Mindless

Chapter 19 Vahela

Vahela sees the stiff set of Sihya's shoulders as she walks away and knows the girl won't flee. It isn't what she would have said, and reluctantly she watches until the stone door closes. Sihya could hide in the castle a hundred years and never be found. She would not die for herself.

A thin body slides across the floor, protected from the stone by fabric. Jonah gets to his feet in the neighboring cell. He had hidden under the unornate, iron-framed bed when they heard the door begin to open. Had she not been so intent, Sihya would have known her brother was in the room. He had warned Vahela she would come. Now he steps through the unlocked door of his cell and comes to stand where his sister had.

"That was harsh," he reproves mildly.

Vahela smooths down the front of her skirts, avoiding his sharp gaze. "It was the only way to repel her."

"She could have helped."

"She would have died," Vahela contends harshly. "We have already lost our families, our homes, our friends. We cannot lose each other too."

He makes a derisive hum, then poses ironically, "Why not send me away as well?"

Her lips twitch. "You wouldn't die for me."

He doesn't disagree.

Jonah doesn't stay much longer than his siter. There isn't much they can plan for, being ignorant to the intentions of their enemy. They know how they want things to go. How Vahela wants them to go. Jonah follows his sister out the stone door. He'll go back to the North, back to the inn, back to the people and all the things they don't know rest between them. He'll continue to play the dutiful boy until he finds a place watching the queen's trial.

She goes back to the cot without the blanket. She doesn't lay down this time, doesn't close her eyes. She will not sleep here. It was here, close enough, that Invidia bled and ached for two years, at the king's mercy. It was here that Vahela feared she too would be locked, at the king's urges. She sits in the dark—they have not left her even a candle—and in the stillness feels the pressure of the king when he was angry. That moment before he reached across for her: the tilt of the bed and the air as he turned. The close of his hand.

She cannot breathe.

The moment which repeated in her marriage repeats again now in her mind. The king, the dark, his pale hand shining like a specter as he reaches for her. She could always see him. She closes her eyes and she can still see him. He is the king. She cannot stop him.

An impotent fury, which exists only to cover absolute terror, drives her to her feet. She paces the length of the room. The same conditioned certainty which had forewarned the king's presence alerts her to the walls now, and she tuns without touching them.

Vahela walks around and around—even the perfect blindness is not enough to stop the pale hand she sees over and over. She hears the scuttling of rats, the laggard breathing of a room with inadequate air, the soft shuffle of her shoes and skirts against the stones. It's so loud and so quiet. So forceful, so still.

She wants to scream—the darkness, the silence, the stillness, it climbs across her, burrows into her through her nose, her mouth, her ears; it's all around her and she cannot escape it.

A pale hand reaches across the darkness.

Silk sheets thrown to the edge, wood creaking as he takes his pleasure and she just lays there, in the dark beneath him.

She puts her hand over her stomach—feels the gentle rounding of her abdomen. The king did not live long enough to end his line, but his line would end. His heir would never know his inheritance or its weight. The child would be safe. Her child would be safe.