the moment your sister turned up in our facilities. Her blood sent our power surging in waves. Did you honestly believe we wouldn’t notice?”
“You lied to us,” I breathed.
“I didn’t claim to have integrity. That is only for the hero. However, it is time for your true sacrifice. You know––” he said, dragging his fingers across the glass around me, tapping in a taunting rhythm––“the one you escaped in the first place.”
Raoku snapped his fingers, and immense pressure suffocated my face.
Bone layered over bone until my head was fully encased, a hollow, ivory helm sealing me in.
Thin spikes reached outward, brushing against my chest. I leaned forward, and they tore through the skin.
A narrow slit framed Jun’s father below, smirking up at me as though he’d built something worth admiring.
“To silence the cries, of course. Your sister didn’t like it either, but she’s survived so far,” he chided wryly.
Lightning ran through me, my body convulsing as the searing agony ripped through bone. A roar attempted to escape my mouth, but the ivory bone helm contracted tighter. It screamed back at me, a crowd of voices tearing at my senses. My ears pounded. Blood drifted through the water around me.