Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Throbbing pain woke me. The aching soreness rolled across my body as I tried to sit up. Slamming into me all at once, I remembered why my body was so cold and sore. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see a damned thing. There was no candle to light, no window to open. He trapped me in a cold empty cell.

I didn’t know how long I had been down there. Darkness consumed me quickly, my body found the only option available was to rest. Several times I felt myself drift back into consciousness before succumbing to sleep again. It needed to rest and I wouldn’t fight that urge. But now I was awake, fully.

Laying there alone for quite a while, all I could do was replay the situation. Every emotion I felt, every betrayal. The only one who ever tried to protect me, tried to help me, was Lenora. She was just a servant herself. All these powerful people and only another servant saw the horrible nature of their abuse.

“We could have been great together,” I mimicked in Altyr’s tone. “Like what, some vampire king and queen?”

A voice cut through the darkness, Orrin’s voice. “You could have, you know.”

I tried to look around and find the owner, but that hope quickly died when I remembered I couldn’t see a damn thing. As if on cue, he lit a candle. It faintly illuminated his face over in the corner. He was sitting in a chair, alone.

“Nathaniel wants you dead.”

I scoffed and said, “Of course he does.”

“You’re not dead.”

Flexing my hands as I tried my best to see how much damage I did when I used the darkness and light so much. “That keeps happening to me, you know.”

He let out a chuckle, not something I had expected to hear from him, not after putting his wife in such danger.

“That’s why I’m here, if you were wondering.”

“And here I thought maybe you just liked my company.”

Another chuckle. “Your stupid flower is safe in my room if you must know. Whatever spell you did, whatever magic you put upon us, it’s gone. We told Altyr everything we knew.”

I rolled my eyes, but I’m sure he couldn’t even see the action. “Of course you did.”

“We should have told him, everything would have gone differently had you not been so dense."

“You’re just here to charm me then, eh?”

He let out an annoyed sigh. “He’s not a bad guy. Before everything happened, he was a benevolent ruler. He outlawed slavery and his people were generally happy. Even after everything happened, after he had so much travesty in his life, when you were thrust into his life, he went out of his way to make sure you were safe. He made sure you were happier here.”

“He also tried to kill me.”

“You were in the wrong place—”

I let out a huff or annoyed breath. “It still didn’t warrant the attack. You two cursed me.”

“It is not a curse to be one of us.”

“You say that on the other side of iron bars.” I grabbed them and shook them slightly to remind him of where we were.

A moment of silence hung between us before he finally continued. “He’s not a bad guy. Of all the people, I thought you would have known that considering how much time you spent together.”

“If he’s not a bad guy, why did he give Idaal back to Nathaniel?”

Silence.

“If he’s not a bad guy, why did he even let Nathaniel do the things he was doing in the first place?”

“We don’t control other lords,” I heard him say with another sigh. “You do not understand the world you’re in now. You do not understand the politics. We can’t force any lord to do anything lest that lord wants to start a goddamn war.”

“So instead you just let them get away with atrocities in your own lands?”

He groaned and said, “Of course we don’t let that happen! You’re such an ignorant mortal, I swear! What are they teaching people there in your damn Silver City! How do you not know about any of the lords of this world?”

“The Lightbringers kind of make sure we don’t know of anything going on in the world,” I tried to explain. “We only know about the good things. We don’t… I don’t… I didn’t…”

“You didn’t care to know, did you?”

It was my turn to be silent.

“You were content to stay in your own little world and not pay any attention to anyone outside of it.”

I gave him no response. I had nothing to give, he wasn’t wrong.

“We don’t have that luxury. We have to know what is happening and where. If we don’t, if we don’t chose our words lightly, everything could come crumbling down. The lords at this damn ritual are the same lords that rule this region, at least the ones that are of our kind. If we piss off all the lords and ladies that are like us—“

“Vampires you mean.”

