A Court of Song and Shadow

Chapter 21

"Luckily for you, your father has made an arrangement for you to return home." I vaguely hear the King of Hybern's voice echo through my mind. I see bright red as guards take all eight ash arrows out that were pinned through me. I see flashes of being taken to a healer and a kind lady making me drink something.

It will remove the poison. She had said, or maybe I was imagining that too. I felt something warm take over the coldness in my body. 

"Good." She says softly as my breathing steadies and I open my eyes. I see a kind elderly woman smiling with tears streaming down her face. 

"Why--why are you crying?" I ask her, and she places a wrinkly hand on my cheek--still smiling. 

"Bring hell down upon them, Lady of the Night." She whispers and starts seizing off her chair and on to the ground. I watch in horror as her mouth begins foaming. I try to get up to help her but I look down and realize I am tied into the bed she was healing me in. I feel wetness on my cheeks and look up when I notice a figure standing in the doorway. Clythia leans against the doorway, looking at her painted nails. When she notices my attention on her she looks up and smirks at me. 

"Why?" I ask in a strained voice. 

"You took away fifteen of the King's possessions, so now he will do the same to you." She pushes herself off the doorway and sits at the foot of my bed. "You did not recognize her, did you?" 

I do not dare look down at the floor where I know the elderly woman's lifeless eyes will be staring at me. When I do not answer, Clythia continues to speak, "Her name was Sirona and she has been a healer for the Night Court for centuries." 

"No--" I begin to shake my head as her smile grows wider. 

"The King of Hybern made an arrangement with your father to send you back if your father sent twenty healers here." Her smile fades and turns to something like hatred--I do not know who for. "I am telling you this because you will never be able to outsmart either of them--they will be five steps ahead of you at all times." 

I dare to look at Sirona's body and more tears flow from my eyes when I see her lifeless light brown eyes staring into mine. Clythia slowly gets up from her spot and leans down and closes Sirona's eyelids. Clythia begins to walk away but she turns around once more. 

"I will see you on the other side of the battlefield, Lady of the Night." 

They leave me here with Sirona's body for what felt like hours. I do not dare look at her again, instead I keep my eyes closed. I focus on that dark chamber within my self searching for just a small ember of my power--but I feel nothing. I do not even feel my shadows anymore. The silence and being in a room with Sirona's lifeless body was more torture than being impaled by ash arrows--which I feel the wounds from it slowly healing which causes me even more pain.

I begin to hum the melody of The Song of Night--a well known song of the Night Court that our people love. Music always had a way of calming me in every situation, and since there was no music to listen to here--I must make my own. 

 " I felt her presence, by its spell of might,

Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,

As of the one I love."  I begin to softly sing the song, my voice raspy from not speaking in days--or weeks. I do not even know how long I have been here for. 

"I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,

The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,

Like some old poet's rhymes." The memory of my mother singing this to my brother and I when we were younger flows through my head, and I imagine her voice harmonizing with mine and smile at the thought. Before I get to sing the next verse a deep voice brings me back to the painful reality I am actually in. 

"Why did you stop? You have such a lovely voice, little doe." The King of Hybern says to me--standing a good distance from me. He must realize if he came any closer I would find a way to kill him right where he stood. I just turn my face away from him so he cannot see the tears still fresh on my cheeks, "What a shame--about the healer. That would not have even happened if you just told us where you sent those women and children." 

I close my eyes as hard as I can--trying to make the vision of Sirona seizing and dropping to the floor in front of me, "Now the death of twenty healers from your own court will be on your bloody hands," I hear a soft chuckle emerge from him, "It is ironic, is it not? Those who were meant to bring others from the brink of death have now found death of their own-- all because of you." 

I try to squeeze my eyes shut harder to stop the tears from spilling over, but it just makes it worse. I begin shaking as I do my best to hold in my sobs as the realization sets in. This was all my fault--every wing taken from those Illyrian women and children--the deaths of those healers--and the gods know if the others were caught helping me. 

I had failed. 

So atrociously I had failed. 

"Are you ready to return home, Velaris?" The King of Hybern asks me. 

And now I would pay the price for my failure.