Dark Heart, Bright Lightning - Red Queen Fanfiction

Chapter 4 - Bones

Maven POV

They dragged me out of my cell into some kind of locker room and let me sleep for a day. Next thing I knew, I woke and was urged to clean and shave – shaking, I insisted to do this by myself – and then was dressed up and styled and fettered. I could hardly focus on my face in the small mirror, a massive migraine combined with nausea and tiredness drowning me in place of the silent stone. Those weren't new sensations, but more intense than before. So strange to feel worse without silent stone, and although I wasn't sure if my face betrayed that, I looked horrible still.

Like in the cell, there was sweat on my skin, unusual for a burner. But I pulled myself together, trying my best to stop the shivering at least. I glanced over my shoulder, as haughty as possible. Ives leaned against the wall, eyeing the other jailers in a blend of threat and boredom. She cocked her head. "Done?" she asked.

I smiled, noticing how odd that looked from the corners of my eyes. I took a meaningful step away, the cue for the Arven jailer to shove me aside with a deceivingly soft insistence.

It had to be only a few minutes with the manacles and they already chafed me. They didn't contain silent stone, only heavy metals I could melt down if I summoned enough heat. But I figured that would be futile, that I'd fail. My ability was mediocre at best, and the lingering weight of silence continued to press the power out of me. It was like a memory I could never erase. Maybe it would war with Mother's voice in my head while I waited for the heavy, lead-like white noise to shift into the whispered words I'd grown familiar to.

It had been too much to hope for from the start, hadn't it?

All I could wish for was for her voice to become indecipherable with time, although that was likely to only drive me closer to insanity.

On the threshold to the corridor, the Arven man pulled harshly on my manacles, making me flinch. Ives glared at him but I laughed. I just realized: the flamemaker bracelets I'd craved to get back were now replaced by fetters, and in this moment, I yearned for them even more. I almost hoped to catch a random spark – maybe by drumming the manacles against each other? – so I would feel the fire chase way the silent ache in my bones.

Cassie Ives was a traitor. I'd been aware of it, and accepted how she took insolent pride in that, for the sake of having her company instead of no one's. But now she betrayed that paltry gift as well, when she told me goodbye on the airfield.

"I belong in the capital," she said, her mismatched eyes adamant as she waited for me to enter the plane.

"Unlike me, you mean?" I snorted.

"Unlike you and the rest of your family," she countered.

I almost smiled, although I didn't feel amused at all. She was still abandoning me, like all of them, and I was still nauseous and weak, my mood dim. But I returned to what I always did and prepared myself for dealing with the new set of jailers and enemies and the brother I hadn't seen yet. With as much posture I could muster, I spun on my heel. They couldn't take faux pride from me.

I'd never particularly enjoyed flying and of course, this trip wasn't improved by my current state. The hum of the plane roared as loud in my ears as the ocean beneath would, the sight of the sea not making this any less uncomfortable or scary, and thus a whole choir trio of torment was formed.

Sunk into my seat, the white noise soon became the worst of them, since every other minute, I believed to hear words among the hum, words whose meanings were impossible to grasp but dangerously tempting to guess.

The relief I'd experienced in the Bowl of Bones became short-lived. Maybe I was getting paranoid, never able to trust my own mind again, with or without whispers and silent stone. But I knew that already, didn't I? No one could fix me, but I'd have to find a way to deal with that, as always.