Chapter 40 Peytor
Chapter Forty
Peytor
“Say that again,” I said, struck dumb by the words that came tumbling from my sister’s lips. The silence hung heavy between us, punctuated only by the incessant ticking of a clock in the guest room she’d claimed.
Ellowyn winced but tried to wipe away my concerns with a lazily waved hand. “Alois kept our parents here after their . . . alliance with the rebellion. They’re still—”
“Beneath the Academy, in the dungeons. Yes, I caught that part,” I finished, my tone borderline caustic. “But what I was confused about was why you kept this information from me?”
I’d felt better, more like myself, as soon as we left Lishahl a few days ago.
The air was cleaner, and it no longer felt like the walls were pressing in at all angles, threatening to choke the life from me completely.
I’d been in a fog for weeks in Lishahl and was no help to anyone, let alone the woman I had professed to love.
I missed Folami endlessly, but meant what I said when I left; she deserved to have time to digest the weight of her decision and come to a conclusion without my cloud hanging above her head.
My only regret was that it seemed Folami thought I might leave her completely; that her choice was between Lex and Ilyas or me.
As honorable as it would have been to simply walk away and concede, I had no intention of that. I’d return, intent on making Folami mine in whatever capacity I could.
The trip with Ellowyn had at least provided that clarity.
Now, though, it seemed it was destined to be muddled even further.
“Did you intend to tell me at all?” I asked. Ellowyn’s eyes—so very much like my own—shifted to everything in the room but me.
Even without opening her mouth, I had my answer.
“You weren’t,” I accused.
Ellowyn stiffened, ire and protectiveness flashing in her eyes as she stared me down.
“No, I wasn’t,” she admitted simply, and godsdammit, I may not have liked the answer, but I surely appreciated the backbone she grew.
“So you were going to, what? Let them rot down there and let me think your ex-husband had them killed?”
“More or less.”
I fought a smile at her blasé attitude.
“Since when do you hate our parents so deeply?” I teased, though needing the answer all the same.
Ellowyn’s expression darkened, magic dancing at her fingertips that she quickly reeled in before she spoke in a tone that was deceptively even. “I feel no kinship with those people, least of all a woman who was never my mother in the first place.”
Our footsteps echoed in synchrony as Ellowyn led me down never-ending obsidian staircases to seldom-used levels far beneath the Academy. The air was colder here and damper, a heaviness clinging to it like the last vestiges of a particularly frightening nightmare.
“I didn’t realize this existed,” I mumbled, surprised that my breath didn’t puff in front of my face.
Ellowyn gave me a thin-lipped smile as she unlocked a series of doors on one of the lowest levels. The stairs still led downward, and I shuddered to think what horrors were kept so far beneath the ground.
I had at least part of my answer when the second door opened with a soft click, the aroma of death wafting through the crack. Gagging, I held my shirt above my nose and mouth. Ellowyn grimaced slightly, her already pale skin whitening even further, before she pushed open the door fully.
“You get used to it,” she mumbled, breathing solely through her mouth. Though the idea of tasting decay was nearly as unappealing as smelling it.
Water dripped from the ceiling, pooling in random spots on the stone floor. There was no light here, apart from what small glow the Mage Orbs on the wall cast, and I hugged tightly to Ellowyn’s side, afraid to step too far to the left.
My boots splashed through a puddle, and I grimaced as the wetness spread up my pant leg, hoping that it was just water and not anything more.
“You have nothing to fear from that side,” she said, her voice echoing eerily in the dark space. “They have all . . . passed on.”
“Who were they?”
“Rapists and murderers, child molesters and sex traffickers. The worst of the worst in Vespera.” She detailed everything without a hint of remorse, and I felt a pang of pride for my sister—the girl who was once so wrapped up in her own trivial issues she could barely see past her own nose now refused to flinch when discussing the vile acts of criminals.
I hummed, my nose adjusting to the smell the farther we walked.
“Those prisoners at the front were for threats inside the walls of Vespera. Those over here”—she gestured ahead and to the left as she lit a few larger Mage Orbs—“are for threats outside of Vespera.”
“Is it just them down here?” I asked quietly enough that I hoped our conversation was private until we reached their cell.
“Not anymore,” a thin, reedy voice rasped from somewhere to my left in the permeating darkness. Ellowyn’s eyes flew wide, and I jumped before scampering behind her. Skin rasped against metal as the prisoner gripped the bars, their skeletal-like hands visible in the straining blue light.
“Who are you?” I asked, leaning over my sister’s shoulder.
“Evidently, someone placed here by Rohak and Fay,” she said, speaking over the man’s pleas. “And, consequently, not anyone we want to see.”
She started walking immediately, forcing me to jog in order to keep pace. Intrigue about the unknown prisoner still lingered as we approached a second set of bars, Ellowyn slowing and eventually stopping.
But it was banished as soon as the Mage light illuminated the cells, exposing the skeletons within.
I’d been prepared for my parents not to look like I remembered, but this was almost too much.
Shaggy, threadbare clothing hung on emaciated frames, bones poking through paper-thin, nearly translucent skin.
Their hair hung in stringy, greasy clumps, some of it missing.
Any exposed skin was red and raw, infected bite marks apparent on wrists and ankles as if the rats down here tried to eat them while they were still alive.
