Chapter 31 #2
“How can you dare sit there and insinuate that I didn’t care about you?
I’ve spent the last decade by your side—caring for you, healing you, cleaning up your messes, and carrying you out of shady inns and brothels you had no business being in.
I did that. Not just because Aziel asked me to or because Owen asked me to.
I did it because I love you, Nymiria. As I said, you have every right to be angry at me for what I did, but we were all just trying to survive.
We were all just trying to make sure that those we cared about lived to see another day.
” Her breaths were rough, her eyes glistening with tears.
“I never wanted to have to choose between any of you when it came to who I betrayed. I never wanted to betray anyone. But, believe me, I told Trio everything. He knew what I did and I did everything I could to make sure neither you, nor Aziel were harmed because of it. I risked my own life to not only funnel information to your mother, but to Trio, as well.”
She was still angry, but Desi was right. Nymiria had done far worse, for far less. “Trio knows?”
Desi nodded slowly, shoulders dropping. “Nym, I need to know if you want me to keep pretending to be loyal to Dorid or not. If I let them know that I am on your side, it could be…”
“I know.” She huffed, rubbing her eyes. “But I’m not going to tell you what I think you should do.
I won’t ask anything of you.” It was too dangerous.
As horrible as the situation was, Nymiria wouldn’t risk Desi’s life for a favor.
Whatever decision she made, it had to be her own.
There was a chance that Everand already knew where Desi’s loyalties lay.
“Why did you go back to Everand, Nymiria? You could have let Aziel handle all of this.”
She snorted a humorless laugh. “I’m not answering any of your questions. I believe you know enough about me to draw that conclusion on your own.”
“So, you have a plan.” Not a question. A statement. One that Nymiria didn’t trust either of them enough to answer. “We just have to be strong for a little while longer. Just a little while longer. You’re strong, Nym. It won’t be like this forever.”
“I’m strong?”
Desi nodded again, offering her a small smile. “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”
“If being strong feels like your heart is repeatedly ripped from your chest, if it feels this lonely, if it hurts this much—I don’t want it.
I don’t want to be strong anymore. I just want to go home.
” She held her hand over the ache, pressing her palm into her chest. This was all just a part of the plan, but good gods, it hurt.
For once, Nymiria just wished to live. She wished for peace.
For a single day without having to discover something she wasn’t prepared enough to know.
There was nothing left for either of them to say.
So instead of sitting and speaking on things they couldn’t change, Nymiria pulled herself up from the floor and walked to the cot.
It was stained and torn in multiple places, but she’d slept in far worse conditions.
Her chains clattered as she sat down, leaning her head against the cold stone wall.
She took that moment to take her still-bound hands and drag up one of the sleeves on the dress Everand put her in, hoping to see if there was any trace of the witchlocks he’d put on her.
But what she found was far worse than what she expected. Her stomach hollowed out, a strangled whimper tearing from her throat as she looked down at perfectly smooth, unmarked skin.
No vines.
No moonflowers.
Just runes.
Everywhere.
She jolted to her feet, jerking and clawing at the skirts that hung heavy over her legs. Desi watched in confusion, slowly pulling herself up.
“What is it?” She asked in a whisper.
Nymiria shook her head frantically. “They’re gone. All of them—they’re gone!”
“What’s gone?”
She finally managed to wrangle the skirts enough to see that her legs, too, bore none of those markings that’d become a part of her.
Just glimmering, iridescent witchlocks. Desi sucked in a sharp breath, sheer horror taking hold of her face.
Nymiria clawed at her skin, eyes welling up with tears. “No… no, no, no, no!”
Desi grabbed her, wrenching her hands away from her skin and pulled her into a tight embrace. “Nymiria—”
“NO!” She wailed. “No—he took them from me! They were mine!” She dug her nails into Desi’s arm in an attempt to free herself, but the woman still held her close.
She bucked and thrashed, even as Desi lowered her back down onto the cot.
“He took them away.” She gasped. Her whole body trembled with fury and sorrow.
She didn’t know how much more they would take from her, but Nymiria was starting to feel as if she had nothing left.
Those moonflowers weren’t just a reminder of her power.
They weren’t just pretty decorations that marked her skin.
They were a constant reminder of who she was and what she’d gone through—the pain she felt so deeply for the better part of a decade.
The villains in her life had taken everything. And this piece of her, these markings that held so many memories of darkness, pain, triumph, and joy…
They were gone. Taken from her. Just like everything else.
This was all a part of the plan, she reminded herself. This was all a part of the plan. Aziel would come. They made a plan. But, good gods, did she feel like giving up.
