Casting Flames

Chapter Two

Months Later

I've lost track of how many days it's been since I've seen the sun. Since I've felt the wind on my face or heard the rain fall or held my sister in my arms. And there are claws in my heart, slowly ripping me apart until I am nothing but a pile of shredded pieces on the floor. Torn and burnt and bleeding.

But I'm still alive. I know this for certain, most of the time.

I've spent too many days in this room surrounded by these four walls where only light crawls through the small crack between the metal door and the frame. But usually darkness obliterates everything, shadows consuming every inch of the cell until I am utterly blind.

But I still have my thoughts and I still have my memories, and I wrap myself in them, hiding beneath them like a blanket. Like a shield.

They protect me. They give me enough strength to keep going. She gives me enough strength. Just the thought of her smiling. The memories of her laughing. The sound of her humming in the garden as she works. If only these thoughts and these memories didn't hurt so damn much.

The cell door grinds against cement as it opens, metal screaming in protest until the cage bars are the only thing standing between me and the outside world.

"Warden wants to see you," a guard says to me, hiding in a wave of blinding light. "Don't try anything."

The warning is accompanied by the hum of electricity from a baton. One jab and my body would be rendered useless and my muscles would be paralyzed for several minutes.

It's their favorite weapon. I can tell by the hidden grins and the dark glimmers in their eyes.

They are soldiers, minions of the Guard, the ruling government that has taken an oath to protect the ordinary people from the Casters, the beings who came out of hiding a few decades ago to restore our dying planet and punish the humans responsible for killing it, which as everyone knows, was all of us.

All of them.

"I'm going to unlock the door now and you're not going to move. Okay?"

I think my tongue might be bleeding from keeping it still with my teeth.

"Okay?" He says, louder this time. His voice pounds against the four walls of this cell like dynamite, ready to blast through the walls in my mind.

"Okay," I snap, having a sudden urge to rip the black pair of socks I'm staring at off his feet and shoving them down his throat. But I don't know how many more stuns and beatings I can stand. I don't know how many more hours I can manage to stay alive in this place. I'm slipping, dissolving into this stone slab, and I can feel it. I can feel myself losing my mind.

So I do as he asks, possibly for the first time without scheming an attack. But not without thinking about it. I could kick at his knees and make him buckle. I could take the fork I have stashed under my pillow and stab him in the eye. I could even sink my teeth into his arm and listen to him cry out in pain as he has done to me for hours... as they all have. But I don't. I won't. Because I'm tired.

I'm beginning to think that maybe they've broken me. Maybe I'm finally too weak to fight. Too scared to push forward. Too heartbroken to care.

I almost envy them in their cruelty. Sometimes I wish I could be numb like them, unfeeling and unsympathetic to a young girl rotting away in a dark, cold jail cell.

The metal hinges on the cage door squeal open, and a moment later the heat of his body is radiating on my back, reminding me of the prisoner brand on my shoulder blade I received my second day here. It sparks life into me—sparks fight into me. Every bone in my body is screaming to turn around and pounce on this disgusting excuse for a man, but somehow I manage not to move a muscle. Maybe it's the fear that's pouring in with the heat. The fear he has for me.