Chapter 4
“SO, THE BIRD HAS RETURNED.”
The prisoner’s coarse rasp emerges from the back corner, where the shadows breed thickest. The sound’s echo folds onto itself: small, smaller, gone. All is obscured: the walls, the floor, even the shape of my own hands. This is no cell. It is a tomb.
I am a fool to have placed myself in such a vulnerable position, but… a curious fool. Tentatively, I take a shuffling step forward, porcelain cup gripped tightly. My hand trembles. It sloshes the boiling brew across my wrist, and I expel a hiss of pain. “I m-m-made you a cup of tea.”
The scuff of chains pricks at my ears. “You mean like the poison that witch forced down my throat while I lay senseless from her cursed sleeping powder?”
“No.” Another step forward. It’s impossible to determine how far from the prisoner I stand. “This is a h-healing tea.”
“I’m sure.”
Gradually, my eyes adjust to the gloom. Stone walls.
Stone floor. The available light is scant, naught but a thin outline surrounding the slot used to shove food through the door.
From what Lady Clarisse has told me, the prisoner is shackled to the far wall, with only enough length in his chains to reach the meager meals we serve him.
The manacles were enchanted by a witch her ladyship captured many years before and forced to do her bidding.
They are unbreakable. So long as I keep my distance and do not provoke the prisoner into using his mysterious powers, I am safe.
“If it w-would help,” I say, “I can take a s-sip of the tea and prove there is n-n-nothing wrong with it.”
Once more, quiet takes shape. It is decidedly suspicious.
Lifting the cup, I take a hearty swallow. By now, the numbness has spread to fully envelop my hurts. “Does that p-prove anything?”
“It proves you believe me gullible, soft,” he bites out. “You’re her employee. I can’t trust you.”
“Fine.” I’m not sure why his judgment irks me.
It is understandable, considering his captivity.
Maybe I take umbrage with him lumping me together with my employer.
We are not the same, she and I. Lady Clarisse relishes others’ pain, she lusts for power, covets leverage.
My desires are humble: food on the table, a roof over my head. A home of my own.
Gently, I set the cup on the ground. Maybe he will choose to drink if I do not hand it to him directly.
“What did she do to you?” the prisoner asks.
His voice now sounds like it is coming from my right, whereas previously it emerged from the left, though I’m not sure how that is possible. I peer hard into the blanketing darkness. Nothing. I see nothing. “Excuse me?”
“She hurt you. I heard your cries earlier.”
I curve one hand over my shoulder as if to shield my wounds from his gaze. “N-nothing I d-d-did n-not deserve.”
“Why do you feel you deserve such punishment?” If I’m not mistaken, he sounds peeved. “There are other employers who would treat you better. Why stay and endure this pain?”
“My l-l-lady has m-my best interests at heart. Everything she does is to m-m-make me into a better apprentice—”
He scoffs. “Don’t tell me you honestly believe that.”
My eyes narrow in irritation. He is quick to pass judgment, this deity. He knows nothing of my life.
“How did you come to work here?” he asks. “Where are your parents?”
“My mother doesn’t w-wish to know me, and I have mostly accepted that. As for m-my father, he died shortly after I was b-born. This estate w-was my grandmother’s. It is wh-where I grew up.” I cross my arms over my stomach. “Now you understand why I s-stay.”
“I don’t. Your grandmother is dead. You’ve no family to keep you here. Why chain yourself to this fate? You cannot live for what is already gone.”
I do not agree. The past is always present. Always.
“There are plenty of opportunities for employment in St. Laurent,” he argues, “or elsewhere in Marles.”
I have considered it. I have thought of how different my life might be, were I to find other employment.
But Lady Clarisse would never allow it. The only reason I am permitted to continue living at the estate is because I am her apprentice.
No, if I am to one day follow in Nan’s footsteps, I must remain.
“My skills apply to only a v-very narrow industry,” I explain to him. “There are not m-m-many opportunities.”
“What about something completely different. Fishing is robust in this town, is it not? I am sure someone would be willing to take you on as a deckhand.”
It is eerie, to feel the weight of another’s gaze and not see it yourself. “My f-father was a fisherman, but I unfortunately did n-not grow up with an affinity for w-w-water.”
“And? That can be learned, as can any skill.”
“My m-mother tried to drown me as a child. I was six. I’m… afraid of the s-sea. Well, deep water, rather.”
To this, he does not deign to respond. If only his face were not cloaked behind the thickening opaqueness. Perhaps then I could distinguish the quality of this stillness, whether pity or judgment, shock or disgust.
A drawn-out scuffling catches my attention, and I stare across the veiling black, willing something to take shape. Yes, I see it now. The figure of a man, crouched, heavy chains pooling at his feet.
“I imagine that’s n-n-not something that bothers y-you,” I tell him. “Death?”
“No,” he says. “I can’t say that it does. You mortals are afraid of such little things.”
Why does his disdain bother me so? After all, I am well used to it. “The w-world is a scary place, especially when one does not have d-doting parents to guide them.”
“I am well aware of that,” he spits out, the words soaked in resentment.
What was it Lady Clarisse had referred to him as?
One of the Anemoi. I wonder what that means.
I wonder what powers he holds. “There’s something you should know about the divine.
Historically, we are amongst the worst in terms of rearing children.
