Chapter Twenty-Five
‘What’s going on down there? Is she hurt?’ Lillienne’s voice plummets down from the library above, her silhouette a hole in the square shaft of light that spotlights my face.
I bring an arm up to my eyes, the simple act of closing my lids not sufficient enough in blocking it out. Something in my shoulder clicks with the movement, an agonising flash of pain, hot and sharp, tears from the joint right down to my elbow. Fuck, I must’ve pulled it from the socket.
Someone shuffles closer to me in the dark, their cold hands taking hold of my wrist and gently pulling it down to rest on my stomach. The pain dulls in this position but remains searing. My temple begins to drip sweat into my eyes.
‘She should be fine! Just a dislocated shoulder or something of the like,’ the person shouts, and I recognise their voice to be Calli’s. I hadn’t even heard her come down here. I must’ve been unconscious for a while.
In that moment I become aware of a throbbing to the back of my head and a warmth unakin to the stone floor I lay on. I reach out with my undamaged arm, but Calli swats it away, placing her own hand where I intended to investigate.
‘Oh fuck. She’s bleeding! Her head is all bloody.’
‘I’m right here,’ I say. ‘Stop talking like I can’t hear you.’
‘Sorry, we were just so frightened when you fell. I should’ve given you something to see better with – a candle or something.’
‘No, no. It wasn’t that that made me fall, it was…’ before I can even piece together the end of that thought. Objects come clattering down the ladder, in a cacophony of smacks and bangs. One of the objects bounces off a rung and hurtles straight into Calli’s head.
‘What the hell, Lillienne? Are you trying to give me a brain injury too?’ She clutches the sore spot, staring up at the culprit above.
‘I thought I heard you say something about candles. So, I passed you some.’
‘Passed? More like attempted to murder with,’ she grunts. ‘But I guess some more light wouldn’t go amiss.’ She pulls a tiny box from the pocket of her dress and turns her back to me, a faint scraping sound ensues.
It takes her a good few attempts to ignite the wicks, before she is finally able to light each candle with one flame, and hands me one.
I blink up at her, delirious with the pain.
How on earth she managed to light the candles that way is beyond me, it seems odd to me that she would carry around a tinderbox when Odette is always on hand to light the fires.
Sitting up, I forget my injury and bite down hard on my lip in an attempt to quell a scream. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that I’ve broken every bone from my shoulder to my elbow joint. But even if I had, at least one would be healed already.
Calli tries to steady me. ‘Are you sure you’re okay to move? I don’t want you to cause any further damage.’
‘I am fine. Pain is temporary, and I am no stranger to it.’ It’s more of an affirmation for myself rather than a comfort to Calli.
‘In a language that I speak please?’
I laugh tentatively. ‘I’ve dealt with worse. And it won’t last long.’
‘If you’re sure.’ She lifts a candle to eyebrow height, her face a flickering gold oval in the onyx of our surroundings.
Behind her, a haloed shadow of a head puppeteered by Calli on an uneven wall of rock and rubble, the kind of damp and crumbling surface you might find in a cavern or a cave.
Much different to the smooth concrete of the cellar I’d expected the trapdoor to lead to.
I extend my own candle upwards, barely able to make out anything more than a foot away from me. ‘Is there any way of making it a little, I don’t know, easier to see in here?’
‘I would suggest we head back up that ladder before we encounter further injury.’
I screw up my face. ‘As if I’d fall down that wretched thing and have it been in vain.’
Calli exhales dramatically. ‘You’re quite annoying when you’re stubborn.’
She gets to her feet, candlestick a floating wonder as she holds it up to the wall to reveal a rusted metal fixture.
A sconce. When she tips the flame, the sconce takes the light as though it has hungered for it, revealing more of the wall and the vines that slither through the gaps in the stone, but not much else.
I watch as Calli walks the length of the wall and lights another sconce, and then a third, before realising I too could speed up the process with my own flame. In the absence of my power, I have been given a candlestick. I shift my legs until I am on my knees, my feet beneath my bottom.
With only one good arm, I have to use the hand that clutches the candle to push myself from the ground, the sharp pain in my shoulder stabbing like a blunt sword tearing the flesh down the length of my arm.
