The Darkest of Truths

Chapter 10

I couldn't leave.

No, that wasn't true.

I was allowed to leave, if anything it was encouraged, and everyone made that fact painfully clear to me. But I couldn't leave.

Every time I had decided that I was going to leave this room, I found myself frozen at the door with my hand stuck to the handle. I'd then proceed to remain stuck there for what felt like forever before finally breaking free of my own mental cage.

What exactly is waiting for me out there? More people like me? More magic users? What if they are everything I fear that we are or worse, what if they aren't? What if everything I have been told is a lie and that if we had just gone west instead of East then everything would've been different. Am I ready to face either of those possibilities?

I wasn't.

It's my fault, I spent my whole life avoiding things like this, running from the past. I had never even considered what would happen if I had nowhere else to run. Never considered what would happen if my past finally caught up with me and had me cornered.

Three days.

It has been three days since I last left this room.

Not that I needed to leave, I had everything I needed.

A bathroom equipped with a basin to wash myself and a strange chamber pot.

Freya called it a toilet and explained to me as best she could on how it worked. Something to do with an intricate maze of pipes that brings the contents elsewhere so that you don't need to empty it yourself.

I wasn't fond of the noise it made but it was certainly useful.

I had books too, I was never really interested in reading but I found that it helped to pass the time. Although my education in literacy was limited, having stopped my learning so young. Meaning that some of the more complicated books were difficult to understand. I got the gist of what was being told by reading between the lines and understanding the context but some of it was guesswork meaning that there were still holes in my knowledge.

It was a very comfortable cell, but at the end of the day a cell is a cell.

It was on the fourth day when I heard a knock on my door that distinctly wasn't Freya's.

Thinking that it could've been the King or Aleister I quickly braided my messy hair before calling out to the other person.

"Cone in!"

The door opened and to my surprise the person who entered my room was neither the King nor Aleister.

It was Olenna, the red haired woman and she looked annoyed.

We stared at each other for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say.

Eventually she looked at me and furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.

"Did you just braid your hair there now?"

I didn't understand her question until I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the vanity mirror next to the door. My hair was a mess and the braid was very uneven and looked like a toddler had done it.

I looked back at Olenna.

"I wasn't sure who was at the door." I told her, an excuse that made sense to me at least.

She raised an eyebrow at me, "what about all that 'I don't know what you're talking about' shit?"

Crap.

The hair braiding had been a habit instilled in me since before I could remember. So much so that I had forgotten that it was a custom of Eldwyn.

I couldn't remember why. It had something to do with being more vulnerable with your hair down. So those with longer hair typically only wore it down when around people they trust or, more commonly, their spouses.