Castle of Time and Ash

CHAPTER LVI

CHAPTER LVI

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The large room Althera entered was bland and dark and wet, interlaced with cold and silence too deep and wicked to be reckoned with. Her steps were measured and testing, her breaths drawn and muted. She couldn't risk anyone finding out she was here, if there even was anyone here.

She had heard moans and cries coming from the black space here and they had seemed to call her name, coaxing her into the shadows. Armed with a dagger and sword, she'd decided to follow the noises and find out for certain why those two men had come here before. But so far, she had discovered only an imperishable curtain of night so dark and inexhaustible the steel blade she held didn't even give a wink of silver light.

The moans restarted. Though their volume had decreased, they were still easily distinguishable in the almost seemingly peaceful atmosphere. But she knew it wasn't peaceful at all. It was the polar opposite of tranquility.

"How unsurprised I am you think so poorly of this place." There was a cutting snap of fingers and the room erupted in beaming light, the torches hooked into the sconces blazing fervently. She whipped around, her heart thundering as Rhaye stepped toward her, a dangerous half smile embedded on his gleaming face. "It isn't perfect, but a few adjustments were made, and I suppose it is quite a sight to behold, don't you think?"

She was standing in the very center of a circle carved into the stone floor with some tool. Dozens of lines exploded from the circle and stretched all the way up to the domed ceiling wrapped in several more torches.

Rhaye had his arms folded over his chest a few feet away from her, near the arched doorway she had just entered from. More carvings decorated the stone, but this time, they were of faces – every type of face. There were ones with tears, others shining with laughter, and a few more wrinkled in infuriation. And there were cages around the room, too, some stacked up on top of one another and the rest locked firmly in place with chains. Inside each of the cages were flames, a winding mixture of blue and purple hues, and inside the flames sat a metal box, emblazoned with a crescent moon. Whatever it exemplified, she didn't want to know.

Her gaze averted to Rhaye again – at his rugged and smirking form. His head sloped to the side. "But I am surprised that you are here. What compelled you to come?"

"I came back for you," she said tightly, the weapons suddenly feeling ridiculous at her side.

"And why would you do that?" He asked flatly, raising a groomed brow.

"Is it wrong?" She reached him in a careful stride. "I have been told today that I have said and thought and acted wrongly. But coming back for you – is that a mistake, too?" When he didn't react, she carried on. "I know you are in there somewhere Rhaye. That indifference, that hatred, and those words you said to me – I know it wasn't you. None of those things had been you. Just give me a sign, Rhaye, show me that the real you is in there somewhere, begging to be unleashed, screaming for you freedom. Just let me be sure-"

He kissed her then, and she didn't know whether she was to blame for tipping into him, his lips and tongue like flower petals palming hers. Her weapons rattled to the ground, their sound reverberating around the room, the beastly moans like an orchestral halo of voices sifting around their heads. But she didn't hear them, only Rhaye's echoing breaths meddling with hers. He pulled back a minute later to press his lips to her throat, and she felt fireworks, thousands of them, burst in her chest, her heart swelling. Her fingers gripped his tunic as his tongue traced lazy circles on her skin, his teeth brushing her neck. She was lost in the moment, too deep in to go back.

But there was a pain, too, indescribable and cold and so real. She shoved herself away as realization washed over her features, her hands nursing her stomach and cupping the soaked, dark blotch to the left of her abdomen. Her eyes sealed onto Rhaye's now an iridescent caramel dripping with hostility.

"Here I am, Althera, whole and sufficient." An excruciating pain overwhelmed her when his clever hands slowly, torturously, wrested the knife out of her. She gasped, her fingers instantly fastening around the wound. His gaze was tormenting. "I am sorry. I really am."

And Althera's heart plummeted, not because Rhaye had plunged one of her own knives into her stomach, or because he was walking away with his back turned to her, or even that he had outwitted her and played her at her own game.

No – it was because for a heartbeat, she had seen him, the true him, kneeling right before her, bloodied knife in grasp.

It was because she knew the words she had witnessed and heard escaping his mouth were whole-heartedly true.