Chapter Three
second later, a brilliant flash of light streaks across the sky, followedA by a roll of thunder so loud it shakes the earth, debris and rocks shearing off the walls and tumbling over my head. Another bright flash, followed by an even louder crack of thunder, echoes across the firmament before it erupts and the rain starts to fall.
The creature seems to be gone, presumably spooked by the storm. I let out a sigh of relief, my heart still pounding so hard it feels like it’s tripping over its beats. That was much too close for comfort. How am I going to survive two weeks of this?
But Zerra has answered one prayer tonight, and I tilt my face to the sky, opening my mouth to invite the cool rainwater to slip over my parched
tongue and throat. At least I won’t die of thirst. Not yet, anyway.
The temperature drops rapidly, and I shiver as the rain pounds a steady
rhythm against my hair and skin and clothes.
After what feels like hours of relentless downpour, I realize I really should be more careful about what I fucking wish for. My hole is filling with water,
the deluge too intense for the moisture to have enough time to sink into the earth. Right now it sits only a few inches deep, and I send up a stream of prayers to Zerra, begging for the rain to stop before this becomes a problem I can’t handle. Or survive.
But my prayers go unheeded, because the rain doesn’t stop. It continues to fall with the determination of an ocean trying to drown a whale.
A day must pass, the sky shifting from black to gray and back again like the most boring story ever told. The cloud cover is so thick, there’s no hint of the aurora. As the rain keeps falling, my hole keeps filling until I can’t sit on the ground anymore. When the water gains several feet, I’m forced to stand. I lean against the now-muddy wall, my tears falling with the rain. No one can see me cry here, and I allow myself this rare indulgence.
It keeps coming. Coming and coming in an endless flood. The water inches up my thighs, and then creeps to my waist like I’m a statue that’s slowly being buried by tendrils of ivy. I’m so tired. So weak. I’d give anything to lie down. Even to sit. My feet and my legs ache, and I’m so cold. My fingers— they’re completely numb. I keep checking my hands to make sure they’re still
there. I try to wiggle my toes in my boots, but they’ve been chilled to blunted nubs.
Propping my body against the wall, I try to sleep, but I might as well be trying to catch a few winks during a stampede of wildebeests. The rain falls and falls, soaking through my clothes and into my hair and right through my
skin, raindrops stinging my eyes. I shiver so hard my jaw aches from the clack of my teeth. I wrap my arms around my torso, trying to find the relief of some warmth, but it’s not there.
Spreading onto my back, I attempt to float, trying to relieve the pressure on my lower limbs. It helps, but now it becomes a choice between the ache of
remaining upright or exposing more of my body to the frigid water and air.
Thank Zerra it’s summer, at least, and the temperature is comparatively warm. The winters in The Aurora are brutal at best, deadly at their worst.
Finally. Finally, it stops.
I don’t know how long it’s been, but pain radiates through every limb and cell of my body. Numbness has spread through every pore, taking root and
spreading out like cooling lava. As the sky clears and the clouds dissipate, I sob tears of relief. At least I didn’t go thirsty. Ice coats my skin, a hard shell that rattles against my trembling limbs. Can you die from standing for too long?
It takes what feels like another lifetime for the water to seep into the earth.
If I sleep at all, it’s merely in batches of stolen seconds that offer no relief.
I’m so tired. I’m so hungry. I’m a broken, hollow husk of nothing. Slowly, so slowly, my back drags down the side of the wall as I descend with the water level. My legs shake and my back spasms. My head throbs and my unsteady heart flutters.
After an eternity, I can finally sit, my body releasing like a puff of smoke
with the luxurious relief of taking my weight off my feet and my legs. I’m so light, I’m floating on clouds, but my skin feels so waterlogged, I’d probably sink to the bottom of a lake like a stone tied to a boulder.
Pulling my knees up, I fold my arms over them and drop my head. A few hours later, when only a few inches of water remain, I collapse to the ground,
no longer in danger of drowning. In that moment, nothing has ever felt so divine as the ability to just lie down. I’d cry if I could summon the energy.
My eyelids drift shut and then I sleep.
I don’t know how long I’ve been lying at the bottom of this hole.
The days become one long smear as the sky oscillates from grey to black to grey again and again. When the aurora lights come out, I try to watch, but I can barely lift my head, catching only the joyless tease of red and blue and
green and purple from the corner of my eye. If I hold my breath, I can hear the lights, though. They crackle as if imbued with energy like pent-up lightning that never strikes.
I try to count the days as they pass, but I quickly lose track, and my mind is playing tricks on me anyway. None of this feels real. I can’t distinguish one second from the next one. I’m a broken clock, ticking forever into nothing.
It doesn’t rain again and for that I’m thankful, except it’s a minor consolation. I’m going to need water again soon. Hunger gnaws so deep, it
chips away at the very marrow of my bones. I know starvation. I understand its rhythm and heartbeat, the quality of its texture, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been this hungry.
There are moments when I sense the demon’s presence, though it never
ventures as close as before. I call out to it. Beg it to devour me. To take me apart, piece by piece, and end this. I don’t even care if it hurts. I just want this to be over.
But it doesn’t heed my anguished pleas. Something is holding it back. In the labyrinth of my turbid thoughts, I can sense its reluctance to approach.
