And within it, an enchanted cage.
Inside sits a Fae female. Around her neck hangs the other half of the moonstone that rests against my own chest.
A haze settles over me. My stomach lurches. I stumble again, trying to shake the image, to blink it away, but it remains.
She rises from a worn chair, a book in her hands. Then she sees me. She’s looking directly at me.
Her hair is black as midnight. Her eyes, gray as the storm.
It's like looking into a mirror.
She steps forward, fingers curling around the bars of her prison. Her lips part, trembling with a single word.
“Brother?”
Then, darkness comes.
Not like sleep.
Like drowning.
It starts in my feet. Shadow coiling, climbing, threading into my veins until every drop of blood feels like smoke. I choke on it as it reaches my throat, my eyes, until the world blinks out in black.
She vanishes.
And with every heartbeat, I lose her. Her face. Her name. The stone. The voice that called me brother.
Gone.
Erased.
Like she never was.
All that remains now is the Father Below, his hand heavy on my shoulder, anchoring me in the dark.
My fingers slip from Lanneth’s arms. My hands fall limp at my sides as she gasps for breath, trying to compose herself.
“Can you hear me, Daedalus?” she pants.
“Yes,” I murmur, hollow. The world around me is distant, meaningless. There is no more defiance, no more resistance. I want neither.All I want is to serve the void.
She brushes a hand through my hair. I feel nothing.
“Good,” she says softly, a cruel smile blooming on her lips.
“You won’t hold him like this forever,” my father says from somewhere far away, his voice echoing like a ghost in a cavern. “He’ll break free. One day, he’ll remember.”
Lanneth’s smile does not fade. She turns her gaze toward him, calm and cold.
“Not while our blessed Father Below holds him,” she replies. “They are bound. One cannot live without the other.”
***
After her.I stand at the prow of the ship, the sea stretching endlessly before me, cloaked in midnight’s embrace. The wind stings my face, the salt clings to my skin, but for those small reminders, it could be the void itself, vast and unknowable.
I close my eyes and listen.
The wind sings, thin and high, carrying voices like echoes from another world.
