Chapter 16

I woke up in a room that should never have existed.

Greatfalls didn't have a prison system. Crime wasn't a major problem in the small, tight-knit community. Most transgressions were dealt with using a mixture of arbitration and community service. If someone did something truly awful, the punishment was exile.

But despite that, I was locked in a cell, and I had no idea where it might be located. I assumed I was still in my home city, but from the damp air I could tell I was underground. My people didn't build below the earth. There was no structure in Greatfalls that had space for holding cells in its basement, not that I knew of.

For three days, I spoke to no one. Meals were slid to me through a small opening at the bottom of the large iron door. Once I'd tried to call out when the slot was open, but had gotten back no response.

I'd been stripped of my bow and my daggers, as well as most of my outer clothing. For some reason, they'd left the crown on my head, which was a comfort, although not as much as it could have been. I tried to reach out with it, but using the artifact was like pushing against an immovable wall. It might as well have been an inert chunk of black stone.

By the fourth day, I had mapped every nook and cranny of the small, dark space with my hands. Other than the few moments when my food arrived and light spilled through the opening in the door, it was always pitch black. If it weren't for the regular meals, I'd have had no idea how much time had passed.

Not that the lack of light mattered to anything aside from my sanity. There was nothing there. No furniture, not even a bed. Only a dirt floor and hard stone walls, and the slow drip of water from a leak in the corner of the ceiling.

I was sitting, my back against the hard wall opposite the door, when a blast of light hit me. The door opened. There was only a single lantern hanging in the hall, but my eyes had adjusted such that even that slight illumination burned. I clenched my eyelids shut.

After a minute, my eyes had habituated enough to see my grandmother standing in the doorway. She was framed by lantern light, a creature of power and control. Behind her in the passageway, two guards watched and waited.

"How are you feeling?"

I cleared my throat. Having not spoken in days, it was scratchy and full of phlegm from the moisture in the air.

"I was attacked by my only brother and imprisoned by my grandmother so, all in all, I'm not having the best time."

"Now is no time for sarcasm." Grandmother stepped into the cell, but I didn't move. The cold stone against my back grounded me. "Now is the time for reflection. Have you changed your mind?"

"About the treaty?" I laughed, a guttural sound. Grandmother folded her arms in front of her chest.

"I wouldn't think there would be anything you'd find funny in this place."

"My whole life I was taught to fear the Dark Lord of Ashfuror. I was told he was a threat to all the peoples of Fyr, that his attack against our city could come at any time. That he was the reason my parents died. Now I'm the Dark Lord, and I find my own grandmother is the true villain."

"The villain?" Grandmother's voice was flat and tight. "My responsibility is to Greatfalls."

"Your responsibility is to humanity ." I pressed my hands down against the cold floor as I spoke. "You hoard water, and the rest of the continent starves. There are people dying out there. There has to be some compromise you could make to help them, some amount of your vast resources that you could give."

"I don't care about them! They are not my subjects." The lantern-light behind Grandmother flared as if it was responding to her ire. "To think that you've made it this far into adulthood without understanding. The reason Greatfalls prospers is because I protect the people here at all costs. I will not compromise on that."

I shook my head. This argument wasn't accomplishing anything, but she might be worked up enough that she'd let something useful slip.

"What did you do to the Crown of Seeing?" I asked, touching my fingers to the circlet atop my head.

"That thing ?" Grandmother frowned. "It has no power here. Stahkla may have ensured that it cannot be removed by force, but here in the heart of Vazzart's power it is useless to you. Underneath the reservoir itself, no other god's artifact has any potency."

Interesting. She'd tried to take off the crown, and couldn't. And we were under the reservoir. I hadn't known that any tunnels dug that far down into the earth.

"The heart of Vazzart's power? What does he think of what you're doing?"

Grandmother scoffed, rolling her eyes. "He would tell us if he didn't approve." A flash of insecurity crossed her face. "Besides, Vazzart hasn't spoken to anyone in Greatfalls since the time of my own grandmother. He would appear to us if he wished us to stop."

I frowned at her words. They simply weren't true. Vazzart had responded to my request, and he'd told me to go with Cyrus. What did it mean that Vazzart had not appeared to Grandmother? Was it really the blanket approval she seemed to think?

"Have you ever thought that you aren't listening hard enough?" I asked. If someone had told me a month ago I'd be speaking to my grandmother in that tone, I'd have told them they were crazy, but she'd pushed me too far. This was the woman that raised me. I never thought the day would come that she would treat me as an enemy.

"Perhaps three more days in the dark will loosen your resolve." Grandmother stepped back into the hallway, calling out to me as the guards shut the door. "Think hard, Skye. You may be Lord of Ashfuror, but you will be the last."

