Chapter 8
Serafina
“You can open your eyes now.” I can feel the vibration of his voice through his chest.
A moment later, his hands release me, and his warmth fades away as he takes a few steps back.
“It’s over?” I manage to ask, my stomach queasy, threatening to upturn whatever little food it still possesses.
“It is,” he confirms, and I open one eye, followed by the other.
He angles his head, and his eyes wander from my face, to my fingers, to my toes.
“Looks like you made it in one piece,” he says, and without thinking, the palm of my hand collides with his arm.
His eyes snap to the place I hit him, widening as if shocked that someone dared to strike him.
“Do you mean to say there was a chance that I wouldn’t?” My voice rises.
“I was only kidding. Of course, I knew you’d be fine.
” He continues to stare at his arm. When his gaze finds mine again, there’s humor in his expression, but it’s subtle.
Creases in the corner of each eye with brows raised ever so slightly.
“Traveling by light is completely safe. I’ve been doing it for nearly a decade. ”
A decade.
So, unlike me, he’s known he was an Essentari for quite some time. For some, the connection emerges when they’re younger. For others, it surfaces just before their twenty-first year.
I tear my eyes from his, taking in my new environment. We’re in a tunnel. Surrounded by gray bricks that form an arch above our heads. The tunnel is narrow and dimly lit, not by candlelight, but by something else.
I try to make out what they are, what I’m seeing, but I have no idea what to call the bulbs that seemingly hold a flame within. How does the flame breathe with no air?
My eyes flash to Jax’s again, the golden flakes illuminated by the strange light.
“It’s electricity,” he says, and I think back to everything I’ve read on the subject.
Electricity is gone. The ability to create it doesn’t exist anymore.
“How?” I ask, and he shrugs.
I turn around, peering down the other end of the hallway. The floor is covered in a thick maroon carpet. No one else seems to be down here. There aren’t any windows, so I’m assuming we’re underground.
“So this is the infamous Imperial City?” I cross my arms because this is not what I was expecting.
“Part of it.” He shrugs again. “I couldn’t exactly take you to the main square. People would talk.”
People would talk. So I shouldn’t be here. Which means I am not safe here.
“Come on, I’ll show you to your room,” he says.
I follow him farther into the tunnel until we reach a door. The door sits a solid three feet into the wall. I stand in the nook, my fingers tracing the carvings on the wood.
“Where are we?”
“Servants’ quarters,” he says softly.
“Like…the servants’ quarters of the palace?”
“Yes. No one will come looking for you here.”
“Jax,” I say, reaching out to place my hand on his wrist, stopping him from opening the door. His eyes fix on my fingers, and I can feel his pulse quicken. I pull away. “I thought you said the royal family would be okay with me staying here.”
“Those weren’t my exact words.” He’s still staring at his wrist, at the place my fingers no longer rest.
“Jax,” I press, regretting our agreement. If he wants to keep me hidden, then I am not safe.
Which means he lied.
“It’s not that simple. But I promise, as long as you stay down here, no harm will come to you.”
“Down here? In this dungeon?” I nearly yell, and there’s panic in his eyes. “For two whole months?” Once again, heat rages just beneath the surface of my skin.
“You have to be quiet,” he says on a breath.
“And it’s not a dungeon.” He rolls his eyes.
Literally rolls his eyes, and suddenly the need to scream at him feels all consuming, but before I can, I hear a voice from the end of the hall.
Someone’s coming toward us. But I’m tucked into the nook so I can’t see them, and they can’t see me.
But they can see Jax.
“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I should have known you’d be down here,” she says.
Why would she say that? Is Jax a servant of the palace? Is that how he knows the prince? He certainly doesn’t dress like a servant.
“Your mother has been losing her mind.”
“Get inside,” Jax whispers, his voice urgent, but I just glare at him.
“No,” I hiss. “Not until you start being honest with me.”
“Who are you talking to? Is someone with you?” that same female voice calls.
She’s closer now.
His jaw tightens. “I honestly need you to get inside this room, Serafina.” He clears his throat, his eyes focused. “Please.” The word sounds foreign on his lips. Almost like he choked on it, like he’s not used to saying the word please.
He looks down the hall at whoever’s rapidly approaching and opens the door.
I let out an exaggerated sigh and step through the threshold, but before I can turn around, the door closes behind me, and I hear a key turn in the lock.
No.
No.