Consider yourself lucky you are no longer in contact with your mother. ”
Lucky is not exactly the word I would use. “Then wh-why the disdain?”
His scoff resounds against the stone walls. It falls into the darkness and is buried. “Do you expect me to extend compassion toward someone complicit in my torment?”
My face grows hot with a shame I am unable to hide. Most days, I shut my ears to the screams. I draw the cloth across my eyes. “Y-you can help y-y-yourself, you know. M-my lady wants information. If you tell m-me what it is she wants to know, p-p-perhaps I can convince her to let y-you go?”
He barks a laugh, shifts in his distant corner.
“That witch will never let me go. No, I have endured far worse. I am a god. When all the earth is dust, I will still be here, meting out my vengeance.” There is a bitterness to his response, and if I am not mistaken, a subtle urgency.
In what ways has he attempted to escape?
In what ways has he failed? “She can continue her torment. I will not break.”
I huff in frustration. “Why can’t y-y-you see that I’m trying to help y-you?”
I do not realize I’ve stepped closer until a quiet pop sounds in my ears, followed by an abrupt change in air pressure.
Low laughter coaxes the hair along my nape to stand on end. “Foolish mortal,” he says. “You should watch where you step.”
I look down. A faint line of soot sketches the stone underfoot.
My gut cramps with understanding, and dread like I have never known.
It is a symbol of protection, established to bind the god’s power—most, but not all.
He goaded me enough to step forward, causing my shoe to disrupt the line.
Now that it is broken, so too are those bonds.
The deity unfurls to his feet with a clink of chains. I gasp and stumble backward, for there is no other word to describe his size except this: overwhelming.
Heavy, broad shoulders stretch the black fabric of his worn cloak, which snaps around his braced legs, clawed by a wind heavy with damp. He is at least a head taller than me, maybe two. The dark inside his hood fully conceals his face.
A massive hand reaches toward me, and I recoil, turning away in anticipation of the blow. It never comes.
My lungs expand and contract, each fitful gasp paired with a dull twinge. Run, Min. But there is nowhere to go. Forcing down a wad of bile, I look up at the deity. Through the shadowed interior of his cowl, I sense his gaze, a direct, piercing thing.
“What are you?” I choke out.
“I am Eurus, the East Wind,” he responds, a hum of ancient winds and eroded stone. “The storms are my palette. The wind is my brush. I command them both. And now,” he murmurs, “I command you.”
A silvery band ensnares my waist, pinning me in place.
I open my mouth to scream, but it’s as if a thin sheet of air seals itself over teeth and tongue, cutting off any emerging sound.
I struggle to no avail. Eventually, the pain of my reopened wounds becomes too great.
I fall limp, trembling, as a breeze slips into my pocket.
“Take it, bird,” coaxes the East Wind. “Set me free.”
The sleeve of his cloak retracts. Lady Clarisse’s key ring dangles from a thin rope. His hand is wide, pale, fingers distinctly masculine, with surprisingly clean nails. “How d-did y-you—?”
“That employer of yours is overconfident. The shackles suppressed the majority of my power, but not all of it.” He sounds darkly pleased with himself.
“But the enchantments on the shackles prevent me from unlocking them myself. Only a mortal can do so.” He thrusts the key against my chest. “Before she returns.”
Even if I were to escape, the nearest estate is half a mile south. And anyway, what would I say? That an imprisoned god attempts to break free from the tower where he is kept? They would think me mad.
“And if I r-r-refuse?” I whisper.
His exhalation drifts across my face. It smells of sweet rain. “I don’t want to hurt you.” The tendril squeezes my torso tighter. My ribs groan in protest, and I bite back a cry from the added pressure on my wounds. “But I will, if I have to.”
Death by a thousand cuts, or death by a single blow? Lady Clarisse I can weather. The East Wind I know nothing of.
My hands tremble so severely it takes multiple attempts to insert the key into the lock at the prisoner’s wrists.
The chains tumble to the stone with a violent crash.
The manacles encasing his ankles follow.
A wave of power detonates, driving forth a screaming, rain-drenched wind that claws at my hair and skin and clothes.
When it dies, I’m left hollow with guilt.
Everything her ladyship has worked for, gone with but one betrayal.
“G-go then,” I manage through chattering teeth. “I d-did wh-what you asked. Leave now.”
“Oh no, bird.” Eurus draws me closer, into the startling heat of his massive body. “You’re coming with me.”
His arms band around me. They are like pillars of stone, or wood, or something equally inflexible.
My struggles revive themselves as he blasts open the door.
Another gust shatters the window at the top of the landing.
In my shock, the keys slip from my hands.
Plastered to his chest, my ear shoved against the hard plate of his sternum, I go rigid in his arms.
For below, there awaits the sea. Look at how she churns.
Her vicious temper, those dark, watery hands scratching at the rocky cliffs, waves frothed like saliva below.
My tongue swells, blocking my airway, for the immortal has climbed through the shattered window onto the steeply slanted rooftop, its panes crusted in salt, slick from recent rain.
Now I begin to thrash. Now I writhe and hammer and beat at the deity who holds me captive.
My stomach lurches as the prisoner strides to the very edge of the roof.
The water. I can feel its sting in my throat, inside my nostrils.
There is no ground, no solid earth, only the wide, swallowing sea below.
“Wait,” I whisper. “Please—”
He leaps.