A Court of Shift and shadow

XVIII

Katies POV:

I needed to get out. My magic was hindered by the Faebane, and the burns refused to start healing. The door had an open window, if I could shift I would get out through that. A taunt, an easy way out, but just beyond my reach. He was a cruel male. And the fact that it was so easy was the worst torture. It was not like the solid air outside my window, nor the restriction on food or moment. I had survived them. But this, to know what caused so much pain to people that I had started to see as friends, to be the one who actually could fix it. And that my way out existed just in front of me, but I couldn't use it. It hurt more than the burns.

The meals I got were water and bread, delivered on no specific schedule. No sunlight came down to the cell. To track time was a waste of energy, and that had become a scarce resource. The Faebane did not only take my magic from me, it took my energy, my ability to feel things like pain. One time I had fallen asleep, only to wake up with my back against the wall, I never let myself wonder how bad it was. No one came to talk to me, and that may have been for the better. I was in no shape to talk.

My dreams were just empty holes of darkness. And not the comforting one. A cold, hard darkness, an endless void of nothing. And still everytime I woke up, I missed the darkness because in it, I at least existed. In this cell, I slowly started to wither away. I tried to guess how long I had been there, a week was a possibility, but so was a month too. The only thing to give me a hint of time was that the next meeting Under the Mountain had not yet happened, or it had and I was left behind in the move. Or I had followed, but not noticed.

"Wake up!" a slam in the door, and Burs call woke me up from the rest.

"What!" I screamed back, more a reaction than anything else.

"How are you?" He asked, like he cared.

"Take a guess." I hissed back.

"I guess that you are covered in burns, and that your magic is gone." He said, pushing a plate of bread into the cell.

"So why do you ask." I took the bread, no smell of poison. Not that I even cared.

"We are a few weeks away from the meeting" He started "And to be honest with you. I hope this is over after that."

"This? Me being locked up, the false story he is spreading?" I snorted. "I am not hopeful."

"Did you know that he had promised me your hand?" The words made me spit out the bread.

"He has what!" I screamed more than said. Putting down the bread.

"I do care about you."

"I don't believe you." I had seen what caring for someone was. And this was not it.

"I have tried to talk to him, to let you out, or at least move you to a different room."

"A cell..." I corrected him, "It would not be a room, but a cell."

"No..."

"Leave." I said, "Don't come here and try to manipulate me to believe that you cared."

"I didn't."

"Leave." I repeated.

"Katie..." for a moment it wasn't Bur who talked, it was Galad. It was his voice I heard. "Katie, I care about you."

"Leave... " I said again, turning away from him. A tear rolled down my cheek, I was slowly going mad down here. But if the move hadn't happened yet, that ment that I had been down here for less than two weeks. "And I am already going insane."

"You are not alone" I heard Cassandra's voice say. "But it will get better."

"You are dead." I said "Now I am totally insane if I can hear you."