16. The Girl With Stormy Eyes
THE GIRL WITH STORMY EYES
A groan of metal forced me awake, and then I was being tossed onto a cold stone floor before the door was slammed shut behind me.
I tried to push myself up, but everything ached, my skin still burning where Arden had marked me.
What did the inscriptions mean? What had he meant when he told me I was his?
“Try not to push yourself,” a soft voice cut through the silence, and I stiffened, pushing through the pain to rise to my knees, scanning the darkness of the new chamber.
“Easy,” she whispered. “I won’t hurt you.”
Rhyas’ warning darted across my thoughts, sparking fresh terror. Be careful who you trust.
I slid along the floor, wincing each time my scraped palms met gravel, until my back met the bars. The beast didn’t respond, its silence putting every part of me on high alert. It had never been silent, had never left me alone before.
“You’re new,” she said, and I turned back to find a woman lingering just out of reach, her hands held out in quiet assurance that she meant me no harm.
But was that true? Could I trust her? Could I trust anyone in this horrible place?
Rhyas seemed to be the only one whose words might ring true, but he was the very reason I was here. Could I even trust him?
She lowered herself to the floor, her brown hair brushing the top of her shoulders, her silver eyes soft.
I looked down at her extended hand as she reached out for me, moving to the iron shackles secured around her wrists, inscriptions carved into the metal.
Something within me recoiled at their presence, at the subtle hum ringing from them.
“Looks like Yressia left you with quite the wound.” She stood before hurrying to the far end of the chamber. I tracked her steps to where she stopped before a shelf-lined wall littered with items that she began riffling through.
“Yressia?” I asked as she returned with a small bowl of water and a rag.
“The Featherclaw,” she said as she knelt before me. Water dripping echoed off the stone walls as she wrung the wet cloth over the bowl. “She’s Arden’s pet. I heard he had her smuggled in from somewhere long ago. She tests each of his fighters before he marks them.”
I couldn’t form a response.
“He keeps her caged and underfed so she’s always ready to hunt,” she said as she lifted the cloth to my face.
I pulled away from her reach, and hurt flitted across her face. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“How do I know can I trust you?” I asked, my voice quivering despite my attempts to be brave. I couldn’t feel the beast’s presence, hear its voice, its guidance. Its instinct.
I had never felt more alone.
She let out a low breath. “There is nothing I could do to prove you can. It’s smart of you to be reserved.” She looked past me to the hallway beyond our cell door. “There are some here who would sell you out for a bite of bread.”
I resisted the urge to follow her gaze, too afraid to turn my back.
A somber smile curved her lips as her gaze returned to me. “You’re an immortal.”
I frowned. “I am.”
“That must be why they put you in my cell,” she said. “They took me from Moonhaven when I was a child.”
My heart shuddered, and I pushed myself up, a strange hope rising in my chest. “You…”
She nodded, her smile fading. “I don’t even know how many years it’s been.”
I winced as she carefully dabbed the rag against my injured eye, but I held still, allowing her to clean it .
“You’re still so young,” she said, as if it broke her heart to say it. “If you were past your settling , you would have healed without issue, but this… I fear it will leave a scar.”
“I can still see,” I said.
She smiled. “That is wonderful news, mikros .”
My heart swelled at the word. It sounded like home.
“How is Moonhaven?” she asked as she continued to clean the wound.
Hope died in my chest. “I don’t know.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The darklings attacked a few days before I was taken.” My voice began to quiver, my vision blurring. “I got separated from Mama and Papa. There was so much fire.”
Her eyes widened, her breath picking up, but then she she drew a deep inhale. She didn’t speak again for a long while as she dabbed and cleaned my wound.
“Do you have a name?” she asked. The question was hesitant, fearful.
A name… Did I? I couldn’t remember. Had I ever had a name?
I did. It had been taken from me. Stolen.
“I don’t remember it…” I muttered, tears blurring my vision, and I winced at the sting in my right eye.
