The Princess's Servant

69. The Dungeon

The way to the dungeon was long and winding. Sybil didn't drag nor resist nor attempt escape as the guards guided her down there: she merely kept pace with them as though these were her own halls. She was happy to go down there. Happy to enter the locking cell if it meant being away from him.

The dungeon itself was well maintained compared to Lailoy's. The iron bars were thick and unrusted, and Sybil noticed a shocking lack of standing water in the area. Sebastian, who had led the entourage, unlocked the door of a cell. She stepped inside, he locked the door, and then he cut the ropes of her wrist binds. Without another word, he and the rest of his guards all left the room. And Sybil was left alone.

She stared down at the worn concrete floor. She stared at it and stared at it and stared at it. She felt a fire begin to burn within her. It burned like the glowing inside of a furnace, like black tar on skin. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and scream and scream until all the fire was out. Sybil shouted into the empty dungeon with her whole stomach. She only stopped when all of the air had been pushed out of her chest.

The princess collapsed onto the cold floor. She stared down again at that concrete. Water began to blur her vision. And then tears fell, fell, staining the stone floor darker where the drops hit. How? How could she have been so foolish? How could she have thought he wouldn't hurt her? How could she have believed she'd actually get away with everything she'd done to him?

Of course, the question had arisen in her mind: What if the Wardian was someone important? She'd asked herself that a few times during the course of his captivity. But she always thought the answer wouldn't matter since she'd believed that even if he was someone, that he wouldn't do this. That he wouldn't hurt her the way she'd hurt him. And now that he had, what was left? What did it matter if she lived or died, when there was nothing else worth living for?

Sybil sniffled on the floor of that cell for a long while, thinking of all the hurt she had caused him, and how much it hurt that he'd hurt her in return. In fact, she was so focused on her pain, that she barely even noticed the deep sighing of another.

Long seconds after it passed, the sigh registered in Sybil's head. She quieted her own weeping and listened for the sound again. Was she not alone? She couldn't see anyone else in the cells, but she was almost certain she'd heard what she'd heard. Perhaps she was hearing the guard's sigh from the other side of the door?

After a moment, she heard it again. "Hello?" She asked, but there was no reply.

But Sybil was certain of what she'd heard. "Who else is in here?" She asked, standing up in her cell. Sybil strained to peer into the other cells but found all of them empty.

"Who else indeed," a haunting voice replied, seeming to emanate from above and below all at once. Sybil twisted her lips.

"Where are you?" She asked, trying to peek around the corner to spy a grate, perhaps. Or a door. "Who are you?" Sybil was not a superstitious person, but it was times like these that make even skeptics wonder.

"I am no one," the voice replied. "Or at least... I haven't been anyone for while. I suppose if you were to name me, then I would be the betrayer. The breaker. The back-stabber. I am the giver of grief. I'm misery."

The voice was low and masculine, but something else too. Morose, maybe. Or perhaps just tired. Sybil tilted her head. "Why are you here?" She asked, increasingly sure that questions of identity would go unanswered.

"I always come down here to meditate on death. This is where they keep the death row prisoners, is it not?" The voice replied.

"It is..." Sybil said, dipping her chin a little as she remembered her situation.