Epilogue
CAGED
Ironically, the first sense that returns to me is touch.
Something soft dabs at my forehead, wiping my brow.
A gentle scraping against my skin. Fingernails?
No… more like talons. I sit up with a jolt, wheezing, pulling away from this prodding creature.
My own fingernails break as I drag myself backward across a hard-packed, earthen floor, into a rough stone wall.
There is an angry ringing in my ears that no amount of shaking my head remedies.
I cannot tell if the silence is that profound or if I’ve lost my hearing.
My vision does not seem to work either—I blink furiously, rubbing my eyes with the backs of my dirty hands.
I breathe deep, to calm my racing pulse, to reorient myself, but am overcome by the smell of iron and dirt and—blood.
That distinct, tangy rust. Father’s blood. Father.
Dead. Used and cut down. And it is all my fault. And my friends—I cannot bear to think of what has happened to them.
I find my hearing intact when my own cry echoes through the darkness, reverberating in my chest.
A rustling from nearby stills me. They do not make me wait. From the void comes a screechy word.
“Child?”
“Mavick?”
I scramble to my hands and knees, at once crawling toward their voice.
The sound of snapping fingers is a brief warning before I am blinded by a soft light Mavick produces at the end of their fingertips.
Four black, widened eyes take me in. Their soft pink skin is shredded in places—deep, inflamed gouges that have yet to heal.
Black and bronze bruises decorate their body like warpaint.
Their pretty wings are bent and lay at an unnatural angle.
But they are alive.
I throw my arms around their neck as another choked sob bounces off stone walls.
“Child, child, child,” they coo, their tone softer than I’ve ever heard it. They run shaky fingers over my back.
“Why?”
“Because you are too good, child,” they say into my neck.
I pull back, and Mavick winces as they kneel opposite me.
They suspend that light source in the air above us.
It reminds me of faerielight, but it seems weaker, insentient.
We are in a cell with three stone walls and a fourth made of iron bars.
Iron. To no doubt dull Mavick’s magic. But other than glamours, I never witnessed them use it.
“You daft, simple, good child. You were supposed to escape and never look back. You were not supposed to grow a conscience and return.”
Understanding settles over me like a blanket of frost.
“The… the dagger… the riddle…?” I trail off. They seem to understand despite my disjointed speech.
“Well—it did not quite go as planned. I thought you were ready when you accepted the Yield—when you said you would give everything. I had the parchment in place, the dagger, the egress—all ready to go,” they say, their eyes closing.
When they open again, they are limned with salty tears.
“That’s when the Night Prince found me—before I could make myself disappear. ”
Mavick shakes their head as the tears fall. My brain is slow to absorb their words.
“So… you attempted to fake your own disappearance. To get me into Sanctuary… but… that’s when Asan took you? The riddle… it—it was a wild goose chase? It was all for nothing?”
“Not for nothing, child—your freedom is not nothing!” Mavick shouts, grabbing one of my hands with both of theirs. “I always thought you worthy—worthy of whatever you wanted. And I knew you to be good. But I also knew you were self-seeking.
“I thought you would eventually give up on the riddle—eventually give up on finding me and make a new life for yourself, safe in Sanctuary. The Night Prince attacked me—my blood—I fear it had the opposite effect as what I planned. It was only meant to be my riddle.”
I cannot speak. Literal. I agreed I would give up everything. They delivered.
“Seeing—knowing I was hurt made the stakes inadvertently higher for you,” they continue, their voice almost inaudible.
“And I did not foresee you desiring to return to check on King Tobias if you ever learned the true nature of the elixir.
You are so good—and I—I underestimated that—I underestimated you.
My shortsightedness had grave consequences.
“Everything was undone when the Night Prince learned of the Yield. He—he tortured it out of me. I fought—I held on for as long as I could, I…”
They cannot continue. I know this is their version of an apology. We sit in a lingering silence. Tears turn icy on my cheeks. Mavick wipes away their own with the backs of their dirty fists.
“Well, here we are,” I say. My voice cuts like a blade. “And now I fear there is no goodness left in me. In its place sits a burning, festering rage.”
Mavick answers with a somber smirk. “Good,” they whisper. “You will need it for what comes next.”