Chapter 8 #2
My head fell to the side, my gaze taking in the small space beside me, and there he was. Lounging in a chair, staring at me as if I were some puzzle to be solved. I tried to make some smart comment, but my mouth wouldn’t move. My tongue felt like sandpaper and my lips were cracked and dry.
“I shouldn’t be surprised my plan didn’t work, bird. It would be a Fates-damn miracle if it had,” Keres muttered as he watched me. “Not that you have any idea what I’m talking about. Vega really did a number on you. Pitiful. You could’ve been of real value had I had the patience to break you in.”
He continued talking but some of the words weren’t making sense to me. Not much of anything was making sense to me right now, and on some level I knew that should worry me.
“This wasn’t the first band of Eternal Outcasts, did you know?
I’ve tried this before. Many years ago. But we weren’t organized then.
I just let my men go out and turn any of the males from the list I’d saved all those years ago.
Some of them were fucking horrid. Just changed the men and left them there,” he scoffed, shaking his head, the movement making me dizzy.
“Well, their kids at least. Grandkids, maybe? Great-grandkids? I’m not sure.
Time blends together when you’ve been around as long as I have. ”
I wasn’t well—yet all I could manage to do was lie here and try to focus on something going on. A focal point. A safe place.
Deep ocean blue eyes, endless and all-knowing, entered my mind.
“My hope was that I’d take the shadow ruler, Raiden,” he spat his name as if he had royally offended him at some point.
Raiden? I knew that name. I tried to listen harder, understand more, as he continued.
“I thought, stupidly, that she’d ask for my help.
She’d subconsciously find her way home. But once Viktor began reporting back how she was behaving…
torturing my soldiers, burning down buildings, I knew it was fruitless.
She’d find him on her own and wouldn’t seek help unless those she’d come to trust approved of it. Those like you.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and breathing hurt the entirety of my body.
“One way or another, I’ll get her back. Maybe I just need to think outside of the box,” he whispered.
He was still talking, muttering to himself, when sleep took me once again.
“Oh yay, the princess has arrived,” I mumbled. My eyes cracked open, the sunlight causing even more pain to radiate through my body.
I watched as Cora walked towards me, only instead of skirting around the edge by the door, she walked directly through the sunlight.
“I brought you this,” she said as she handed me a small vial. “It’s the same tonic I gave you before.”
Lifting a tired arm, I took it from her. Swirling it around for a moment before I uncorked it and dumped the entirety in my mouth. I tried to hide the grimace, but it was hard when my entire body felt as if I fell from the middle of the sky and hit the cobblestone.
“When I let it go, will it just disappear again?” I asked, my tone quiet and thoughtful, but before she could answer I dropped a more pressing question for her. “What are you, Cora?”
My gaze tilted up to stare at her, her dark blue eyes locking on my brown ones. She opened her mouth, pausing for a moment, and I wondered briefly if she was going to try and attempt a lie.
I was prepared for it, a lie. It wasn’t as if she owed me the truth or anything of the sort, but it wouldn’t stop me from trying to dig into this female and everything she was so eager to hide.
“My mother was a witch,” she whispered after a moment.
“Silvana isn’t a witch,” I replied.
She looked down at the floor, chewing on her bottom lip. “No, she just inherited our father’s ice magic. So did I. Father was, well, his family was…” She sighed, the words dropping off mid-sentence. “It doesn’t matter. I inherited some of my mother’s magic as well as his.”
I looked away and found myself nodding. I’d thought she had someone in the castle making the tonics she’d given me, but that hadn’t been the case at all. “Makes sense, I guess,” I muttered.
Lifting my arm, I threw the vial across the cell. But it disappeared into thin air before it could shatter against the far wall. A breathy chuckle slipped out of my mouth. “Does he know?”
“No. I’d like to keep it that way, please.”
“You messed with Silvana’s memories. Don’t bother denying it.
She remembered bits and pieces before she left here and you just gave me the last piece of the puzzle.
” I shook my head. “Not a princess, a witch. Should’ve known.
Although princess still fits you better, in my humble opinion.
The Lady of the Court of Ice,” I sneered.
“Cedar, I—”
“If I stand up right now and reach for you, will I be able to touch you? Feel you? Strangle you to death?” I knew my words were cold, but there was still a heat behind them that I wished desperately I could extinguish.
I wanted so badly to burn the pull towards her alive, and instead all I could feel was the burn for her in its place.
I swallowed roughly.
“No, you wouldn’t be able to. Not truly, anyway.”
I slowly pushed myself to my feet, my back against the wall as I stared down at her, trying to remain upright despite my body’s protests.
“I want you gone. I want this little mirage bullshit you’re here as gone.
” I looked up at the ceiling I’d spent countless days staring at, trying to fight this feeling, suddenly not feeling confident in my next move at all, but I pushed through.
“Then I want you to find some way to bring yourself, your real self, back here. In full form, Princess, so we may have actual words.”
Her gaze snapped back to mine again, speechless. She started nodding quickly and I watched as she backed towards the doorway before disappearing into thin air again, only this time I sent a prayer to any of the Fates who would listen that it wasn’t all in my head.
That this was something I would remember—could remember.