“Yes.” I could actually see his eyes roll dramatically with how close the candle was to him. “If we anger the other vampires, when your Lightbringers decide to wage war on us like they did to Altyr so many years ago, we will have no allies to defend each other. That is if those lords don’t decide to take our lands from us in the first place before the Lightbringers even have a chance. They have been gaining influence and power in every region. Now is not the time to anger these lords! Trying to steal their people away from them is a surefire way of alienating an entire region from helping defend you when the wars start.”

“My Lightbringers? Did we forget they tried to kill me just as much as they tried to kill you lot?”

“So you say,” he said as he crossed his legs. “So he says. But they are saying otherwise and when you have a castle full of people thinking you’re some type of Lightbringer spy, it doesn’t bode well for either of you. Either way, you’ve caused an enormous mess for all of us.”

I let the silence grow between us, not giving him the dignity of a response to that. For several minutes, the quiet chewed away at our friendship. I let out a deep sigh and flopped my body back onto the stone. Taking in a dramatic breath, I said, “So you’re down here to make sure I don’t escape.”

He laughed and said, “No, I’m here so Nathaniel doesn’t come and murder you in your sleep.”

I sat back up and snapped my eyes back to him. “Are you here of your own volition?”

“No.”

“Lenora is making you be here?”

I could see him shake his head, letting me ruminate on who had asked him to sit there. The ache in my chest reminded me exactly who it was. Instinctively my hand grabbed at my heart, trying to hold whatever warmth I had left in.

“I would have thought he would have wanted me dead.”

Another silence hung between us, and a small rodent ran by, breaking up the moment. “You are truly a foolish mortal.”

“I—“

“He’s been furious. He was up there breaking things, breaking walls, breaking the gate. The gate is broken, by the way, the big pretty one with all the nifty metalwork? Yeah. It’s not so pretty anymore. Still works as a gate, but anything that heavy would, really.”

The urge to look away from Orrin was too strong. His words about Altyr were too much. I was ashamed for causing such strife.

“Nathaniel is so incredibly mad and Morina is not helping the situation, goading him at every chance she gets, but I don’t think you understand Altyr’s strength, his abilities. When he took his revenge, he also took that entire camp’s magic when he did. No other vampire has ever made that much of an acquisition. He is probably one of the strongest vampires you will ever meet. Not only are they in his home, but he could break any of them at any moment.”

I swallowed hard and said, “then why didn’t he? Why didn’t he stop them?”

“He is just one man. One man with few allies. Him and I have had this discussion you know?”

“What discussion?”

“About Nathaniel.”

My breath caught in my throat. He had known about Nathaniel’s behavior. “He obviously didn’t do anything.”

“You don’t know what we were planning on doing. There’s a lot more to factor in than impulsive actions. We were working on it.”

They were working on it. So they were plotting and planning on what to do, but they hadn’t done anything at that point. That didn’t help Idaal from being abused as she was. At least I actually did something to try to help her when it was happening. I let out a dramatic sigh.

“So if he doesn’t want me dead, what is he going to do with me? I’ll turn into a darkened hollow soon. It’s almost already been a month.”

Putting both legs on the floor, he pushed on his knees and stood up. “He’s going to turn you into a lightened hollow. You’ll be bound to him forever, but you’ll be like Lenora. You’ll still be mortal…ish. You will never have the relationship we have, but you’ll live. It’s the only thing he can do in this situation. He’s worried that if you die, with the power you have, and the bond you already do have with one another, it’ll really damage him. If you die in the ritual, that connection is voided anyway so he’ll be fine. If you die before then, well, I don’t know how much of Altyr we’ll have left.”

He took several steps closer to my cell, letting the light illuminate my pitiful state. Standing on the other side of the metal bars, he put his arm through them and grabbed my wrist. With more force than was necessary, he pulled my arm through and let the candlelight illuminate my skin.

My hands were entirely black, a void of darkness. The misting tendrils wrapped all the way around my forearm, dancing and twisting up my biceps while tickling my shoulders. Folding my lips in, tears formed at the edges of my eyes. In just one night, the darkness had made such dramatic progress on my skin. He twisted my hand over and my nails were pointed, sharp. I was already turning into one of those creatures.