As I plant my hand on the floor, preparing to assist my legs in thrusting me upwards, the candlestick slides free of my fingers, the length of it dipping inwards and the wick colliding with the skin of my arm.
The candle drops to the floor, and the flame dies on impact.
The place on my arm where fire met skin is blistering, if not a little numb.
It’s an odd sensation, tiny hair singed and curling into the raised and bubbling skin, reminiscent of pain and discomfort yet nothing close to the real thing.
Like a phantom stinging that I know should hurt and yet it is almost – pleasant.
A welcoming home of a feeling that I’ve lived most of my life without and wasn’t aware I could miss. The imitation of my power made manifest on my skin instead of within. The symptom without the cause, and with it; sadness.
How I long for the newfound brilliance of internal energy, warmth and flame. How I hope I do not have to bid it farewell after only just making its acquaintance.
I did not wish to think of it, a terrible, unthinkable thought.
And yet – there it is, forcing itself upon me regardless.
We still do not know where the power is going when it is being drained from us all.
Although I am yet to feel its full withdrawal from me, it is imminent and enigmatic still.
Bringing down the Divide is a bandage when we should be after the cure – whatever it may be.
When I finally stand, the cavern is fully alight and Calli is eerily still, arm still held up but her hand no longer holds the candle. There is no discernible expression on her face, as though she is unseeing, unconscious, a statue made in her likeness.
A trick of the light, once of the dark.
The hairs on the back of my neck raise in perfect unison with the smoke that curls around my throat, an ashy buildup forming in my mouth. Dry and gritty. The acrid taste, real or unreal, fills every inch of me with rage. ‘You told me you wouldn’t mess with my senses again. You promised.’
Eliaz scoffs behind me. ‘If you recall, Princess. I made no promises.’
To turn and look at him right now would be giving him the satisfaction of seeing me caught off guard, angered and betrayed being exactly the state that pleases him best.
I dip my head down cursing myself for being so adamant to come down here in the first place and notice that my boot is submerged in at least an inch of water.
Or rather, a thick, fetid, polluted liquid that stains the hem of my skirts a deep green.
In fact, the entirety of the fabric that clings to my legs is soaked right through.
I lift my head, looking in Calli’s direction to see if her dress is in the same state, but my eyes meet dead air. Emptiness where she had just stood, a mere four feet in front of me.
Is she there still, but blocked from my sight by Eliaz? Or was she simply a figment of reality placed in my mind to convince me of her presence down here?
Scanning my surroundings for anything that could help me make sense of it, there is nothing familiar or recognisable around me anymore.
The uneven cave-like structure of the walls has been smoothed out into a flat, concrete grey akin to the cellar beneath the kitchens back in Reyhen, where the fresh produce is kept; vegetables, dairy, meats – anything that spoils quickly with time and warmth.
I clutch a hand to my stomach, the churning of distress and deceit growing more and more intense with every panicked beat of my pulse.
The sound of boots wading through the liquid does not evoke fear, or even anger within me.
Just pure betrayal, a serrated, torrid blade with which he has wounded me.
Eliaz’s breath becomes a surging wind in my right ear, his long pale fingers sliding over the curve of my shoulders, one of the bejewelled silver rings he adorns himself with, snags on the laced fabric there.
A rip. Calli won’t be much pleased when I return the dress to her in this condition. Green, stinking, and torn at the seams.
‘How’s the pain now? Non-existent, would you say?’
The curving of his mouth is audible with the rounded sound of his words. He is smirking, I do not need to see it to know. And so, the Eliaz that finds amusement in my torture returns.
But there is something different about it this time, a playfulness layered over the teasing, in place of the festering resentment that could usually be felt when he closes in on his victim.
There is no anger. Just… teasing.
My eyes broaden when the realisation hits.
He is exactly right. There isn’t even so much as a discomfort in the joints where the pain had taken over.
Hardly even the faintest itch. I clench my jaw, hard, gritting my teeth so as to quell the building fury.
I must keep my calm, if I wish for Eliaz to retain his good humour.
Turning around, all pre-dispositions of keeping the peace abandon me, and before I can even hold myself back, the wet toes of my leathered boots meet with his shin in an accumulation of force fuelled by my displeasure.
