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“Here we are,” my father says, casting me a closed-mouth grin as he leads me toward what he refers to as the examination table.
My legs connect with the stone, it’s elevated from the floor like an altar. Had I not been here before I’d be worried I was about to be sacrificed to a god. Although, a part of me wonders if that would be better.
The walls are clad in pure, white scales. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never had the courage to ask what creature the scales once belonged to. Their spaded shapes catch the light, reflecting a prism of colors around the room, like ghostly flames. Multiple large bookcases are lined with the same material, their shelves stocked full of ancient-looking tomes, amber vials, crystals, and bright-hued potions, and tonics.
A long, wooden table stretches across the opposite side of the room, holding up bulbous glass jars and coils. Liquids all the colors of a rainbow drip and loop around, changing as the fluid moves down the line. I breathe in deep, tasting the magic in the air. It’s syrupy sweet, but it’s not the taste that makes me grimace, but the implications of what that magic will do.
My stomach flips, remembering the last time I was here. When I was younger, I’d do just about anything to make my father happy. I’d jump if he asked me to, knowing jagged rocks awaited my feet, that it would hurt when I landed. I craved the man’s attention more than I valued my own life.
The king used my naïve heart to get what he wanted, promising freedom he had no intention of giving me. All I had to do was cooperate, listen, and indulge his curiosity. He’s obsessed with magic, primarily the science behind it, and he’s taken me to the brink of death and back again in search for answers.
He’s a mimic druid, a magic user with the power to mimic the gifts of others like they are his own. All he usually needs to do is touch someone, but the ability fades with time. It’s how he’s built an empire in a realm full of monsters and chaos. Yet, my gift isthe first he can’t replicate. It’s driven him into madness, hellbent with the need to know why. It’s like I’m immune to his form of magic.
Meg was too. Honestly, I think that’s the only reason he let her live for as long as he did. He needed her alive so he could understand why and run his tests. A part of me wonders if that’s why she disappeared. He cracked the mystery, and as a result, he didn’t need her anymore. It’s why I can’t sit here and play the part he’s asked me to for so many years.
I don’t want to be next.
The king bends across my legs, grabbing the leather straps that run through carved holes in the base of the altar. He wraps them around my middle, cinching the belts one at a time. They’re not tight but they’re constricting enough to keep me on the slab if I try to jerk away.
“Comfortable?” he asks, giving me his back as he retrieves something from the wooden table.
“As ever.” I let my head rest against the stone, staring up at the circular ring above me. Eight candles are lit with magic. The wax never burns, and the lights never go out.
“I think this is our year. I’ve already had the maids get a bedroom ready for you. Wouldn’t it be nice to finally eat breakfast with your sisters and I? To have a real room?”
“Yes.” I do my best to muster up a sincere smile.
It takes everything I have not to roll my eyes. He always says that, right before putting a mask over my face. He puts something in it, and the room becomes blurry, my limbs too heavy to lift, but it doesn’t numb the pain like he says it will. Every year, I feel whatever he injects into my body burns through me like it’s turned my veins to cinders. Then nothing…I’m there one moment, then waking up in my cell the next. And the king is nowhere to be found, as if the promises he made never existed.
I’d started believing I imagined it all—that maybe, I was asleep the entire time and conjured fantasies of a shitty version of father-daughter time… I even babbled about it to my father, but he claimed the liquid hell flame can cause hallucinations, that the flickers of incomplete memories were nothing more than nightmares born from fear. But I’ve experienced nightmares for years, and these were different. In my nightmares, my father doesn’t have a face.
That was the year I figured it out, that he was somehow making me forget the worst parts of our visits, as if omitting it from my memory would keep me compliant. In a way, it had.
I was prepared last year, and when my father shot the fire through my veins, I used the claws that formed at the ends of my fingertips to wound my thigh. It healed, but it was enough for me to know what was real, that they weren’t nightmares and I’d endured far worse things than the green liquid he pumped into my veins.
Even if the only thing I remembered were choppy glimpses, what they revealed left me horrified and raw, betrayed in the worst way possible.
“Alright, let’s get the drip started, shall we?” The king inserts the needle into the top of my hand and within seconds I can feel the liquid burning through my veins.
I grit my teeth as he gets the mask, ready to place it on my face, but not before I use my magic on him. He won’t risk me not being coherent enough after he’s done to reverse the years of his life.
“Okay, princess. Your turn.” The king extends his hand, palm up and I have to cross my arm over my chest since the other has the needle in it. The gold of his ring gleams mockingly and it’s cold to the touch. "Make me young again," he commands, his voice a raspy whisper.
For a moment, I stand still, gathering the nerve to do what must be done. My power surges to the surface as I close my eyes, focusing on our connection. I start to give him life, doing as he asks, and his body relaxes and he lets out a deep breath.
Then I take my chance, snatching it back as fast as I possibly can. My eyes flare open to find black tendrils erupting from his skin. They slither onto mine and vanish only for more to appear. My father tries to jerk away, his lips parting on a silent scream. He lifts his hand, writhing in my grasp as he casts. Invisible ropes tighten around my throat, locking the air in my lungs. My body screams as the pressure builds in my face, but I don’t relent.
The more the tendrils consume, the more shriveled he becomes. His teeth form small blades, as he drops the spell, incapable of holding it any longer and I gasp for air. Then pain explodes up my arm as his teeth sink into my flesh, scraping against bone.
I cry out, jerking against the leather straps. No longer caring about the needle, or the fact the tube connected to it is too long to reach, my fist connects with his face. The burning in my veins recedes now that the needle is no longer dripping liquid fire into me. Still, I don’t let go, I drain him dry until his once strong frame collapses against the stone altar. His muscles are too weak, and his skin stretches thin over brittle bones.
“Stop! Stop this instant!” His raspy pleas for mercy are too quiet for the guards at the end of the long hall to hear. A smile touches my lips as his eyes grow vacant and the light goes out of them.
The inky veins connecting our hands retract, fading back into my skin like they were never there.
The king is dead. For now.
“One down. Two to go.” I get to work unlatching the straps the king placed across my lap and over my legs. Once free,I search the room, looking for something to use as a weapon for when he wakes. The table is first as I shuffle through the scattered parchments. Not even the shelves have much besides a book I could wake him with. The only things here of worth are needles, which would likely inflict minimal damage alone, or glass beakers. I could break one, and maybe use a shard of it.
