Chapter 42 The Dark
It is dark when I wake, and cold. It takes me a long time to reacquaint myself with the controls to my body, every muscle sluggish as if drugged.
I register the sound metal scraping against stone, the clanking of chain links against one another.
It takes me longer to feel the bite of metal against my skin, the rough stone at my back.
When I raise my hands, I find them decorated with thick iron manacles, my fingertips bloody and nails ragged as if I have been clawing at something in my human form.
I hear the sound of quiet sobbing.
Turning my head is an achingly slow process.
When I manage it, I am greeted by the sight of iron bars running vertically, floor to ceiling, across the face of what is clearly some kind of prison cell.
In the cell directly across from mine, a familiar head of pink hair, grown greasy and tangled with neglect, bows over a set of skinny knees exposed by the fraying hem of a too short dress.
"Cherry," my voice is hoarse.
The crying stops, her head jerking up.
Vivid blue eyes meet mine, and Cherry is on her feet in an instant, pressing her body against the cell door, hands gripping tightly to the bars on either side of her face.
"Tarah! Oh my gods, oh my gods.
You're awake."
I feel foggy and slow as I blink at her.
"Cherry... Why are we in a dungeon?"
Her responding laugh is brittle, half hysterical.
She sniffles, and there are tears streaming down her face.
"Oh skies, I'm so happy to see you. To talk to you.
I've been..."
My slow brain is gradually piecing the information together.
Cherry's appearance is haggard and filthy, hair matted, face streaked with dirt and soot.
She has lost weight, cheek bones and elbows far too prominent.
"How long have we been here?
" I ask, horror dawning.
A pause.
"A few weeks maybe."
"A few weeks," I whisper.
And in those few weeks, I have been fighting hallucinations, caught in a haze of palace rooms and petty squabbles.
And Cherry has been here in the real world.
Starving in a dungeon.
"The king is a basilisk," I breathe, remembering my epiphany.
Cherry exhales shakily.
"He is."
"Tell me what happened.
What happened to you. How are you awake?
"
"How are you awake?
" she counters, eyes wide. "I have been— I've been calling your name for days, Tarah.
You never woke. You never even moved."
The voice I kept hearing, the one telling me to wake, calling my name.
Screaming. It was Cherry all that time.
"How are you awake?
" I repeat.
"I don't know.
I never... It never happened to me. What happened to all of you.
The moment we arrived at the palace, when we were brought before the king.
You all just...stopped. You were gone, far away.
It didn't happen to me. My father... his power doesn't work on me.
He wasn't surprised when it didn't. He must have known, already.
All those years, my childhood. He must have tried at some point.
.." She trails off, voice bleak.
"So he put you down here?
"
She swallows thickly.
"He put me down here."
And me too.
"Where are...?" A lump rises in my throat.
I am scared to ask about Vakhrin and Marton.
The cells around us, what I can see of them, are empty.
Cherry shakes her head.
"You weren't here at first either. When my father first used his power on you all, you were still standing, still moving.
It's like you were puppets. Operated by strings.
In a trance. But—But something must have gone wrong.
After a while, it didn't work on you. You woke up, and the next time my father used his power on you, they brought you down here, chained you.
.. And this time you weren't moving. I think he must have used more power on you this time.
A lot more. How...How are you awake, Tarah?
"
"It's like the sirens said.
" Slowly, stiffly, I pull myself to sitting.
I find more chains, more manacles. One on each ankle and a thick collar of iron around my neck.
I pull on it experimentally, but it feels unbreakable, at least in my current state.
"He showed me things. Visions of false reality.
I just had to realize they weren't real.
"
"I didn't think...I didn't know if it would really be possible.
"
"No. Me neither."
Quiet falls between us for a moment.
"What did he show you visions of?
" Cherry eventually asks.
I debate how much I should tell her.
"...Things I was afraid of, mostly. Of Marton lying to me.
Of you telling me to leave. Of...just, everything backwards and terrible and.
.. He brought my worst insecurities to life before my eyes.
"
"And you fought it off?
You knew it wasn't real?"
"Eventually.
"
"That's incredible, Tarah.
"
"I had help. It wasn't me, not really.
It was you and Marton and Vakhrin, Nerris and Yaun and Araine.
It was the people who...who helped me believe in myself along the way.
I couldn't have done it, just me in my own head.
"
"But it is just you in your own head.
"
"No. Not really."
A beat of quiet, and then Cherry snorts, and then she is laughing, quietly at first but with growing strength.
I try to shush her, but she ignores me.
When her laughter peters out, she sniffles and apologizes.
"Sorry. I haven't had anything—" she wipes her face "—to laugh about in so long.
You and your crazy head..."
I find myself almost smiling.
It fades quickly as I take in her appearance once more.
"Have they not been feeding you? Where are the guards?
"
"Meals once a day," says Cherry.
"The guards stay outside the dungeon." She points to a wooden door at the far end of the hall.
"Two on duty during the day. Only one at night.
They come in here to yell at me and slam things against the bars, if I'm too loud.
Mostly they stay outside. They don't like the smell.
"
The place reeks of unwashed bodies and chamber pots, and I know that all of it can't be coming from Cherry.
