Page 99 of Synodic

The guards would never open the door so gently.

Had someone from the Wyn found me? Was it Rowen? But how? If Sabra caught a trail of my scent, it likely vanished the moment I was brought below ground and buried alive.

I had lost hope of ever being discovered down here, but I still found myself holding my breath. I yearned to see the face that once haunted my dreams but now ignited them to a point where I couldn’t picture my life without him—and I didn’t want to.

As they quietly entered my room, the figure turning to face me wasn’t Rowen at all but a woman with warm brown skin and braided jet-black hair. Her kind citrine eyes were a beacon of sunlight and lost humanity in this empty darkness. Gold freckles swept across the bridge of her nose and planes of her cheeks, and a single strip of golden specks fell from her bottom lip to the tip of her chin.

“My name is Rayal,” she said with a smooth voice of sun-soaked sand. “Her Highness has asked me to bring you food. The guards outside let me enter.”

She knelt down and lowered a gleaming silver tray of fresh fruit, creamy dips, and puffed pastries right before me.

The spread was lavish and ostentatious and looked like it had been snagged right off one of the throne room tables. I didn’t think Aliphoura was in the business of treating her prisoners to the same delicacies as her court. Whoever this woman was, she had snuck in under false pretenses.

“Thank you,” I said, trying my best to chew an airy tart through my aching jaw. “I’m sure it’s at a great risk that you’re here.”

“And you, who are you to find yourself in the false queen’s wrath, more so than the rest of us?” Rayal asked, dropping the act she’d been sent here by an altruistic monarch.

Not sure how much to reveal to this mysterious yet welcoming stranger, I said cautiously, “Someone with something she wants.”

“If you are who I think, and I believe you are, what you have can never be taken. Changed and altered, yes, but never taken.”

“How do you know who I am?” I asked, afraid and comforted all at once.

Her lids closed intently as if listening to a far-off symphony, hearing only beauty in such a hopeless place. “I can hear your blood. It is singing,” she said, her eyes opening gently to meet mine. “The power that runs through your veins is in your blood. It’s been passed to you, making you who you are, and that can never be ripped from you.” Her fingers absentmindedly stroked the gold choker around her throat.

“What do you know of my blood?”

“That it’s very old and hums of stardust, yet it’s young and budding, like ancient imprints flowing within a newly sprouted blossom. The moment you entered the throne room, I could feel it.”

“How did you come to be here?” I asked through the searing pain in my side.

“Many people from my village fled here, believing Queen Aliphoura would save us from our dying lands. But she possesses no power of life, only death, and we are as trapped here as the stones. Her dark power is said to come from Erovos himself.

“We are nothing but tributes living in comfort until we are sacrificed for the lavish survival of others, often beaten if we step out of line. We may have all we could want, but it is at a great and unnatural price. One of us is sacrificed each day, and once inside there is no escape.”

“How does she do it? Can she be stopped?”

“Energy can be redistributed but never plucked from thin air. Everything has a cost, and unless given freely, the energy must be stolen, sucked from an alternate life source and fed elsewhere. Aliphoura siphoned her land dry to maintain power and control, and now that the earth is used beyond repair, she must resort to her people.

“By the day her masses grow as more are tricked into following her, providing her the numbers she needs to sustain her daily offering hour. But to do such a thing is greatly taxing; she is only able to do it once a sun.”

As I listened in horror, three aggressive knocks pounded on the prison door, jarring us both to the reality that we were not alone and far from safe. “Hurry up in there,” one of the guards shouted.

Rayal’s hand flew to her necklace in startled panic, and this time I noticed the choker she stroked with such reverence was engraved with a line sweeping over and under two circles. While she wore the billowing fabrics of the Crystal Crypts, she held this unique piece of herself close and protectively. It must be a totem of her life from before.

Her voice lowered in a hushed whisper, and she took my hand, laying her palm flat on mine, “I wish there were more I could do to help, but like you, I am a prisoner here. If you should survive and ever find yourself where sun casts upon sun and your shadow greets mine, know that you are amongst friends.”

She stood and released me with a pained regret that swallowed her lovely features. And without another word or glance, she slipped back through the prison door, leaving more questions upon my yearning tongue.

* * *

I wasn’t sure if it was my third, fourth, or hundredth time being dumped back in the glittering black prison. Deceived by the fact that, through my continued abuse, I oftentimes lost sense of whether I floated in the vastness of space or was trapped in a small, stifling cage.

Either way, it was cold, wet, and endless.

I made a point never to take in the faces that transported me between the cell and Aliphoura’s throne room. It seemed every few hours I was brought back to her feet, each interaction unfolding as the one before.

Aliphoura demanded her pretty bird spark, and when I couldn’t comply, Caeryn’s fury was unleashed upon me. Whenever he laid his hands on me, he gladly bruised, cracked, and broke my bones until he was commanded to stop.

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