“I hoped you might’ve somehow kept it, but it was foolish of me.”
“Do you?” I asked. “Have a name?”
“It is not the name gifted to me by my parents, but you can call me Kish,” she said as she pulled back. “I guess you’ll need one.”
She tapped her chin as she looked me over. “What to call you…”
Silence stretched on, and a strange anticipation swelled in my chest before a smile stretched across her face. “Thalia.”
“Thalia?” I echoed, brows furrowing.
“It’s a special name, one I hope will have great meaning for you,” she explained as she cupped my cheek. “It’s a name of prosperous destiny, one that I gift you in the hopes you will thrive and flourish.”
“I think that’s a lovely name, Kish.”
I gasped at the sound of Rhyas’ voice and twisted to find him leaning against the stone outside our cell.
His soft amber eyes welled with pain the moment he saw my face, and he knelt. “Is that the only wound Yressia gave you?”
“It’s the only one I’ve found so far,” Kish explained.
“That’s a relief,” he said and checked both ways down the hall before reaching into one of the satchels tied to his belt. “Here.”
He held out a small container, and Kish reached out to take it, her eyes narrowing to make out what it was before her body tensed. “If they find out you gave us somethi?— ”
“Better not let them find out,” he whispered, and for a moment, something passed between them as he held her hand through the bars. “Take it. Make sure she’s well and tended to.”
“Why do you care?” I asked. “You took me.”
“He didn’t have a choice,” Kish said, her sadness filling the room with the scent of freshly fallen rain. “He was like us once.”
“Once.” Rhyas scoffed. “I still am.”
“But you’re not caged,” I said.
“Don’t mistake the lack of bars on my cage for freedom,” he said, and pulled the sleeve of his shirt up, revealing the same inscriptions that now marked my skin. “He marked you too, right?”
I looked down at my hands, at where the ink peeked from beneath the hem of my sleeve. I pulled the coat off, and my heart plummeted at the sight of the inscriptions decorating my entire left arm, from my wrist all the way past my shoulder.
Rhyas’ and Kish’s eyes lingered on the tattoo, something akin to pity dulling their expressions.
“As long as that mark remains, he will have power over you,” Rhyas explained. “Over you, your magic, everything.”
“How can I get rid of it?” I asked, my heart hammering. I needed to get back home, needed to find Mama and Papa.
“You can’t,” Kish muttered. “Unless he dies or releases you, you are trapped here.”
“What will he do to me?” I asked, my words flying from my lips. “What does he want with us?”
Rhyas rested his head against the bars in defeat. “You are to fight.”
Fight what? The creature that had attacked me?
“I’m sure you heard them speak of The Pits,” Kish said.
I nodded, glancing between the two of them.
“You will be trained, conditioned, and you will learn how to spill blood in the most brutal of ways,” Rhyas said, his eyes hardening as they burned into the stone floor. “Then, when you come of age, you will fight for their entertainment. You will kill or you will be killed.”
“No,” I muttered, tears blurring my vision. “I don’t?—”
“You must,” he said, his amber gaze capturing mine.
He reached out and took my hand through the bars.
“I’ve watched as countless children have been taken, conditioned, and killed, all so his pockets could be lined with coin.
I’ve resisted, tried to find loopholes where I could.
” He let out a sigh of defeat. “I tried to let you return home, give you a chance to be free, but he had already taken your name.”
His words from when I had nearly escaped resurfaced in my mind.
Do you remember your name?
“Arden did?” I asked .
Rhyas nodded. “It’s one of the ways he traps his fighters. If you would have reached the veil, you would have found you couldn’t have passed through.”
My breath quickened, fear flooding my system. I wanted so badly to feel the beast’s comforting presence in my soul. Rhyas’ hand landed on my shoulder, and I looked up at him.
“Promise you won’t die on me, little beasty,” he pleaded. “Promise me I won’t have to watch another child die from my actions.”
I shook, fear clawing at me, but I nodded.
“I promise.”