I blink in and out of consciousness, dreams chasing nightmares into one endless loop that blurs into a haze of colors and darkness. Shadowed images
of black feathered wings and leathery hides. A sky streaked with crimson forks of lightning and a river of stars. A bloody smile that spears through me with a sharp crackle. Screams that echo in some place I’ve almost forgotten.
A place I know but I’ve never visited.
I dream of Tristan and Willow trying to move on without me. Of their bent heads and tear-stained cheeks. I see Willow rocking back and forth, a prayer
on her lips, Tristan’s arm wrapped around her shoulders.
I dream of Aero under an aurora-strewn sky. Of frantic kisses and needy hands. Of warm skin sliding against wet heat and feverish moans. I dream of his fingers and lips and tongue tasting, biting, and sucking. Of how something that should feel good can instead feel like agony when it’s a fleeting moment of relief entombed inside a lifetime of pain.
I dream of the warden and his beady eyes and his putrid breath. Of his cruel words and sadistic intentions. I hear the rip of a zipper and feel the bruising on my knees as I will myself not to cry. Will myself not to hand over those last shreds of dignity I cling to like brittle straws.
It feels like I’ve been here for months and years. But that can’t be right.
My body aches, and the moisture has settled into my bones. I can’t imagine ever being warm again.
With the absence of the rain, my throat is once again parched, my lips cracked and bleeding. I shiver against the cold, my clothes never properly drying, the air damp and thick. Mold is probably growing between my toes
and under my arms. Soon I’ll become one with the forest floor, consumed and gifted back to the earth. With any luck, I’ll be reborn into a better place.
When the forest returns to its normal volume of deathly silence, I can’t
distinguish between day or night, but then, somewhere in the clouds of conscious thought, it registers. A shift in the cadence of sounds. The crushing
stillness is fringed with something echoing in the distance.
The sound of metal on metal. The sound of flesh hitting stone. The sound of screams. It’s coming from the prison.
Once more, I try to lift my head but only manage an inch. It sounds like a riot. A big one. I’ve been through three of them at Nostraza and the result always means more left dead than alive. Tristan and Willow are in there. I
hope they’re hiding, but I know Tristan will be in the thick of it. At least, I hope he thought to get Willow to safety before he made his boneheaded way into the fray.
I whisper their names into the dark. Willow. Tristan. When we were brought here, I was just twelve years old. Willow is three years older than me and Tristan is two years her senior. I remember flashes of my parents, many of my memories cobbled from my brother’s and sister’s stories. We’ve always been inseparable. Always there for each other. The early years were the hardest, and I’m not sure what’s kept us alive all this time, but I thank Zerra every day all three of us wake up to see another turn on the calendar.
They charged Tristan with killing three of the king’s men and they slapped
Willow with her sentence for stealing a precious Artefact from the kingdom.
When it came to me, they didn’t even bother with an official ruling. They just tossed me in here and threw away the key.
I heave out a dry sob, brittle with regret. I wanted so badly to get us out of here.
The sounds from the prison grow louder. Thumps and shrieks ringing in the forest’s silence. The clash of weapons and the cries of the wounded. The creatures seem to listen too—all paused on the edge of curiosity. The inmates
outnumber the guards twenty to one, but they’re tired and hungry and have no weapons or training. The guards have magic on their side, too, the king’s
wards preventing anyone from breaching the perimeter without being shredded into ribbons.
My eyelids droop. I’m so tired and hungry, but I can’t go to sleep. I need to hear what’s happening. Tristan and Willow. I hope they’re okay, and I cling to the image of their faces as I continue to drift in and out of consciousness.
I’m not sure how long it goes on, but hours must pass. Time has ceased to
have any sway over my existence. Maybe I’m already dead.
But then I hear a thump right by my head, and I flinch at the sound, wondering what nasty beast has found its way to my tomb. As my eyelids shutter open and closed, I become dimly aware of a shadow moving above me. There’s a soft rustle. The warmth of breath on my skin.
Someone is touching me. I’m rolled over onto my back and I groan.
Everything hurts. My skin burns. My bones ache. I can feel every hair on my head like each one is a lit match, blazing across my scalp.
In my haze, I’m aware of hands shifting me where I lie. They’re gentle but firm. And then I’m being lifted. Am I dreaming? Have I died? Am I being taken up to the heavens? Surely the list of my sins is far too long for me to be
granted any kind of absolution. I’ve been in prison for twelve years. I’ve done so many things Zerra would frown upon to survive. There is no eternal peace waiting for me.
I’ve fought. I’ve thieved. I’ve whored. I’ve blasphemed so many times, my soul is as black as The Aurora sky in the depths of winter. Perhaps I’m being
sent to live amongst the Fallen forever. It’s where I belong.
But it doesn’t matter if that’s my fate. I’ve already lived on that desolate plane for so many years. How could the reality of hell be any worse than
this? The arms holding me lift me up, and I tip my chin to the sky, prepared to fall at the feet of the lord of the underworld, where I will spend my
wretched eternity.
If it’s the ozziller finally coming to take me, then it will rip me limb from limb. I wanted to die, but some feeble shred of self-preservation clings to the tatters of what’s left of my spirit and I flail. With the fleeting strength I have left, I claw and I scratch, but I’m no more dangerous than a newborn lamb.
My teeth sink into flesh, a growl tearing from my throat. I hear a grunt and a
sharp pain shoots across my shoulder.
And then I remember nothing but darkness.
