Page 30 of The Eye of the Fifth
Alone in a damp, darkened cell beneath Avaldale’s Citadel, they had left her.
To die? She didn’t think so. Not here. Not alone without a witness in sight. When they did it, she was sure the whole city would watch on with eager eyes. It was to be a spectacle. The death of a Daeiros was not to be missed.
Iron had been chafing the skin away on her wrists for days. If she even knew how to use her magic, the shackles would surely stop her from wielding it.
They were scared of her now, she’d realised fairly quickly. They hadn’t realised who she was when they’d detained her… no they were too stupid for that. Instead, she’d been accused of stealing magic from humans. Kyra hadn’t known that was even possible, yet that was the conclusion they’d come to for the colossal display of power in that alleyway.
Food was brought to her each day on a small silver plate, but with the shackles around her wrists, she downright refused to eat in front of the soldiers that supplied it, denying them the satisfaction of seeing her do so on her knees like a damned animal.
It may have been a week since her arrest. With no sun to mark the days that passed, it was an estimation she couldn’t trust. She was certain they’d even put something in the food to sedate her, for hermind had not been her own those first couple of days. Once, she had even hallucinated a tall fae male, naked as the day he was born, with hair as black as night.
She stopped eating after that, shoving the slop they gave her down the hole in the corner of the cell meant for shit and piss, and the empty plates were collected with no questions raised. Her stomach had never been emptier, her body never thinner, but at least her thoughts were once again unclouded by roots.
Death was coming for what felt like the hundredth time in a fucking week.
Maybe she’d be known in history as the youngest Earth Warden to lose her life. There were at least three people who had known who she was long before her power had burst forth, though she refused to tarnish her parents’ memory with a bitter brush of betrayal. Win, however…
Win had known. And Win was very much alive.
Kyra would die damning her grandmother for withholding such an important part of her identity.
What sort of Earth Warden would she have been, given the chance to thrive as Roheia’s liege? Would her powers have manifested much earlier in life? Would she have wound up in the pits anyway?
Would she still have abandoned her family?
Speculating on what might have been didn’t matter. It didn’t change the present.
Roheia’s magic within her was a wild, untameable tempest. The monster she had come to know had been released from its prison. It writhed inside her like an alien presence, and she wasn’t too proud to admit that it terrified her.
???
‘Get up’, an unkind voice commanded.
Thick fingers wrapped around her upper arm. That grip would leave a bruise; days of not eating or drinking had left her weak. It was strange, to be in this body she knew so well. And yet it was foreign, afeeble vessel whose movements were laboured and slow, unrecognisable from the famed Warrior Queen of the Arc.
She smiled at a soldier she hadn’t seen before. Younger. Softer faced. Prettier. ‘Are we going somewhere nice?’ she purred, though it didn’t sound as sensual as she would have liked on an unused, croaking voice.
He ignored her as the other, burlier soldier pulled her from the cell. She wanted to rip out of his grip, but without his support, she was unsure if her legs would even hold her.
They escorted her down a torch-lit chamber she barely remembered, both silent at each side. ‘Have you ever wondered what a naked female’s body looks like? If we differ from a woman?’ she asked the softer of the two, turning her head slightly to look up at him. ‘Ever wondered if we move different? If wefeeldifferent?’
Even in the dim torch-light, his cheeks stained with pink. ‘Oh…’ she breathed. ‘Of course you have. So, ever wondered what we taste like?’
The other, rougher soldier ripped her away from his comrade with vigor, forcing her to look at him. ‘Shut up.’
Reckless stupidity made her say, ‘You’ve wondered too, haven’t you? What would the governors have to say about that? Two noble Union soldiers wondering what their cocks might feel like inside a fae-’
His fist smashed into her stomach and she doubled over, half laughing, half gasping for breath. ‘Don’t,’ the pretty soldier said quickly. ‘We’re not supposed to harm her.’
‘What does it matter,’ Kyra said as she was hauled up, her gaze locking with his. ‘If I’m going to die anyway?’
Something like sadness flitted across his face, so fleeting that if she’d blinked, she would have missed it. But it had been there, and she could have sworn his grip on her arm became a little gentler as they marched her above ground.
Perhaps not all humans in Avaldale hated her after all. A tiny distinction she hadn’t known she’d needed.
She remained quiet after that.
Pure sunlight streamed into the Citadel courtyard, damn near blinding her as they dragged her up to a platform where a singular rope ending in a loop hung from the beam above.
