Chapter 3
Three
Sienna was a tiny thing, but she had no issues dragging me through the dark castle halls to her private quarters.
Sweeping black velvet curtains hung from the windows, their softness in opposition to the stone carved furniture she had strewn across her room.
Pulling me into her adjoining office, the tones became warmer as we were greeted by an intricately carved wooden desk and chairs.
Beautiful clothbound books covered every spare shelf lining the walls.
Candles that had been burning for years—yet never extinguishing—sat in mottled dry drippings, casting a comforting glow around the room.
Standing by the entrance I watched as Sienna pushed her desk back against the wall and spread out what looked like a fur rug.
Placing four bowls in a circle at the outermost edge of the rug: one containing water, another soil, and the third, small pieces of charcoal she had pulled from the fireplace.
The last remained empty. Catching me looking at it, she pulled me into the centre, nodding for me to sit before she explained.
‘That’s air. The four elements make up everything we are and ever will be.
So, in order to dig deeper, we must rely on their unyielding strength.
Your sword.’ Sienna handed me my mother’s sword; I hadn’t realised she had taken it from my chambers as we left still half dazed from the effects of the panic.
‘Why? What do I do?’ I asked, trying not to let the panic creep back into my voice.
This was happening all too quickly, and it was starting to feel real.
A flash of shame coursed through me, but from the moment Sienna came into my life, we had bonded over a shared brokenness.
We had been warped and shattered for different reasons, but we had coped just the same.
We became crutches for one another. She would help me in my times of pain, and I would guide her through her descending madness as we fought through years of the panic with it manifesting differently for each of us.
Sienna never stopped searching for a cure.
One day, she rushed to me, speaking about an old ritual called ‘The Awakening’ that claimed to erase the panic.
She tried it on herself first with the help of her mother.
In the weeks that followed, she was worse, but slowly, she found balance.
She changed. The process, however, was brutal, and I had been too afraid to leap that far into the depths of my darkness to see what was on the other side.
What if it was nothing? What if there was no chance of getting better for someone like me?
Instead, I forced Sienna to give me treatments and tonics that were merely a bandage on a wound that continued to fester and spread.
We knew we would hit the end of the road at some point; I just didn’t realise it would be today.
‘Your sword is generational; there is no better conduit to link you to your past and to guide you through this. Hold it; nothing more is needed.’ Sienna hummed as she tapped a metal drum, the sounds harmonising and filling every recess of my mind.
The water bowl rippled, while the flames and smoke from the charcoal flickered.
Closing my eyes, the sound washed over me as I felt my mind and body freefall.
As the intensity of the sound began to crescendo, sweat pooled at the back of my neck.
It was like being sucked into a dream while still awake.
I tried to move my hands, but I could no longer feel my sword in my grasp.
I felt trapped in darkness as the drumming came to a halt, my mind’s eye focused.
I was standing in a black circular room where no light could get in, yet somehow I could see. I knew exactly where I was; I was not trapped in any darkness, but in my mind. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. My instinct was to panic, but I felt an unusual sense of calm.
‘Take me through every moment that broke you, one by one,’ Sienna whispered into the air around me. It was as if a cord snapped, with black smoke seeping out of my skin into the space around me, so thick that I couldn’t see through it before it suddenly disappeared.
Zoe. That was the face looking back at me.
Pain instantly lanced through my heart; it had been so long since I had seen her.
She was ethereal, with skin that looked like glass and waves of light golden hair that matched the blue, childlike glint in her eyes.
She punished herself for years for what the men in her life had done to her as a child.
Instead of giving her unconditional love, they had used her body to service their innermost twisted desires, night after night.
As she got older and her body matured into that of a woman, they became disinterested in her.
But the reprieve from their touch did nothing for the memories that plagued her, feeling their wet, warm and smoke flavoured tongues inside of her mouth.
Their fat, calloused fingers dragging themselves up her thighs.
The smell and feel of their sweat on her body.
It would make her skin itch and crawl. The worst part was her father, who never believed her.
She had no one to protect her, and at that time, I was nobody and nothing in this world, unable to do anything.
It was the first time I had felt truly powerless.
Zoe could never escape the men in her nightmares until one night she couldn’t take it any longer and took her own life.
I had spent years begging, pleading and fighting for her to stay with me, not to give up.
I knew I was selfish; she was in pain, and I couldn’t face this world without her.
But I knew what her life could be, even if she couldn’t see it yet; she was destined for so much more.
As I look back on my own life now, perhaps she was the smartest one of all.
Had I been brave enough to do what she did, I would not have suffered so much.
When I first came into power only a year ago now, I made it my mission to find these men and piece by piece I cut off their skin, flesh and bones until there was nothing left.
I kept them alive for as long as possible throughout the process.
That way, they would know why I was doing this, what they had done and how they would never live to hurt another child again.
Although I was raised to be a savage without mercy from childhood, this was the first time I felt a true thrill for other people’s pain and began to relish the feeling of taking a life.
It was justified; it was right, and I felt this down to my core.
I would never be powerless again. That moment changed me, but I had no regrets apart from one—that I did not come into power sooner to kill them years earlier.
What broke me was losing her. At the time I was living at the Academy in my second year.
It was hell but she was my light in that darkness and once the world had snuffed out her flame I lost myself.
Two days after her death is when the panic set in.
My chest heavy, breathing shallow and laboured, heart racing and blood pounding through my ears, drowning out every other noise.
My limbs would turn ice cold as sweat coated my skin.
My hands and feet would prickle with the pain of a thousand needles before going numb.
Everything around me fading—as did my sensations—while the world turned black.
Losing Zoe was the first piece of myself that I had lost, one I would never be able to reclaim.
A part of my heart and soul was chipped away when I lost her light.
I had learned to live with it over the years and accept that the person I was from our shared childhood died with her that day, never being able to truly move on.
The all-consuming black smoke rippled out of me, washing away my childhood friend as I was catapulted forward until I was looking at my father lying in his bed.
Nausea roiled through my stomach at the sight.
I couldn’t let my mind come back here and go through this again.
I had buried these still raw memories deep, as they had untethered me so completely.
I was in my penultimate year at the Academy during winter break.
The doktora told us that father had become ill with the Rak.
A black festering growth inside his body that could not be cleansed.
They slowed down its growth for a time until it slowly solidified his organs from the inside out.
Those three months were the hardest moments of my life.
He was at peace with dying, although he wanted to live and was desperate to see me each day; but the pain was inexplicable and too much to bare much longer.
No concoction the doktoras or Wiccans could brew eased the agony.
He could barely move, and worse yet, he could barely breathe.
I was exhausted from being at his side every day and night, but it was never a burden; what pained me was that he viewed himself as one.
I became emotionally unstable from the grief in the following months.
I lashed out at everyone and everything.
My mother blamed me at the time. She said that my wild and rebellious ways had caused the stress that poisoned his body with the Rak.
Perhaps that is another reason why, when she died, I did not care.
She deserved it for uttering those words to me.