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RYN

The human mind is the most powerful thing in existence.

It’s capable of altering the earth and everything in it. Just a few spoken words from one with a sound mind can build up another, inspire a hundred souls, cause dry bones to get up and dance, and raise a battle cry that shakes the chains off a kingdom. One resolute mind can be the difference between peace and war. It can cause an entire nation to either fall at the feet of deception or allow the truth to shake up the foundations below their feet. It can set the course for death or a mighty, bright future. Therefore, the state of one’s mind is everything.

She should never have opened her eyes.

The cave ceiling came into focus, bland colours turning sharper in the darkness. Ryn blinked at it as her dream faded away and reality set in. She didn’t bother trying to guess the time; it was too hard to tell this deep below ground where the black stone walls of the Mother City prison sealed away all light, sound, and life above like a corked bottle at the bottom of a sea. Moisture glimmered on the ceiling like it had the day before, and the day before that. And the three months and twenty or so days she’d lost track of before that.

It may have been morning, but Ryn didn’t move to lift off the hard, uneven floor. In the muted yellow torchlight creeping in from the tunnels, she studied the four hundred and sixty-three holes in the walls of the women’s sleeping quarters, and the thirty-seven unequally sized rocks piled in the corner, and the twenty-one female inmates breathing heavily around her. Most wore the beige inmate uniforms given out only when needed, making colours a luxury for those who’d entered prison with clothes durable enough to last a long time. Eventually, Ryn’s clothes would tear, the threads would unravel, and she’d be in beige too. Cool air tickled her skin through the rip growing over the knee of her Folke pants to prove it.

Heva rolled over an arm’s reach away, her snoring following her around until she was yelling it in Ryn’s ear. Ryn scowled and used her elbow to push Heva onto her back. The ex-guardswoman’s arm flung with the movement and smacked the floor on the other side, an inch away from another woman muttering in her sleep, and Ryn dragged her gaze back to the ceiling. The faint, musty smell of old rice lifted through the tunnels, confirming it was time to wake up.

Last night was the first time she’d dreamt in months. Most nights she didn’t sleep at all, but when she did, she was swallowed into an empty black sea, never with colour, never with people or places, never a true escape from the cave even in her mind. But last night she’d landed in an apple orchard with her mother, leaves a bright green canopy overhead, fruits a crisp red. In the dream, her mother had no idea what Ryn’s life was like—that Ryn was in a dark prison. And Ryn didn’t bother to tell her. She’d just let her mother talk, let her mother smile, let her mother be real for those short moments.

But dreams weren’t real, of course. Just another lie. Like everything else.

And now, the only real thing left before her was the moisture collecting on the cave ceiling—the first thing Ryn saw every morning when she opened her eyes. Something that didn’t bring sadness. Something that didn’t bring joy. Something that made her feel nothing all over again.

“You awake?” Heva’s voice came from beside her.

“Mhm.”

“Let’s go eat. I’m starving.” Heva yawned and rolled to stand in one motion, stretching her arms that looked thinner this week. Her hair was a wild black creature, matted around a few surviving silver beads. Even with dirt-smeared pale skin, dry lips, and a thinning frame, Heva still looked like the most alive person in the caves for some absurd reason.

Without warning, Heva grabbed Ryn’s wrists and yanked her up. Ryn bit back a moan as her bare toes dragged over juts in the rock floor. She spit out a piece of hair stuck in her mouth, the taste of dirt staying behind.

“Oh, come on, Heartstealer. Are you missing your big palace bed yet?” Heva grinned, showing all the cracks in her lips.

“I told you not to call me that,” Ryn muttered. She brushed the dirt off her arms as she glanced at the other women asleep around the cave. No one stirred, so she tugged her long bangs over her face, kept her head down, and followed Heva out of the crumbling stone arch to the tunnels.

The first weeks in prison, Ryn had worn a scarf over the bottom half of her face to conceal her features, but after one morning when she forgot to put it on and no one had reacted, she discarded it. She didn’t look like a Heartstealer maiden anymore anyway—no one would recognize her as the same bright, clean young woman that had once been on a banner outside the palace. And though infrequent chatter rippled through the caves about “Heartstealers” or “King Xerxes” or “how the Intelligentsia hoped to restart the trials soon,” apparently no one had clued in that one of the former Heartstealer maidens was in their midst. Maybe all of Per-Siana thought Estheryn Electus had been executed that day—the day the news broke out about the Adriel traitor who’d dared to walk in the presence of the King.

Heva squinted out into the cave tunnel. “I don’t see any of those idiots from the cave across the hall. They must still be sleeping—quick! Let’s go get rice before they wake up. You know they’ll leave us nothing if they get to the bowls first.”

Ryn stifled a shiver as she followed Heva through the tunnel, the rough floor freezing against her feet. Even after three and a half months, her aching flesh wasn’t used to the cold. Firelit torches flickered overhead, the scent of smoke drifting into Ryn’s nostrils as she passed them.

There were new inmates in the feasting cave, young men with stricken faces that hadn’t yet been muddied by the filthy cave floors. Ryn slowed her walk as she glanced from one to the next. Youthful men—Kai’s height. Black robes. Worn sandals.

She didn’t recognize any of them, and her shoulders dropped.

“Go sit and I’ll bring you a bowl,” Heva said to Ryn before heading off to the counter. Ryn dropped into the nearest chair, keeping her stare on the notches in the table as prisoners passed by. Names, threats, celestial prayers, and promises were carved into the wood in ugly patterns; some of the names were of inmates she knew. Others were likely prisoners of the past, either released now or dead.

Heva returned balancing two wood bowls and cups of water in her spread fingers. “The rice is cold,” she said in disgust as she set a bowl in front of Ryn. “Would it really be so hard for them to keep it warm for us?” She picked up her flat spoon and shovelled some into her mouth anyway, flinging a strand of black hair out of her eyes. “It’s salty this morning. Yum.”

A fight broke out across the cave between the new inmates and some seasoned ones. Ryn lifted a single grain of rice between her fingers and studied it beneath the dim lights as the shouts intensified, and Heva finally snorted a laugh. “Being in this place is more than some people can handle,” she said as she scooped in another mouthful of rice. With a stuffed mouth, she added, “Thankfully, you have me, Ryn.” She jutted her thumb toward herself, showing off her thin silver thumb ring. “Otherwise, you’d go crazy down here.”

“Pain is just a consequence of carelessness.” Ryn dropped the grain of rice back into her bowl. She pulled over her water instead and sipped as she studied a group of flushed-faced women across the feasting cave. They’d already finished their bowls—she wondered if she should offer them hers too so Heva wouldn’t make her eat. “The pain of ending up in a place like this is no different. They just regret their choices.” She set her cup back down with a clatter.

Heva spat rice when she scoffed. “You think all these people are down here because of their careless choices? Speak for yourself. Half these people are only here because they’re Adriels.” Another hefty scoop went into Heva’s mouth.

Ryn’s lips twisted to the side.

“Speaking of which,” Heva looked up again, a grain stuck to her chin, “you’ve barely said a word in days, and I haven’t seen you take more than a few bites of food in that time, and now you have dark rings beneath your eyes—are you trying to starve yourself to death?”

Ryn’s fingers tightened around her cup. Her gaze sliced upward and she shot Heva a look.