The boots are fortunately very sturdy, and firm, leaving my foot unscathed from the impact.
Eliaz’s leg on the other hand, must bloody hurt.
‘Ahh, what do you women have against my godsforsaken legs?’ He clutches his damaged shin with both hands, crumpled over with the offence of it, much to my delicious pleasure.
I lean down so that my mouth is level with his left ear. ‘How’s the pain? Wonderfully existent, would you say?’
‘Fuck you, Princess,’ he grunts out.
Bringing a hand up to my chest, standing upright, I feign upset.
‘Such hostility, King. You have me wounded.’ I echo the words he whispered at my presentation when he had the advantage of my fear.
I relish in the absence of it now, as that fear is replaced with something much more gratifying – awareness.
‘Fair enough,’ he says, righting himself again so that he now stands looking down upon me. ‘See, it is much more enjoyable for us both if you let yourself participate in the fun of things.’
‘I do not believe the keeping of secrets from me to be very fun.’ I cross my arms. ‘Especially not when you insist on disrespecting my boundaries and intruding on my mind. Not the behaviour of a respectable gentleman, you must admit.’
He laughs. ‘I’ve never acclaimed myself to be such a thing. Besides, you needed punishment for snooping around and stealing my things. Not very respectful of my boundaries, is it?’
I narrow in on him. ‘I admit I was searching around where I should not have been, you have my apologies for that. But my actions are hardly akin to full loss of autonomy and grasp on reality. Plus, you left those keys there for me to take.’
He crosses his own arms, eyes scanning me up and down. ‘I did no such thing. I happened to have left them behind, and you happened to decide to steal them and cross my boundaries further.’
‘Well, only because you have been keeping secrets from me – withholding things that might be crucial to our efforts here, with the affliction and the Divide. How can you expect me to trust that—’
‘Do not insult me by pretending that this is about trust. I have shown you what I am willing to do for my people, not to mention, yours. The lengths I will go to, whether you agree with my methods or not. This is not about secrecy or whether you can trust me. You’re down here because you can’t stand not being in on something, being kept out.
You’re here because you are desperately trying to prove to yourself that I am the great and terrible villain you’ve always been told I am.
’ He sighs. ‘You’re trying to convince yourself that this is not all your father’s fault.
That everything we must struggle through is not directly caused by his actions, his greed. ’
I step backwards. Does he have a point? Am I truly just desperate to find something else wrong with him so that I do not have to admit what is blatantly the case? That my father is the true villain in my story.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Eliaz hasn’t been truthful with me and has ordered Calli to do the same.
I screw my face up at him. ‘Was that what this was? You left the keys on the bed as a test to see if I would take them? To see if I would go searching for more? All these mind games, for what? Your satisfaction in being right about me, that I simply have to know everything before I can fully trust someone? You won’t even tell me how it is that you even have all the abilities you do.
It’s hardly Relic magic. It’s hardly a fatal flaw of mine to want to know. ’
‘Has it ever occurred to you to just ask me? Instead of stealing keys and interrogating my sister. I am not trying to endlessly scare you or trick you. I gave you the opportunity to prove to me that you were willing to do this together, as a team. You could have asked me any question there and then and I would have told you. You could have asked me anything you wished to know, but you chose to work as a team of one and search for the answers all on your own.’
As much as I do not care to admit it, he is right. I have asked him the nature of his powers before, yes, but not since we formed this incredibly unconventional alliance.
I sigh, nodding with defeat, knowing the fault in my actions. Knowing that the only way to find out anything, is to trust that he will tell me all I need to know. If I just ask him.
‘Okay, fine. Fair enough. I will forgive you for the manipulation of my senses, as my punishment for failing your little test. We are both guilty of something, so we are equal. And I am asking you now, as someone who wishes to truly work together.’
He leans his head in, raising his brows as if to say, ‘enlighten me.’
‘Where do your powers come from? And how do you use them to stop the affliction from taking lives?’
He stares at me for an age, his amber eyes swimming with thought, fingers fidgeting by his side, clenching and unclenching.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he says finally.
‘You said that—’
He shakes his head, red strands of hair falling into his eyes. ‘But I can show you.’