He’s locked me in. The bastard has locked me in here!
I raise my fist, ready to pound, but before I can, darkness creeps toward me from under the door. The darkness keeps coming, black as night, circling around me, flooding the room. It’s closing in on me, and I can feel it—pressing against my skin, holding me still—as if it’s solid, as if it’s alive.
I scream.
I scream not because I’m afraid, I scream because I’m a fool.
I scream because I’m angry.
I know what this is. I had thought Jax was only a Luminarie because most Essentari can only form a connection with just one element. But there are those who possess the rare ability to form a connection with two opposing elements, and the opposite of light is shadow.
Jax isn’t a Luminarie, he’s an Umbraluminar, a shadow and light hybrid.
Which means my original assessment of him had been wrong, so very wrong, and there are two sides to the man who locked me in this room.
Which one had given me his promises?
Which one had told me I would be safe?
Shadow wielders are known to be dangerous, manipulative, and full of secrets. The opposite of light wielders in every way.
How someone can harness both elements, displaying the qualities of each, has never made sense to me.
But I know one thing for certain, Umbraluminars are the most feared of the Essentari, the most unpredictable, and I truly am a fool.
I scream again, but the voice on the other side of the door, the one who was calling out to Jax, simply ignores me. My screams don’t even cause her to pause or question who I am.
She can’t hear me. The shadow is concealing every sound I make. Swallowing it up, swallowing me up, as if I’m not even here, as if I don’t even exist.
I am trapped.
I am a prisoner.
No one knows where I am.
No one will ever know what happens to me.
And it’s all my fault.
I close my eyes, trying to regain control of my emotions. When I open them again, the shadows are gone. I let out a slow, long breath and move from the door to explore the room.
Because what else am I to do?
It’s a nice room. A lovely room. But a prison, nonetheless.
It’s well lit with many bulbs. The electricity—that shouldn’t exist—makes it easy to see. Bulbs are in the ceiling, protected by colored blue glass, covering everything in a peaceful hue.
A bed is pushed against the wall with a pretty white canopy surrounding it. The fabric flows to the floor, a floor covered in uneven cobblestones.
There’s a mirror in the corner that I refuse to look at and a wooden dresser next to it, full of men’s clothing. Tunics that are far too large for me and breeches that will never fit, but I sniff them, and they smell clean.
I, however, do not smell clean.
For a moment, I wonder who the clothes belong to, but I smell myself again and decide I do not care.
Pulling the blouse I’ve been wearing over my head, I drop my pants to the ground. I grab one of the beige tunics and slide my arms through the sleeves. It’s soft and warm. It reaches my lower thighs, but I’m comfortable.
I walk to the wall opposite the dresser to where a large mahogany desk sits. It’s nice. Very nice. Sturdy with carvings up and down the legs, but the top is smooth.
Books lay scattered across it. Books about the history of the trials, and suddenly, I feel sick. I shove the books in one of the drawers, jamming them in so the drawer barely closes, but it does close, and I’m glad because I don’t want to look at them.
There’s a painting on one of the walls. It touches the ceiling, then drops to the floor. It’s of the ocean. Eerily similar to the exact view I awoke to this morning.
There’s also another door, different from the one I came in through. It creaks when I push it open, and I’m met with darkness. There must be bulbs in this room, too, only they aren’t working.
I think back to the books I used to study. There should be a switch. I reach my hand out, feeling the wall on both sides of the door until I find it. I flick the switch up and just like that, the lights turn on.
It’s a bathroom. It’s not very big, but there’s a porcelain toilet, a wide sink, and a standing shower.
It’s clean and everything is white. There’s a full-sized mirror, but once again, I refuse to catch a glimpse of my reflection because I know how dirty I am, how dirty I must look, even with the clean tunic.
Turning the knob of the shower, hot water sprinkles onto my hand. I’ve never had a shower with hot water before. I can’t keep the smile from my face as I strip the tunic from my body and step under the warm liquid.
This is nice. So nice.
I make sure to drench my hair, washing the blood from my strands and gently glossing over the wound from last night’s attack. It’s tender, sore to touch, but not as big as I thought it’d be.
A bar of soap rests on a shelf an arm’s length away. I grab it and begin lathering it on, making sure every part of me is covered in frothy bubbles. And then I smell it. I don’t know why I didn’t smell it before.
Burnt wood and sage.
It smells just like Jax does.
Is this his soap? His shower? His room?