“Mother? Father?” I asked. Dull eyes once so full of life, but now nearly as dead as the prisoners at the front of the dungeon, blinked slowly back at me.
“Peytor?” The sound of metal on metal rasped from the vocal box of my father, something sparking in his eyes when he saw me standing just outside the cages. “You came for us.”
I winced outwardly, and my father recoiled slightly.
“You haven’t come for us?”
I shook my head. I empathized with Ellowyn’s retelling, but needed to hear the words from my parents themselves. I had no doubt they would try and manipulate the situation to paint Ellowyn as some sort of villain, but there was at least some validity to her claims.
Besides, I had no control over who entered or exited the dungeons, nor did I care for it.
“I—I need you to tell me what was really happening,” I said. My father frowned before understanding dawned. He scoffed—or tried to—before backing away from the cage bars.
“I see she’s poisoned your mind against us—your own parents. She’s not even your full sister, do you know that?”
I nodded my head, unable to formulate a response to the sudden vitriol that poured from my father’s mouth.
I’d never seen him like this, never heard such utter contempt.
He was always the soft one, always there with a smile and a hug.
But either this solitary captivity had changed him or simply revealed his true nature.
My gut roiled at the latter being a distinct possibility.
What good did pretenses serve him here? He was going to die no matter what—why contain your true nature while death stared at you from darkened corners?
“Is that Peytor?” a weak yet decidedly feminine voice sounded from the adjacent cage, and my heart plummeted at the sight of my frail mother clutching the bars of the cell as if they were the only things keeping her upright.
For all I knew, they could be.
“Did he kill the bitch? Is he here for us?” Delirious, deluded hope rang in her voice, and I curled my lip on instinct.
“That bitch is my sister. And a better person than either of you are turning out to be,” I replied dryly, trying to keep the conversation civil despite the quick turn of events.
The living skeleton that was somehow my mother grunted something, her hands falling away from the bars as she shuffled through the damp straw to the dark recesses of the back of her cell.
“Is it true?” I asked my father as my mother’s form was finally swallowed by darkness.
“You killed her, you know,” Father said, eyes suddenly full of hate and life.
“Killed whom?”
“Your mother. You killed her just now.”
I blinked, sweat suddenly popping on my brow and down my back.
Despite the heinous things she did to Ellowyn.
I didn’t want to be the one responsible for her death.
Objectively, I knew staying in these dungeons would kill them both—it was a miracle they’d survived this long—but that was an abstract concept.
“You didn’t kill her, Peytor,” Ellowyn said. The weight of her hand resting on my shoulder halted my spiraling thoughts. “They chose their own path and now must suffer the consequences.”
“You power-hungry bitch,” my father spat venomously as he launched himself at the bars. I flinched backward, Ellowyn’s hand holding me steady, but my sister didn’t so much as blink.
“Do you have any more questions for them, Peytor? Or should we leave?” Her voice was even, devoid of emotion, but I knew our father’s words cut her deeply despite her insistence to the contrary.
I mutely shook my head, aghast that these . . . creatures were once parents who loved me, educated me, held me.
“Gods, it should have been you,” my father scoffed, pulling my attention back to the cells once more.
“Say that again?” I asked, blood running cold.
Ellowyn squeezed my shoulder once and whispered, “Be careful of their lies.”
I nodded and shrugged from her hold, approaching the cell once more.
“I said it should have been you,” he sneered. “The death at her hands should have been you. Finian was much more malleable, supported each of our plans and ideas. You talked too much, questioned too much. Finian would have fought against her with everything he possessed.”
I retreated from the cells with a shake of my head. “If that’s the worst you can conjure, then I think we’re done here. There is nothing you can say to me that I haven’t already told myself, nothing here that compares to what I suffered in the mines for months, never mind the recovery after.”
“You’ll never find anyone else to love you,” my father spat to my retreating back. “He was the only one who would tolerate your preferences, and you let her kill him.” This time, my muscles tensed, old wounds reopening as dark, festering thoughts swam through my mind.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I called over my shoulder. “I’ve found another who loves me as deeply as Finian did. Perhaps three others,” I added, glancing behind me to see my father’s face twisted into an ugly sneer, his nose wrinkled in disgust.
“We’re your family!” he tried one last time, voice cracking on the last word.
I sighed and shook my head. “No, you’re not.
You were. But family does not do . . . whatever this was,” I swirled my hand in his direction.
“I have a family. One I have chosen that loves me deeply. One that I need to return to, now that I can fully see what they mean to me. And you will die down here knowing the daughter you tried to use and the son you hate for whom he loves and overall ‘weakness’ are thriving. I hope it hurts more than anything else could.”
Ellowyn smiled at me, a hesitant thing that I returned in full force. I folded her longer fingers in mine, clutching tightly to the sister I trusted more than almost anyone else.
“Come on, Peytor,” she said, leading me out of the darkness. “Let’s go home.”
A warmth sparked and spread as we walked, the screams of Hestin’s former Lord and Lady fading into oblivion.
Home was no longer Hestin, and it was certainly not Vespera. Not even Lishahl could claim that honor.
Home was wherever Folami and Itanya—and perhaps even Lex and Ilyas—were, and I was more than ready to return to them, to see what we could become.