Chapter 24

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Chapter 24

On her first night in the cage, Oriane had felt strangely satisfied.

It had given her an invigorating sense of vengeance, to see them all rushing around like headless hens. The king's reaction had been particularly gratifying: a steady decline from uneasy concern to furious action to ranting, raging apoplexy, as his men prodded and poked at her and still she remained silent.

Good, Oriane had thought. Let him feel some tiny measure of what I feel. Let him know what it is to lose the light in his life.

But as the endless night stretched on, her satisfaction began to wear thin, like a garment worn and washed until the light showed through it. Finally it disintegrated, leaving nothing but a hollow in its wake.

People still came and went. They offered her food, tried to force it on her. They studied her, holding torches so close to her cage that the heat nearly singed her feathers. Oriane barely noticed any of it. She had begun to sink inside herself. A numbness and a vague, creeping sense of unreality settled upon her. Sometimes she could not be sure whether she was really there. Whether she was even real. Who was she supposed to be? Who had she been before? 186

Soon, even those questions disappeared. None of it mattered. None of it even registered. The hours drifted by, melded together, becoming one great river of darkness that flowed inexorably from some wretched source.

Oriane let herself be carried with the tide.