The darkness returned.

In the artificial night of the prison cell, my thoughts rang out loud and harsh in my head. Did Grandmother really have the will to hold her grandson captive indefinitely? I had to consider the possibility. I'd misjudged her. Her willingness to discard morality for the sake of politics ran deeper than I could have imagined.

Cyrus was alive and awake. Part of me was certain that he would come for me, that he would never leave his husband to rot. But part of me worried that I had hurt him too deeply, that my betrayal was too much for him to overcome, even if he had known it might happen. That he would abandon me here.

Why didn't Vazzart stop my grandmother, or at least make his will known? The direct presence of a god could obliterate whole cities, that's what some folk said. That's why the gods worked through artifacts and through the minds of their followers. Although some argued that they couldn't reach us if our hearts were closed, regardless of how powerful they were.

Stahkla was terrifying but had been crystal clear. My interactions with Vazzart had confused me more than anything. Why send me with Cyrus just for me to get locked away?

As my thoughts wandered, the drip of the water in the corner grew louder and faster. It would hit stone and then trickle down to the dirt floor. The longer I sat, the louder it became, echoing off the walls of the cell. It took on a life and a rhythm of its own. I got lost in the hypnotic patterns filling the damp air.

The black field of my vision vibrated with color as the sound took on a visual form. It was small at first, but soon the whole cell was filled with aqua patterns, pulsing to the sound of that now-thundering drip.

If I hadn't been stuck in the dark for four days, I might have reacted with suspicion, but I was hit with a wave of relief. The shapes called to me, and I inhaled the sound into my lungs. Then I exhaled, my breath joining the dance of colors in the air.

With an overwhelming woosh, I was underwater once again. Like that day at the mountainside altar, I was being pulled by the current, faster and faster as I passed indistinct piles of rock and coral.

Then I felt it. His presence. Vazzart was here. Not as a person or the enormous buck, but all around me, like a school of jellyfish, wrapping me in hues of purple and pink.

Little one.

He was so much more intense than last time. Grandmother had said this was the heart of Vazzart's power, and the weight of his being permeated me down to the foundations of my soul.

"Lord."

You are a Lord of Fyr now.

The colors around me sprang to life, moving faster now, forming images of me in Ashfuror, marrying Cyrus, wearing the crown.

"Do you approve of what Grandmother's doing? Is this what you want?"

The colors became more subdued, the images fading to gray, ashy clouds.

No.

"Then why haven't you let your will be known?"

I cannot appear to those who shield themselves from me, even unintentionally. She fears my judgment, and that fear cuts her off from me. I cannot break through. My words are for those who welcome my guidance.

"But...what do I do?"

What do you wish?

Tears welled up in my eyes, meeting the water that surrounded me and floating away. They were like tiny bubbles of my spirit, carrying my hopes to the surface. The god's presence made me want to say everything, to speak all of the words that echoed in my mind.

"I wish to go back to when I had a grandmother who loved me, and parents who were not murderers."

You would live in ignorance? You would give up Cyrus?

The blues and greens were back, and now the colors were thick, like blankets wrapping around me, squeezing me, comforting me. It took me no time to come to the answer.

"No." The admission called forth more tears. They confirmed what I already knew. "It's better to have the truth. My marriage to Cyrus has the potential of real, true love between equals. I don't want to go back to the lies of my family."

Images appeared once more in the water around me, this time of Greatfalls, of a drier and more humble version, with Safehold filled to only half of what it was now. Of a leaner, rationed people.

Greatfalls may have to sacrifice. Your family may suffer. You will be called upon daily to make the hard decisions, and some may die because of those decisions. That is the nature of it. Are you willing?

I nodded. I'd made my choice.

Very well .

The water around me sprang to life with amber light, the orange and the aqua dancing and shifting together. It took me a moment to realize that it came from the crown on my head.

At this moment, your husband stands at the gates of Greatfalls with an army behind him.

An image of Cyrus appeared in front of me, atop his steed, on the plains beyond the outer wall. Manod was by his side, Bertio sat on his shoulder, and behind him were legions of soldiers. On top of his head, there was a crown, like mine but unlike, more angular and intimidating than the Crown of Seeing. It shone with a blue light.

Go.

With that word, the water around me swirled, and sucked down, farther and farther down, to the place where all light died, and I went with it. Soon enough, the water was gone, and I was back on solid ground. The dirt floor was cold underneath me. I'd been deposited back in my cell.

The lock on the cell made a sound like a bone snapping. The door swung open. Beyond was the passageway, the lantern flickering, but there was no sign of the guards. I peeked my head out. The hallway was empty.

I ran.