“I don’t fucking know,” I whispered.
Here I was, on the opposite side of the world from Zaraga and the prison of my past, in a miserable pit inside a fucked-up castle, seeing an impossible face that I knew all too well.
Chapter 17
Something, Something, Me Caught La-La
Baz was tugging on my hand, pulling me nearer to the cage and its unfathomable prisoner.
I dug in my heels. All too soon I’d have to confront the unbelievable, the inexplicable, the absolutely fucking impossible that I was seeing. I knew that, of course I did.
But I didn’t have to do it now.
I didn’t have to do it yet.
There were plenty more never-ending tunnels and creepy caves we could explore first.
One of his lumoons raced ahead, flying upward ten-or-so feet to the top of the cage. When its soft glow shone upon the woman’s face, it was no longer a choice; I couldn’t take another step.
Baz tugged on my arm, only turning toward me when I didn’t budge. “What is it? Are you alright?”
My stare was fused to the woman, but I could hear the worry in his voice. How strange that my mortal enemy should care. Even stranger that I liked his concern. He stepped so close that the rope linking us sank limply to the floor.
The caged woman had seen us. Her keening ratcheted up, becoming intolerably piercing while she clutched the bars and struggled to drag herself to a seated position.
Baz squeezed my shoulder. I jumped.
“Velle.” His voice was softer than I imagined him capable. “What’s wrong? You look…”
“Like I’m seeing something that … can’t be? ’Cause this is impossible…”
“Yeah, like that. Though my long life has taught me that little is truly impossible. It’s usually a matter of perspective and patience.”
“Aren’t you the philosophical one.”
He huffed a chortle.
I sent one of the lumoons I hadn’t created, but that obeyed my wishes anyway, to join his in exploring the cage. We approached while I absorbed every detail—until my memories pressed down on my shoulders and chest as if I’d never escaped the cage—not any of the cages I’d ever been locked up in.
This cage was identical to the pair that had imprisoned Teo and me in Zaraga. The bars, thick and bespelled to resist the strength of a sänglure, were worn by my own hands. The frigid iron floor bore the indentation of my defeated, curled-up body, since the prison was too cramped to stand or lie down.
The cold would rise off the sea in a damp mist. Nothing I did, no wish I made, ever warmed me.
It was worse when Rafaela locked Teo in the cage beside mine. My inability to save him stung more than the cold, than the hunger—the madness.
When I noticed the lock on the cage, I lost track of the passing minutes. I no longer heard the incessant keening.
Eventually, Baz wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his body. His arm was muscled and heavy, and I desperately wanted to lean into him.
He lowered his lips to my ear. “Tell me what’s going on with you right now.”
For the first time, I wanted to share with someone other than Teo, or sometimes Marina. I wanted to tell him all about how I’d practically been born into a cage. How it had taken long years for Teo and I to have bedrooms that didn’t have bars in place of walls. How even once we’d escaped the fighting pits of our childhood, for decades the palace had been just another prison, with luxuries that made it easier to overlook our confinement. When the walls had finally fallen from around us, it had taken many more years to trust that freedom—and by the Ethers, was it tenuous. Every time Rafaela punished us, the struggle to believe we were free—that we’d ever truly be free—began anew.
He rubbed my arm in what might have been an attempt at comfort. I offered nothing.
He exhaled heavily. “Let me help you.” It sounded like a plea, causing me to blink myself away from the image of the cage’s lock that had so captivated me.
Within the cage itself, the prisoner now knelt beside the bars, clutching them with fingers so thin their knuckles were knobby. Her face nearly squeezed through, when I knew precisely how far apart they were spaced—a fit much too tight for an adult’s head. What had once been a fine dress, but had since fallen into disrepair, hung from her frame as if she were little more substantial than a hanger. Her hair was loose and long, falling in straight sheets around her body, emphasizing her gauntness. In the lumoonlight, her locks glimmered a shiny black as dark as the abyss. Her eyes, so piercing they glittered like onyx, were darker still.
