Page 100 of Synodic

Despite the pain and fog, I fought to clear my mind. I hoped Caeryn would stay away from my head long enough for it to heal, so I at least had a chance of escaping. I tried telling them through labored speech that blows to the head were counterintuitive, and if they kept at this rate, the only thing they would eventually see from me would be a corpse, but they never listened.

I eventually became grateful for my muddied mind, which progressively worsened. I’d come to know it helped the next round of torture not hurt so badly.

I tried screaming at her crowd, begging them to see reason, but they were all too frightened of the repercussions. Aliphoura kept a tyrannical rule over her subjects—even the ones who wanted to leave couldn’t.

It was for more than sport that Aliphoura was keeping me alive. She said I would eventually become of use to her, but after multiple beatings, I was still no closer to figuring out why.

“I am beginning to question if what I heard about you is true,” she said after a particularly nasty beating where my eye was already swelling shut. “And I have to confess, I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.”

I learned to no longer rise to the bait of her questions. Her answers were always more cryptic than informative, and who knew if anything she said rang with a lick of truth.

I did know, in no uncertain terms, that once she got the reaction she wanted out of me, she would discard me with a simple command.

Knowing I needed to stay sharp, I attempted counting the number of days since the fire. There was no sun, moon, or even regularly scheduled meals to help convey any real sense of time. Only the screaming from the daily offering hour let me know I’d been here four days.

All the food upon the silver platter had long gone, and I’d been drinking the dripping cave water to sustain me. Rayal hadn’t returned either. It was most likely too risky, or she’d been caught and punished for helping me. But talking with her solidified my need for escape. I’d take her and anyone else with me who wanted to leave.

Several times I thought I saw Rowen entering my cell, but it was always just my broken imaginings and splintered dreams. There was no way he would find me here. He’d tried and failed several times to find these crypts as it was.

I attempted to sleep, rest, heal, and plot my escape, but every action was listless and fitful, and I could do nothing but exist in perpetual torment. When I managed sleep, all I could see was Caeryn’s menacing brown eyes lashing out at me, my power nowhere in sight.

36

I lay in a small broken heap after yet another merciless beating, not even stirring from where the helmeted guards dumped me on the prison floor. I no longer needed to worry about staying warm and dry in my dripping wet cell. That time had long passed.

And much like the dreams I used to have before Rowen appeared, I found myself in yet another waking nightmare.

Dark.

Endless.

And isolating.

Rowen had seen my suffering then, when I had been fighting off the worst of my mother’s concocted drug, and he prided me on how I always managed to get back up, to somehow keep rising. I kept replaying his words from the night of Celenova in my mind,I knew no matter what came at you, you would stand and keep going, keep fighting.

But I couldn’t keep fighting, not anymore. My body had been broken so many times that the only thing left to break was my spirit, and it was fading by the second. The Wyn people and Rowen had no way of finding me down here.

Crumpled on the cold, hard ground, I didn’t even shiver. I knew I should be more alarmed by how little I felt. This total detachment couldn’t be a good sign. I was pretty sure my leg and arm were broken, along with several ribs and fingers, and who knew what else. My lip felt huge, and one of my eyes wasn’t opening properly. Not to mention my head injury that hadn’t healed since the day of the fire.

Even if I was found, I was too far gone for Takoda’s healing. Aliphoura’s sick game of cat and mouse was just prolonging the inevitable—I would die here.

My hope was the Alcreon Light would find a new host. Someone worthy. I’d held out as long as I could. I was on death’s doorstep. I could taste it on my tongue like dried petals and dust, it wasn’t so bad.

I began to write a farewell letter in my head, one that nobody would ever read or even know existed, but at least somewhere floating between two worlds, my words would exist.

I may die a captive in a cell, but I refused to die a captive of my mind.

I brought my theoretical pen to paper, ready to let go of all the hurt and betrayal in my life, not only from my parents, teachers, friends, and Natalie, but also from myself. I sealed the letter and sent it off deep within the infinity of myself. I closed my eyes for one final dream, when suddenly, my prison door began to creak open.

It was always a guessing game as to who it would be. Was it the guards sent to deliver me for my next beating? Caeryn come to finish the job? Or was it Aliphoura herself, finally deciding to get her hands dirty?

I didn’t shift to look. Whoever they were, they were already too late.

Calloused hands touched my shoulder, and I didn’t even flinch.

“Keira,” an agonized voice whispered through the swallowing dark.

I knew this voice. Through any darkness, through any light, I knew it because I had come to love this voice.

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