Ashes to Ashes | ✓

12 || Mae's Request

Hours and days became meaningless—one and the same, acting as an uncounted and unnamed blur that crawled slowly past Felix as he sat against the wall. At one point, sleep claimed him suddenly and pulled him into its depths. He awoke with a start to a pitch-black cell, his shoulder aching from the press of the stone against it. The torches had gone out, but a small, blue light hung at the end of the hall far beyond the locked door. When Felix tried to approach it, the light fizzled out, leaving him alone in the dark. He wasn't sure how long it was before one of the guards returned and the torches were lit again.

The jingling of keys mocked him, as did the distant echo of voices in the castle, far beyond the confines of his cage. Although his body ached from constantly resting against the unforgiving floor, and his nose grew blind to the musty smell, he couldn't find it in him to be dissatisfied. As long as he thought only of how he was freed from the burden of choosing, he had nothing to worry about. Dinah couldn't bite back at him for his failure as long as he remained in Niveus, and Aiko...

His chest tightened painfully at the thought of her. Shifting his position against the wall, he glanced down at his scarred, rough, and calloused hands. The vision of blood didn't torment him this time, but his mind provided something worse: the cruel ghost of her soft hands resting in his. They were small against his palms, smooth as the hands of someone who had never had to work hard with them. There was nothing different about her hands—free of scars, adorned with a ring of gold—compared to any other noble he had killed before. Yet she was different.

There was a fire in her eyes, burning brighter in her soul. It was warm and comforting, like the gentle touch of the sun in the early spring. The madness he had seen before seemed less and less solid the more he looked back on it.

If nothing else, he wished to speak to her again. And if she was foolish enough to return, he pleaded that it would be to listen to him rather than to mock him. He didn't have the energy to play the mocking game with her, and he knew he stood no chance of persuading her to stop once she had started it.

"I want you to stop Aiko from taking the throne no matter what it costs," she said as Cinere, with her mask firmly in place. He had almost forgotten about it, yet now it resurfaced. It was what started it all. Those words were the reason he was tangled up in this mess. The task had been simple when Dinah gave it to him; straightforward and to the point: kill Aiko then return for your reward. There was nothing complex about it.

By his own indecision, curiosity, confusion, and all-around foolishness, he had made it complicated. Perhaps his heart yearned so much for freedom that his head had forgotten its place in the game. His hands had moved when he did not want them to, and his feet had strayed so far from the path that he couldn't find it if he wanted to.

It was simple, and he had made himself a fool. He would remain a fool until he could think clearly again, and perhaps the deafening silence of his own company would provide him with the time he needed to get his head on straight again.

His gaze landed on the cuff still firmly settled against his wrist. Its weight somehow connected him to her. If he played his cards right, he could still see her again, though he doubted it would be before her coronation. He wasn't sure how long he had been in the dungeon already, but there wasn't much time before the coronation when he came to the palace with Aiko originally.

Before he could land on a proper conclusion, the dungeon fell dark again. A scuffle broke out as the guard jolted from his stupor, leaping to his feet. The keys which had mocked Felix for who knows how long clanked against the floor. Shortly afterward, a thump followed as the guard himself collapsed. The blue light reappeared at the end of the hall, casting a haunting glow across the fallen guard and his silver keyring beside him.