Elven Legacy

Chapter 59

Jaden

He woke up in what appeared to be, unshockingly, a torture chamber.

It was rather vast in a haunting, cavernous way, with a low stone ceiling and walls of uneven stone blocks. A bath tub stood on rusty metal legs beside him, the reek of stale water wafting from it.

The windowless air was cold and humid, shivers raked through Jaden one after the other. His wrists were in manacles and strained up over his head. There was a dull ache in his shoulders that intensified as he came fully awake. He couldn't feel the rest of his arms properly. Then, he discovered that his boots did touch the dusty floor, only he wasn't putting much weight on them. So, carefully, he did just that, to alleviate the strain in his arms.

Pain shifted with the motion, flaring across his thigh instead. He remembered he'd been bitten there, the flesh savagely torn by the jackal demon. His black trousers were in shreds. Other memories of the fight lurked at the edges of his thoughts, wanting to claw their way in. He desperately blocked them, for now, though he wasn't entirely sure why.

Jaden startled at a scuttling noise, coming from the shadowed recesses of the chamber. Rats, he suspected. His stiffening caused a rattling of chains, making him glance upward and behind himself.

The manacles were connected to thick metal link chains that ran up through hooks in the wall, near the ceiling, and then down again – he craned his neck to glance to his left – where the chains were rolled around a large cog wheel system. Jaden had seen similar devices in the Veicira Castle's dungeons, though he'd banned their use.

You could turn the wheel and free more chain length, lowering the prisoner all the way to the floor if desired. Or, you could rotate the other way, and lift the prisoner up in the air by the wrists, arms splayed wide – it usually dislocated the shoulders.

Jaden shuddered, looked away.

To his right, on the far side of the wall, a metal door was set in the stone. And beside it, dangling from a hook, a single oil lamp, which enabled him to glimpse his surroundings. But there wasn't much else. A discarded bucket next to the tub. Something that looked like a short stool in a corner.

He heard more scuttling, and – shuddering again – looked down at the floor around his boots to make sure no rats were nearby. He saw nothing but dust.

Jaden tried putting his full weight in his feet, but he couldn't touch the heels of his boots to the floor, the chains had been pulled slightly too high.

Inside his mind, darkness roared, menacing. A memory of . . . something . . . attempted to break in, to enter the cloistered space of his current thoughts. He swallowed hard, and winced. His throat felt like a length of rope had been jammed in it and rubbed back and forth.

Thirst consumed him, and for a long moment there was nothing but the need for water. His dry lips parted with it, his eyes closed.

Until eventually, the same darkness from before shrouded his mind, like clouds before a storm. Yet he was terrified of looking it in the eye. Afraid of discovering what it meant – what lay beyond the clouds.

It reminded Jaden of a tiny poem written by Kili. She hadn't shown him, but she'd forgotten it, somewhere on the bookshelves of their Hart Delun home, and Noah had found it.

After reading it, Noah had shared it with Jaden to ask what he thought it meant.

Stare into the darkness within,

Long enough, and it stares back.

An unexpected confidante, you find,

The monster befriends, rather than attack.