It is a smell leeched deep into the walls of this place.
Thinking of meal schedules and chamber pots, I press a hand to my abdomen, frowning.
"If I've been out of it for weeks, how have I eaten?
How am I alive?" Other than feeling like I've been run over by a four horse carriage, I appear to be in much better shape than Cherry.
"I think it must be some kind of.
..magical stasis brought on by my father's basilisk powers.
When he controlled your mind, the second time, it froze your body's condition somehow.
So you didn't starve or need anything, physically.
"
"Huh."
"I've had a lot of time to think about it," Cherry adds.
I nod slowly. The desolate atmosphere of the dungeon settles around us like a smothering blanket.
Cherry crouches, putting herself at eye level with me as her voice drops to a whisper.
"We have to get out of here, Tarah." The light in her eyes is fierce, body wired with tension.
"How?" I whisper back.
"Can you break your chains?
"
I consider the thick irons, the hefty chain links traveling to the spot where they are bolted to the wall.
On an ordinary human, the chains would make it so that the person imprisoned could not reach the bars of their cell.
But the thickness of the chains makes me think they were not designed with ordinary humans in mind.
My hands go to my neck, feeling the breadth of the collar—welded together, not bolted—at my throat.
It's possible that shifting into my dragon form would be enough to break the collar.
It's also possible that that the collar would be strong enough to behead me if I tried.
Still, I am stronger than a human.
Though I feel rather frail at the moment, my strength is returning every minute I spend outside of the basilisk king's thrall.
Trying to concentrate that strength in my hands and arms, I reach for the collar at my throat, grasping it firmly on either side.
Then I pull.
And pull.
And pull.
I break off with a grunt, arms jelly, collar still perfectly intact.
I don't even think I bent it. I try again with the shackles at my ankles.
Then the chain links at my wrists. Then I brace my feet against the wall and try to tug the chains from their bracket.
Nothing.
I am sweating and frustrated by the time I give up, and Cherry's expression has gone from steely determination, to vague hope, to outright dejection.
"I just need some time to recover," I promise her.
"I can break them."
She nods, trying to smile.
I press a hand to the collar at my throat, looking for a weakness in the metal.
"He'll know you're awake," Cherry whispers.
"He'll be able to tell that he doesn't have your mind anymore. "
I ignore the fear that tries to bubble up inside me at the thought. "How long do we have?"
She hesitates. "It's... If he tried to take your mind again, would you be able to fight him off? Could you do it again? Keep him out?"
I want to say yes, of course. I want to say skies, no.
The truth is... "I think I could. I think I could do it again.
" I would do it, if I had to. But I would rather do anything else in the world.
I would rather face any other danger, any siren, warg, wyvern, rather than have someone take my mind and play with it like that again.
To take my worst fears and paint a picture with them in my head.
To build me a prison of them in my own mind.
I think of the crushing, desperate rejection I felt when the dream Cherry said those horrible things to me. When dream Marton lied to me. I think of the confusion, and fear, the trapped feeling, the throbbing headaches of those dream days.
Are Marton and Vakhrin experiencing the same think right now?
"Then I think we may have time," Cherry's voice breaks into my reverie. When I look at her, she has her cheek pressed to the bars, looking down the hall in the direction of the door.
"What do you mean?"
She meets my eyes. "If you can beat him, if his power cannot control you, then I think he will stay as far away from you as he can."
The significance of her words occurs to me slowly.
"Cherry..."
She grimaces, turning her face away from me, but not before I see the tears swimming in her eyes.
"That's it, right?" She swipes aggressively at her face with one wrist. "Mystery solved.
It was never about danger, or a dragon husband, or any of the fool lies we believed.
He wanted me as far away from him as possible because I was the one person his power wouldn't work on.
Because he couldn't control me. But he would have. If he could, he would have."
"We don't know that." The words are ashes in my mouth.
An automatic response, which even I do not believe.
Cherry glares at me, eyes glistening in the dimness.
The only light comes from a small, horizontal window set high, high in the wall above the door, a sure sign that most of this dungeon is underground.
"I don't know why he didn't just kill me," Cherry says miserably.
"You're his daughter." I am full of meaningless platitudes this evening.
"Maybe you're right," says Cherry.
"I suppose there was some... some remnant of goodness, or fatherly responsibility in him.
So he sent me away to rot in a tower instead of putting a blade in my heart.
"
I wince, her words hitting painfully close to the words that dream Cherry said to me.
We spent years in that tower when we could have been free. We could have been out in the world learning all of the things we know now, but we weren't because you kept us there. You decided.
My fault. My responsibility. The king sent us to the tower, but I kept us there. That part wasn't a lie.
Love is the truth, dream Marton whispers in my ear, and I swallow, putting my self-recriminations aside for the moment.
"It doesn't matter now," I say, not sure who I'm trying to convince.
"You're right," says Cherry after a beat.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out.
"You're right." She sits back on her heels, surveying the walls and bars of her cell.
There are no chains on her, only me. "Only one thing matters now," she says.
I am afraid to ask.
Cherry meets my eyes across the damp dungeon floor.
"We have to get out of here. And when we do, we have to kill the king. "