Swords of Gilded Crimson

Chapter 20 | The Darkness of the City of Light |

I didn't know how long had passed when my eyelids finally shot open. Every muscle of my body was stiff with pain, and I could still feel the incessant tickle of running blood from battle wounds that had been undone. At first, the darkness that welcomed my curious eyes was a sign of home, of Tenebrae... but the unhealed wounds scattered across my body told me all I needed to know; this was not home. I was in a dungeon. I had to be, because only such cells laced with faebane could prevent scars from faerie healing; I should have healed fully while unconscious. But I hadn't.

I winced, forcing myself to sit up. The surface beneath me was cold and jagged, biting my palms as I leaned back upon it. My left leg was aching with pain and drenched in blood. Whose, I didn't know.

It took my eyes a while to adjust to the darkness. When they did, I still couldn't make out much. My gut twisted in panic – as a Tenebrian, I'd been trained to befriend the darkness, to navigate it and push past it as if it were a barrier. But this... black shadows drifted close and far from my vision, overwhelming, teasing. I rubbed at my eyes. I hoped on some stupid whim that the darkness was of the familiar kind.

"Kymil?" My voice echoed in my own ears, pathetically raspy and weak.

But the shadows were not his. And there was only one other Spymaster whom I knew summoned a tenebrosity as caliginous as obsidian. And seeing that these bore the scent of faerie magic, as opposed to Kymil's whose shadows were pure and refined like that of the reiner he wielded.

The realisation was a stone to the pit of my stomach. My mouth went dry, and, somehow, the darkness thickened, as if in response. Because if the shadows around me were not Kymil's... they were Adrien's. And if he had captured me, then that could only mean that I was at the mercy of the Luxandrians. That I was in the dungeon of the enemy.

I squeezed my eyes shut again as my thoughts finally began to clear.

We'd lost the war. The thought was an echo in the empty chamber of my mind, low and haunting. I'd failed my armies. I hadn't anticipated Odeir's bargain with Eleodor, and because of it, Veyren had destroyed us. And what was worse – I had let him. I had let Veyren penetrate my mind with his power, and let loose the repressed, caged memories of centuries before. The horrors of my childhood had rushed back at once, filling an empty space I'd never noticed until now that it was brimming. Had I not done so, would we have stood a better chance of victory in the final battle? It didn't seem to matter as much, when a round of various tremors and tingles prevailed throughout my body, reaching my throbbing head, urging for me to withdraw once more.

Aching and shivering on the dungeon floor, my eyes remained shut as I hesitantly explored the new memories now swimming around in my unconscious instead; as a part of me as any of my other thoughts.

Instantly, as if the moment had been waiting for me to remember it, there was Aelius's laughing face, so young that it robbed me of my breath. His hair longer, his cheeks fuller. But in those teal eyes, a soft agony remained. And for the first time in centuries, I knew why.

I knew why there were so many unhealed scars strewn across our backs, like a sketch of ocean waves. I knew why Kymil had left- where he had gone, and why he hadn't returned for me. I knew how many times I'd been subjected to training simply not viable for children that young, along with hundreds of others.

And then, in sheer irony, we had forgotten what had been done to us, who we loved, who we were.

The shame and guilt were enough for me to abandon even these centuries-old memories, however new they felt, and let myself succumb to the darkness of my cell once more. When the shadows of this foreign darkness invaded my senses this time, I didn't resist as they pulled me under.