The Crystal Mines

3 Callion

Darkness and I were old friends. I had been in the prison mines for almost five years. The room we sat in was the place they sent me when I killed the first guard at age sixteen. I knew that the wall behind Niktda's head had my name carved into it from a nail I pocketed from the shower drain. She had passed out after they threw us in here and she needed to rest. I rubbed my face in annoyance at the horror she had to endure. The woman had strength beyond anything Ameer had spoken of.

She had blatantly looked at her friend, in spite of the danger Viorica presented. She doesn't remember, but they had placed her friend in the cell next to us when they first arrived. While she slept, healing from broken ribs and arm, they relocated him out of the maximum-security wing into the general population of the prison, deeming him weaker than her. I kept it to myself that he was clearly more dangerous than he let on, a quiet storm building up over time. He would do everything he could to get to her. I could see it in his eyes when he followed the guards out of our wing. His devotion and strength reminded me of the friendship I once shared with Ameer.

We met as children, just under seven years old. He was standing firmly next to his father as I was next to mine. They had come to visit from a far away land that I later learned was the kingdom of Aegran. Our fathers sent us away with a nursemaid to play and the friendship had been instant and fast. We connected on understanding the weight our father's bore as leaders in the world. He had told me one day, that he had a brother, but never traveled together. They were very close in age, only a few months apart. Ameer being the younger. We figured out, as we got older, that that meant they shared different mothers. Ameer had never revealed the name of his brother and had stopped talking about him years later. When I had had the gall to ask one day, while we played with magic in the palace gardens, he threw a boulder at my face. That same night during dinner, he whispered that he had been murdered and dropped it. We never spoke of his brother again.

The lioness tattoo on my arm stirred and the woman next to me shifted in her sleep. I didn't dare touch her. Strange things happened when we touched. I had an idea as to why, but I wasn't ready to accept it. I just knew that, while she was being shredded to pieces next to me, she had to stay awake. I had received punishments worse than what we had endured, but she hadn't. Ameer had told me bits and pieces, when he could, while at the university. So, I knew she had been severely abused as a child. But here, in the mines, was torture. I nearly came undone watching her reach for me with her fingertips. Desperate for contact. It seemed that by her will alone, she had brushed my fingers with hers. The connection created a magical force that concussed throughout the island. I have no doubt that Viorica felt her power and it would be unwise of her to not be even a little bit afraid.

Niktda had no idea what she was. Ameer had spoken to me about her inability to shift during their first class with Master Ahren. The rock wall at my back was digging into a wound, so, I stood up to pace and continued my rambling thoughts. When he had contacted me again, it was to tell me that Lambert had seen that her magic system matched ours. Lambert had warned Ameer to help her, as Erix would be looking for someone like her. And I told him that he needed to be careful too. Everything hinged on as many of us staying hidden as possible. At the time he only rolled his eyes and sent me some strength through our connection. Ameer was the reason I was still alive. The only one in the world that cared enough to check in month after month, year after year.

One night, he was speaking to me, and I had told him that they had put me in solitary again. I had challenged the redheaded guard, called Reed, after he had been harassing a newcomer. He had caught me trying to give the newcomer some of the extra quartz I had mined so that he would not get the whip again. So, I grabbed my chains and whipped him with it, scaring his face. Since then, he had been stationed to me as a personal guard. A punishment for letting me get to him. When Ameer had contacted me, I had already been in the very room I now shared with Niktda, for almost a week. Viorica did not give a time frame. She halted all food and water, hoping I would starve. I was dying then, and I knew it. The thirst was unbearable and the hollowness of hunger, so familiar, eating would have been strange.