'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'
Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and l...
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Not even spiders like Corros. The barren landscape introduces a reduced abundance of them, due to the radiation that spread through the ground for so many years, from before anything linked to Norta even existed.
Inside, they are rare too. It must be because the walls are wet and rotten and because there is nothing to eat, not even for spiders. I sense a few small ones, but I can't see a web in any corner or grating ceiling as we pass.
Four rows of cells, half of them still empty. I don't see a small boy. But below me, the girl I arrested sits on the bare stone ground. She looks drained of color in the grey light. Her body shakes. Her lips are just as grey.
I step over the metal stairs, balancing over the fissure. When I look down at her, into this rift in the poisoned ground that has been built to capture and hold, my foot almost slips. I stumble a step beside my cousin and hold myself in balance, arms stretched as if I want to fly away.
The group pauses. My feet have produced too many sounds. Electric eyes from above and silver ones from around me stare at me. I have to cover my mistake. My neck and my shoulders hurt so much from grating my teeth and straightening my body.
"I recognize some of the faces," I explain. The girl in the cell doesn't move. A delicate doll in colorless rags. I feel light headed. It must be the air that hangs so stale here. "If this is the tract for the defected mutations, I assume there is one for blood traitors as well? And is tehre another room for them to be interrogated?"
The warden of the prison, Captain Iral, waits a moment, hands behind his back in an all-business stance, attending this tour of horror in the manner anyone taking their tasks professional would. His teeth are bleached white in contrast to the grey metal around us and the black starch uniforms.
"Cellblock G for silver prisoners, and it is one of the first we finished after being given order. Interrogation and other rooms for different usage exist as well, they were equipped first," he elaborates. "Do you have a personal interest, Lady Viper?"
"Yes, do you?" Maven looks at the cellblock around us, the screaming tiles, the deafening drip of water, the little light that the facility grants the prisoners. His eyes seem to reflect the little drops of life that die in shadows, a face that is as attractive as a smashed mirror to me.
I screamed about being removed. Ptolemus had to carry me back to my bed. Now he looks at me with barely muted interest. He doesn't say anything, but I know he will as soon as I speak again.
