Poisoned Souls

𝕀-𝔸donis

Adonis woke up screaming. Again.

He looked around frantically, anxiety creeping up inside of him. It was hard to breathe. He couldn't see anything. He waved his hands around, desperate to touch something. Anything. Suddenly, he hit something hard, like wood. A door. It opened, and Adonis crashed into the cold floor of a large, dimly lit room.

It's only sources of light were a startling amount of candles sitting on every available surface, including the floor, and a few minuscule rays of light that seeped through boarded windows in one of the marble walls. There was a luxurious bed in the center of the room, and beside it, a desk covered in candles, clay figurines, and strange drawings. An ornate mirror hung over the desk, a long, thin crack separating the fractured glass into chunks.

I'm home, he realized.

He sighed heavily, shook his nerves off, and got up. He closed the closet door he'd smashed into earlier, picked up the candles he'd toppled over, and moved towards the window. He peeked through one of the cracks, and was greeted by the faint yet warm light of an early sunrise.

The White Palace was said to have the best views in Olympia for a reason. The sun peeked timidly over the horizon, painting the deep blue skies with amber and rose clouds. The coastline shimmered in the distance. The dark waters reflected the indigo above in such a way that it was hard to determine where one ended and the other began. Even from afar, flocks of seagulls could be seen circling over the sailboats arriving at the docks. Adonis found it amusing, though also irritating. It was ironic how a view like this one could look as though it came straight out of a dream. Especially when his most recent dreams had been feeling so hauntingly real.

Adonis had never been prone to peaceful sleeping, but lately his dreams had been nightmares more often than not. Moreover, a recurrent nightmare had been haunting him the past few nights. He kept seeing terrifying images between flashes of nonsense. A glowing, golden ankh. Some sort of natural cave or tunnel collapsing in on itself. The hooded figure of a woman, standing surrounded by corpses. A shield soaked in blood. Then... what horrified him the most. He would see himself. Well, his reflection in a broken mirror similar to his own. In the glass, There were hollow sockets where his eyes should be, tears dark as blood streaming down his face. He would try to look away, but he couldn't move. He never could. The monstrous Adonis would smile, and it would speak without moving its mouth, as if the sound came from the pits it had for eyes. The inhuman voice still rang in his ears: "Hello, fíle." Hello, friend.

Then, whenever he saw his father, the King, he'd be asked all about his nightmares, more like an interrogation than like a parent caring for their child. Then again, Adonis never expected any affection from him. Not anymore, at least.

"Dreams have power," Father would always repeat to him, like a mantra. "Only if you share them with me, can we understand what the gods want to get through to us, and harness that power. We can control them."

A bitter, resentful thought bubbled up in Adonis's mind at the memory. Just like you wish to control me, Father? Of course, he'd never let such a thought escape his lips in real life. He knew better than that.

Pulling his thoughts back to reality, something caught his attention in the beautiful scenery, but at a much shorter distance. A familiar figure stood just across the palace gates. Octavius, the King's advisor—and Adonis's tutor, unfortunately. The priest had never been the kind type, but he seemed to have developed a special taste for making the prince's life in the palace as insufferable as possible. Octavius's bony complexion (similar to his own, much to his dismay), added to his spiky, dark hair, charcoal eyes, and cranky attitude, reminded Adonis of a crow. It didn't help that the man crept around the castle like a paranoid ghost.