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“Hello?” I called out, my voice cracking and my throat aching. My heartbeat in my ears was so loud that I nearlymissed the sound of whoever else was in the dungeon with me moving across their cell.
“Are you okay?” The voice from the darkness asked me, and my head swung in their direction. As far as I remembered from being down here visiting Maeteo, there had been only one other person in here, the shrouded figure that Cyrus had been so intrigued by when he had joined me. He seemed almost as shocked as I had been to see them, but where mine was a shocked surprise at the sudden appearance of an unknown prisoner, his was surprises of a different kind.
“I — no! No, I’m notokay.” I snapped, my tone incredulous, “What a ridiculous question.”
He chuckled, and I wanted nothing more than to be able to hit whoever it was.
“I suppose it was.” He sounded as though he was smiling. “Are you hurt?”
I paused for a second, taking a mental note of anywhere that hurt my body. A warm trickle of blood worked its way down the side of my face and a dull throb behind my eyelids made it hard to blink. I was sure my ribs were bruised by the way it burned when I took a breath in, and my shoulders were screaming as though they had been torn from their sockets. But I was alive, and I supposed that was a good thing.
“Not too badly,” I offered, rolling one shoulder and wincing at the pain radiating through the muscles. Notbroken, I concluded, just pulled. “What’s your name?”
The silence in the corridor made me peer down towards where his voice had been coming from. In the dull light of the wall torches, I could almost make out his hands, gripping the iron bars of his cell. Water dripped in a steady, maddening rhythm somewhere nearby.
Before he could answer me, a door at the other end of the dungeon opened, illuminating the dark space.
I squinted into the sudden bright light, a dark figure taking up most of the space in the door way. Their boot-steps were heavy on the stone floor, and I watched as whoever it was, I had been speaking too sunk backwards into their cell as our new guest walked past, slamming his fist on the metal bars.
Glaring, I lifted my chin and stood still, my eyes finally coming to meet Cyrus’s. He had his hands in his pockets, and his shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and he wore a smirk on his face. I clenched my jaw shut tightly to stop me screaming at him.
“Hello, wife.” He smiled, his tone oozing with venom. “How are you finding your new room?”
I did not answer him, simply held his gaze. The blood on the side of my face had started to harden, and I could feel it cracking as I swallowed. Cyrus’s eyes left mine long enough to take in the small space around me, and his eyebrows furrowed momentarily before his facesmoothed back into the mask I had gotten so used to.
“Who are you?” I asked, squinting at him. He looked like Cyrus, but in the same way he did not. His hair was parted differently, and his smile was almost feral. He sounded like Cyrus, but his tone was slightly different, too.
He had told me about the accident he and his father were in, but there was not a single scar on his body.
“Well, anyway, I must be going, I just wanted to make sure you were alive.” He smiled at me, but there was not an ounce of feeling on his face. He reached through the bars, his fingers reaching for my cheek and running across the skin there. I fought every instinct in my body not to jump away from him.
“It’s a shame,” He muttered, “We could have done wonderful things.”
With that, he withdrew his hand and turned on his heel. Without a single look back, he walked away, only pausing briefly to investigate the cell that held my new roommate. From my view point I could only see his side-profile, but even from here I could tell he was grinning. A chill ran through my body as I stepped back from my cell door; waiting in the silence for the main door to close and plunge us back into darkness.
The sound of locks clicking echoed through the hallway, and after a beat of heavy silence, I let out a breath, running my hands over my face and wincing when Icaught my injuries.
My companion cleared his throat, and I let my hands drop to my side again.
“You’re his wife?” His tone was shocked, and I laughed humorlessly.
“For my sins, yes.”
A low whistle and a laugh were his only reply, and I glared in the direction of his cell.
“I never caught your name,” I said once he had stopped laughing. He shuffled in his cell, and I saw his hands appear through the bars once again, leaning on the horizontal metal bars.
“I can’t tell you that, unfortunately.”
“What? Why not?” I scoffed, rolling my eyes, and straining my neck to try to see his face even a little bit.
“I can’t remember it.” His voice was soft, his tone far away as if he was lost in his thoughts. I frowned, my heart aching in my chest. How long had he been locked away down here, without me even knowing it, for him to have forgotten his own name?
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to call you… Shadow.”
His laughter burst from the hallway, and I let a smile find its way onto my face.
“Shadow?! I’m offended.” He chuckled.
“Would you prefer Gump? Or maybe Bug? Or we could go for something like —“
“Shadow is fine!” He cut me off, a wheezing laugh echoing around the hallway now, and my small smile turned into a full-on grin. The sounds of the dungeons settling and the wind whistling through the cracks in the bricks filled the space, making my stomach turn uneasily.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, Shadow.”
“Sure is,Queenie.”
