Chapter 7

The ground trembled beneath me where I slept fitfully on the thin mattress, a gasp tearing me from the meagre clutches of sleep as the jolt rocked through the walls themselves.

I looked up with wide eyes as the woman with the kind smile moved closer in the shadows.

"What is it now?" a man hissed fearfully in the dark, his silhouette shifting before the bars of our cell.

It was cold in the Nebula Inquisition Centre. Always cold and always cramped.

The Minotaurs in the next cell over mooed uneasily, dust cascading from the walls as another jolt rattled them again.

Whimpers and fearful murmuring broke out around us, and I curled my legs up to my chest, banding my arms around them and placing my chin on my knees as I tried not to remember that night.

But the screams were still ringing in my ears, my mother's blood hot against my cheeks as she tried to fight back, placing herself between me and the men who had found us.

The letters on their clothes swam before my eyes. FIB. The Fae we had always been told would protect us above all others. The ones who had stolen my world from me instead.

"Hush, love," the woman said, dropping down beside me and taking my hand in her fleshy palm. She'd taken it upon herself to look after me and the other kids who were alone here, but there wasn't much she could really offer us beyond soft smiles and simple platitudes. She hushed me again, but I hadn't uttered a sound. Not a single sound since that night. It wasn't me who was crying in the corner of our cell. I wasn't the one muttering prayers to the uncaring stars as the walls shook again.

"The Queens are here!" a voice cried from somewhere in the darkness far beyond our cell, the cry followed by another and another, my heart pumping harder with each declaration, each sob of hope and relief.

Then there was nothing but fire.

Smoke crashed through the cells, screams tore the darkness apart, and the woman who held my hand shifted in fright, her body shrinking until a tiny paw brushed over my fingers before she fell to the mattress beside me.

The rest of the Tiberian Rats who shared this piece of hell with me did the same while the sound of cattle mooing in terror pressed in on my ears from the next cell over. Tiny bodies swarmed around me, squeaking in fright, scratching at my skin with their sharp claws as they rushed past me, hunting for a way out which we already knew didn't exist.

The fire flared again, the heat searing my skin as red and blue flames flashed violently through the darkness, illuminating a scene of pure horror with two terrifyingly beautiful women standing in the centre of it with crowns upon their heads.

Wings of raging fire spread from their spines, and I could only stare as they slowly walked towards me; the only calm point in a seething rush of terrified Fae.

These were the queens that the people locked up in this camp had whispered of. The ones they had said would save us. The ones who had come to kill us all in the end.

The one with the blue hair reached out for the bars of my cage, her head tilting as she surveyed me amid the tide of rats who swarmed away from them, a still object in the sea of chaos. The rats scrambled for the wall at my back, the furthest point from those flames and the heat which was choking the air from my lungs.

The moment Darcy Vega's fingers wound around the bar, it fell to nothing. It didn't melt, it didn't burn, it simply ceased to be.

Tory reached out next, brushing her fingers across the bars from left to right, each of them tumbling away to nothing beneath the force of her power.

"Is this what it's for?" she breathed, watching the Rats who squealed in fear behind me, scrambling at a wall which may as well have been a mountain.

There was no way out of here without passing those twins of flame and carnage. But none rushed towards the queens who had come for them at last. Nothing in the eyes of those terrible creatures offered salvation.

"Fear is so…pointless," Darcy sighed, seeming disappointed as she reached out and plucked a Tiberian Rat from the ground by its tail.

The creature thrashed and kicked, its pale grey fur so like my father's had been in his shifted form. I stared at the terrified Fae as Darcy lifted it up before her, watching it intently while her fire slowly rolled from her fingertips down its tail.

The Rat's screams were all piercing squeals as it burned beneath her power, but her face didn't change as she watched it suffer through its death. She observed it impassively, as if nothing about what she was doing mattered at all.

"This one is different." Tory pointed at me, taking a step closer, her terrible beauty stealing my breath while I simply stared.

I had nothing left. It had all been taken from me already. Perhaps death would be a relief after all of that.

A tiny body leapt before me, the brown Rat shifting in mid-air, and the woman with the kind smile landed there, her arms wide as she placed herself between me and death, just as my mother had done.

"Leave the child," she begged, her limbs trembling with fear as the twins observed her with interest.

"Sacrifice?" Darcy questioned curiously.

"Bravery," Tory replied in that same, too-flat tone.

"Interesting," Darcy mused.

"Please, my Queens, I beg you," the woman wept, still shaking as she held her ground before me.

She'd told me on that first day here that I reminded her of her daughter. I should have asked her where that child had gone. But I hadn't had the words. I still didn't have the words.

My lips parted on…something, but before I could summon whatever it was from the depths of my being, Tory reached out and caressed the woman's cheek.

Her scream ripped through me as the bones within her flesh lit up, catching light with the force of the fire that tore through her body.

I didn't flinch. The horrors I'd already witnessed had broken the part of me which should have reacted, which should have made me do…well, I didn't even know what.

Her body fell away to nothing, and my eyes closed against the flare of light that burned from the twins who had brought ruin in place of salvation.

The screams surrounding me grew in volume, the frantic bodies of Tiberian Rats in both shifted and Fae form collided with me as they rushed to flee, and the light of the fire stung my eyes even through my closed lids.

When the silence fell, I expected to find myself stepping beyond The Veil, my family waiting for me, ready to return whatever had been broken inside of me that day.

But that wasn't what I found.

A single tear rolled down my cheek as I took in the destruction surrounding me, the ash and soot all that remained of those who had been incarcerated here for nothing more than the crime of being born the wrong Order for the King's desires.

A finger pressed to my cheek, catching the tear and drawing my gaze up to Tory Vega who surveyed me with that same empty curiosity.

"This is different," Darcy said from my other side.

"Perhaps," Tory replied.

"Then she shall come," Darcy said. "What we seek is clearly not here anyway."

"No," Tory agreed, though somehow it wasn't like a normal conversation, more like the musings of a single mind, uncertain of which path to follow next.

"Death was…less than I expected," Darcy sighed.

"Much less. No more tempting than before. I still fail to understand the call of it," Tory exhaled, her hand clasping my arm, the touch of her flesh like a bite of utter darkness which stole the breath from my lungs. "Come, empty girl. We have work to do. We must seek the other fallen."