A Court of Lichen and Twilight / An ACOTAR Fanfiction

Chapter Fifteen: The Shadowsinger

It was so damn dark.

I came back to alertness slowly from the needle's puncture. The back of my neck was sore where my head had hung limply between my shoulders while I continued to doze. I must have been like this for hours now due to the searing shockwaves that rippled down my tendons when my cranium finally straightened upright. I groaned from the headache brewing at the base of my skull and yawned off the sleep that still clung to my eyelids.

I felt my eyes orbiting around their sockets in the search for any light to fixate but they came across none. No figures or distinguishable shapes, in fact, no shapes even remotely identifiable took form in the blackness that engulfed around me. It was like I had been tossed into a canister of the darkest noir paint and sealed inside it's murkiness. I tried to speak to ask if anyone was around, but a thick, terry cloth strip was shoved between my lips to silence me. It moistened from where my tongue had butted against it and my teeth sunk deeper into it's creases from my attempt to cry out. Gagged sounds curdled in my throat.

I could hear my breath and heart rates escalate. The wicked pulse full of anxiousness thrumming against my eardrums. With every too shallow inhale that entered my body, the inflation of my abdomen tightened against something holding me in place. A thick, rubbery strap kept me from exiting the chair and jammed against the hard back of a metallic chair. Similar ones also bound my wrists and legs to their respective places on the seat. Only my head was free of restraining devices to swivel back and forth.

This couldn't be happening right now. I debated wether it would've been better to stay locked up with Tamlin or enjoy where I was now. At least Tamlin didn't involve painful interrogation tactics. Moreover, I missed him and if given another time, I would have stayed - no. No, I didn't mean it. That was the heart of an unbroken girl and not the mess cradled in the seat now. Regardless of my mixed feelings for the High Lord, I needed to get out of this situation.

My lightning. I needed to use my yoga breath work to calm myself enough to control it. With a long due releasing exhale, I watched as little twines of the bolts sparked across my fingertips and spread to my hands. I directed them to the bindings, using a tattooed middle finger to use a particular branch in cutting the binding. I could try to shock them into a cutline, set fire, and remove myself out of the way before it engulfed me. But to my horror, the rubber material rebounded the lightning's kiss and sent it shooting towards the ceiling above. The cathedral height of them delayed a few rock crumbles form the ricochet. I sent another to the same experimental outcome and an even larger pelting of chipped rubble fallout. Whatever material they had restrained me with utterly absorbed my powers to their advantage. Pure, ruthless intelligence in their tactical skills. I wouldn't have expected anything less for the Night Court warriors I once called my friends.

While I didn't know exactly where I was, I knew I was somewhere deep in the Night Court. I had never been to the infamous torture chamber myself even after knowing the Inner Circle for a few hundred years. I never wanted to obligatorily end up here so it never really came up. Hell, I never thought I would see this place for myself. I was always on there side: even now. However, the cauldron had other plans for it's hilarious hand of fate it had dealt me in the past months. I almost had to laugh at the gagged, tied up mess I had found myself in.

I tried again with the bolts that glowed on my hands. This time I wanted to try to lighten the room up to potentially find my exit strategy. Cassian's keen training lecture replayed in mind once again - always know all of your escape routes. It's how I'd tore through my window and gotten here from Spring Court in the first place.

A thunder rumbled the chamber as I sent a massive blast into the floor. Light blue light briefly lit the room enough for me to see inches in front of me in the stone room. Still, nothing but the chair I sat in towards the middle of the space seemed to be the only furniture accentuating it. The darkness of the room intensely swallowed every bit of light I had sent up to the heavens in a heart beat. It was too unnatural.