She didn’t want to be strong anymore.
She just wanted to go home.
“Get up.”
Nymiria blinked, eyes straining against the darkness.
She slowly lifted her head off of the cot, glancing around the cell until her gaze fell on the hazy white mist of a man standing in the corner.
His name fell from her lips on the wind of a relieved sigh, her body aching as she sat up, careful not to disturb Desi’s sleeping form that was huddled behind her.
“You have to be ready.” Owen came forward, the cold mist of his hands curling around her own. “Aziel is coming—you have to be ready.”
Her heart gained speed. “When?”
“Soon.” He glanced behind himself, as if something sinister was waiting for him in the shadows.
“Everand is currently enchanting this palace. I won’t be able to get to you again for a while, but I needed to warn you.
Things here are not like they were before, Nym—they’re worse.
Far worse.” He shook his head, worry written all over his face.
“I need someone to get these witchlocks off of me, Owen. Without them, I have no means to protect myself. I have strength, but without my Grace, Everand could kill me.”
“Who do I need to get?” He was at full height now, his misty form slowly solidifying, and then winking back to near-translucence. “Hurry—I don’t have much time.”
Nymiria stared at him, tears finally falling down her cheeks.
She gave him a sad smile, knowing that this risk was a large one to take.
No matter how desperate she felt, she wouldn’t put Owen in that sort of position.
Even when they were together, Owen kept Nymiria away from Phyona.
Back then, she’d always wondered why, but now Nymiria knew it was because Phyona didn’t know much about Mystics and her brother didn’t want her involved with them—putting a target on such a young child’s back if she were to be found mingling with them.
For all intents and purposes, Owen made it abundantly clear that he wanted Phyona to be normal.
It would break his heart if anything happened to her. Phyona was the last living relative he had.
“I can’t ask it of you.” Nymiria said, finally.
Owen’s ghost-like figure winked in and out of view, his face growing doleful. “Nym. You have to fight back. They could hurt you.”
“Owen, I can’t.”
“You can!”
The desperation in his voice shook her, fingers curling around the fabric of her dress.
It was so similar to what she’d been wearing the day they met.
She believed him to be a dream, having fallen for him at first glance.
She remembered it so distinctly—how she’d been running from those evil roosters that always nipped at her legs when she tried to feed them.
She’d run straight into the stables and crashed into a boy on the verge of manhood.
His tan skin and green eyes reminded her of autumn. Cozy. Safe.
At the time, it was all any girl her age could dream of. And Nymiria had many, many dreams. None of them came true. Because of her.
“It’s Phyona, Owen. She’s the Rune Witch.”
It was on those parting words that Owen’s form finally flickered away, entirely. It happened quickly, but Nymiria could still make out a brief warring expression, a look of fear in his eyes that was unmistakable.
Phyona was nearing sixteen, if she hadn’t already reached it. Well-trained, but far too young to risk her life getting into this palace and helping her. She didn’t expect for Owen to relay any sort of message.
She turned her focus to the other cells, peering through the rows of bars that separated her and Desi from the other prisoners.
Every cell had a small rectangular slat at the top of the back wall, allowing for sunlight or moonlight to spill through and give just enough illumination and air to make it slightly more livable.
If it hadn’t been for those small windows, the smell would have been so much worse.
Prisoners here were supposed to be bathed twice a week. That was what Dorid had told her many years ago—what Aziel had ensured when she was held here as a girl. By the looks of the faces and bodies Nymiria could see, it seemed as though these prisoners had not been bathed in months.
“Please,” a small, quivering voice said from a few cells over.
Nymiria focused in on the darkness, able to make out the form of a feeble old man with a bruised face.
His eyes were so swollen that they were fused shut, his lips thin and stretching over teeth that seemed far too large.
“Please, Mortem, just take me. Take me. Put an end to this suffering.”
Her heart ached. For the man in the cell and for the god he prayed to.
Aziel once told her that prayers made in his name were generally made out of desperation or anger.
She knew that well, as she had made her own desperate pleas to death many a time.
But to see it firsthand, to see such a weak and feeble soul using their strength to call upon one of the most fatal gods in existence, it just made her hurt.
No hope.
There was no hope in a place like this.
If she’d been capable, she would have given him something. Even with all of those runes seared into her flesh, the godhood called to her—wanting to extend her hands and breathe life into his withering body. To bring forth hope. To give comfort.
Still, as desperate as the old man was, death did not come.
In a place like this, the only gods that could be reached were ones that were just as selfish as the people who prayed to them.