When Lilian Delvoix, the daughter of the most powerful and feared witch in the realm, finds a strange boy in her mother's dungeons, she knows it's a sign of trouble. Only after making the dangerous decision of helping him escape does she find out hi...
I was feeding the doves in the cages, when Tobey ran in and scared them. They fluttered away but not too far, the metal bars confining their wings. They calmed down soon enough. I turned to Tobey, who didn't tend to run. Even though he was technically a child and looked very much the part, he usually didn't act like one. We only guessed at his age when mother first found him. He never bothered to correct us. Later, we found out he never bothered to speak at all.
"Did something happen?"
He just looked at me. I sighed and put my palm on his cheek.
"We have a guest" I heard his voice echo in my head.
"A guest?" I asked aloud. Tobey wasn't particularly gifted at telepathy so this was how we communicated: I spoke to him, but he answered only in his thoughts.
This time he didn't answer and pulled away, breaking our mental link. He started poking at the birds. My guess was he was trying to pique my curiosity on purpose.
"Who is it?", I took the bait. He tried to hide his smile, pretended a while longer to be fascinated by the birds. But Tobey wasn't the most patient of creatures. He had a secret, a secret he desperately wanted to share with his only friend in this castle and his only friend in the world.
Tobey tugged at my skirts and led the way. When I realized he was headed to the dungeons, I grabbed a candle and lit it with a quick spell, stealing a flame from a nearby hearth. Tobey smiled. He loved to watch me use magic. Out of the rare occasions I've heard him speak, he blurted out "pretty" one time I showed him how I floated feathers in the birdcage.
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When we got to the first of many dungeon gates, Tobey let go of my skirts. He positioned himself by the frame, with his little body tense and alert.
"I go in and you'll be the lookout?"
He nodded.
"Well, alright", I stepped inside wondering what was waiting for me there. I tried not to look into my mother's work, or as she called it "the revival". Not that she'd willingly share any of it. Ignorance was better in a way. It shielded me from knowing how far she was willing to go to get her way, and exactly how much of that I could forgive and still call her my mother. Tobey shared the notion so it must have been something to make him this curious.
The air was quite heavy here in the dungeons. The candle lit the way but I still couldn't see too well. I walked until I heard a rattle of chains and stopped. I was a witch and not a weak one at that, but I knew better. There was no guarantee that the thing my mother had been hiding was human or even human-like. I approached the nearby cell with care. I saw a shadow of a body sitting in the corner, its head rested on the bars. No, his head.
I leaned in closer, drawing the candle towards his face. The flame was reflected in eyes that were the color of sapphires . His body was drenched in sweat; his clothes were sticking to it. As much as I was assessing him, he was assessing me. He started to slowly stand up on his feet. Very slowly, like he was ready to retreat the second a single muscle moved on my face. He was taller than me but not by a lot. He twisted his hands around the bars, moved his face closer to the flame and spoke in a tone of both a welcome surprise and guarded suspicion:
