Caged Source

Chapter One

Rimi

It has been four days since I had seen another person. If it went on much longer, I would beat my record for "Longest time between meals".

That was okay. I deserved the punishment the Connir family devised for me, seeing as how it was my fault their beloved son was dead.

My fault. All my fault.

The chanting in my head started, and the familiar urge to bash my head against the curse-threaded bars slithered into my thoughts. It was both a punishment and a way to stop the chant once it started.

Before the thought could come to fruition, the sound of steps carried down from the doorway. I peered up, squinting when the doorway opened and the faelight from the hall beyond carried in. My eyes burned, tears filling them but I did not look away from the woman who descended the cracked stone steps, lilac dress wrinkle free around her. She carried a tray with a single bread roll on it, and I could smell the meat and cheese melted inside it.

My stomach let out a fierce growl and her mouth turned up in a sneer. I tended my shoulders to stop myself from flinching away. The more I moved away from her, the harder she would come at me.

While I deserved the punishment she would deliver today, my traitorous body still tried to minimize the damage. I suppose after eight years, I would only have so much control.

Reaching my cage, she threw the metal plate at me, the roll skittering across the moss covered stone and landing in front of me. Bony hands shaking, I grabbed it quickly and began to take small bites, chewing quickly and hiding the roll behind my back while I swallowed.

"The Court of Mountains has been making a fuss the past few days," she begins, her sneer firmly in place as she paces outside my cage watching me eat. "They say a "new evil" is rising, as if there isn't always a new evil rising in our realm, and that there is only one type of magic that will be able to stop this new evil. They have a prophet, you see."

She snorted again, and even I wanted to make a noise of disbelief. Maybe hundreds of years ago prophets meant something. But the Goddesses had long since disappeared from this world, and the Sight with them. Anyone claiming to be a prophet now just smoked to much of the mind clearing herb, and believed the hallucinogenic properties were visions.

Or they were liars.

"Can you guess, little thief, who in the Court of Mountains might be asking after a unique type of magic?"

Usually, Sebza did not want me to answer her questions. To do so was to disrespect her. The look in her eyes tonight though, punched in the corners and a lime green right in the center from her magic peeking through, warned that silence would be even more disrespectful.

So I thought for a moment, and the only answer I could come up with made the skin that hadn't seen the sun in eight years even more ghostly.

"Duke Tarron?"

My voice was scratchy from disuse, but a trickle of water from the corner at least meant it was not dry.

Her sneer quirked into a cruel smile and she leered at me, inching closer to the cage. I could not recall the last time she was this close when the doors were still closed and a whip was not in her hands.

"Yes, little thief, it would seem my sons cousin has a prophet whispering in his ear, telling him he needs a mana manipulator."

I scrambled back at that, my scratchy gray shirt hitting the wet and mossy stone wall behind me.

"N-no."

"He won't have you, of course," she flicked her hand, and a golden whip appeared, the length of it wrapping up her bare arm. "I will kill you before I let you out of this cage. The only reason the King has not let me done so yet is because you have not yet come of age. But when you do, and when you prove as useless as I know you are, I will kill you for killing my son."