The hole in my chest ached more as I realized the situation I was in. I could ignore it in some ways and try to focus on other topics and discussions. Looking directly at the darkness consuming me was not one of those times. I felt empty and useless. I had used so much magic to try to stop the damn vampires that it allowed the darkness to fill the voids. Even though I tapped into the flower again, it still grew. Instead of keeping that entrancing power to control it, I used it to try to escape again to no avail.

“You don’t have much time,” he said as he tossed my hand back down. “What you did was incredibly stupid. You could have used that power for something good. You could have gone through with the promise you made to him and joined him as a vampire. He wasn’t wrong, you two would have been so good together in that way. Instead, you will be weaker and still mortal.”

Turning back around, he walked back to the stairs. “I’ll be in the guardroom above. Now that I know you won’t die in your sleep, I don’t need to sit down here and watch your limp body barely breathe. There is some food and water for you right outside the bars. I suggest eating to help regain your strength.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

He stopped in his tracks, one foot already on the first step.

“I didn’t mean to get Lenora so involved. She… she was just the only person who had ever been more like a friend to me. I just…”

“You won’t ever do that to her again.”

“I won’t do that again.”

He took another step before stopping. “You had us too. We were new, we were different, but we were willing to be friends with you. You didn’t need to hide this from us. You didn’t need to do this by yourself.”

Without saying anything else, he ascended back up the stairs. The candle was left sitting on the chair he had been in. I hadn’t even noticed when he set it down but was thankful at least for a light in the darkness. I didn’t want the thought of it consuming me any longer. My eyes squinted as I tried to focus on the light, not wanting to let it disperse. It was all I had.

I could barely make out the dark marks along my skin now in the lower light. Tracing my fingers across it as it twisted up my arms, I shuddered. Everything I had done so far, everything I had done in my life, had been out of a selfish need to only trust myself. These people had thrown my entire life into chaos, cursing me with this darkness and yet they were the only ones who bothered to tell me anything about how the world actually worked.

Bazak had done wonders on me. Here I thought I had finally gotten out of his grasp, but he left deep-seated trust issues upon my psyche. Every time I had let anyone close to me, I always retreated, fearful that it would end up the same way it had with him. The same way it had for my mother.

I was with a group of people who finally were offering me a place at their table, one of equal footing, and I caused that light to extinguish too. I looked at my hands again, trying to make out their silhouettes in the low light, but the darkness on my skin caused them to blend into my surroundings.

“No,” I said with a shaky voice. “I wasn’t wrong to try to save Idaal.”

Maybe I was wrong with how I went about it. I tried to do everything myself, and when I finally did try to do something about it; I roped in Lenora. I wasn’t even convinced she willingly was helping. Part of me knew, deep down, that I had forced her to help me. Orrin was right, I could have got her killed.

I wanted to be mad at Orrin for yelling at me so much and calling me foolish, but he was right. He had been right the entire time. I should have told Altyr. I shouldn’t have endangered Lenora. This world I now had to live in was foreign to me and I should have relied on them more to navigate it.

A defeated sigh escaped my lips. The ache in my heart was heavy and pulling me down. Exhaustion was still pushing on me, but at least I wasn’t feeling like lead. Tears started to stream down my face, dripping off my chin to the stone below. A haggard sob escaped and I dropped my head in my hands. Everything slammed into me. Every incident that had led to this place, every person I could have hurt or killed. The fact I couldn’t save Idaal from the cruelty of that vampire lord and was expected to have just stood by while it happened.

Curling into a ball, I wept. On the cold floor of the cell, I hugged my body, holding it tight as ragged sobs echoed through the darkness. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want to play their games; I didn’t want to fight for my life.

I wish I had died on that bed of flowers that night. At least then I wouldn’t have to suffer.

At least I would have been at peace.