In the Open Cage

Chapter 28

Misa awoke at mid-morning, when the sun peeked through her drapes and blinded her through her eyelids. She squinted through the brightness, groaning because she felt drained. Her body was heavy as she lifted it to sit. Whatever Rithian had in mind for tonight, Misa wasn't sure she'd be strong enough to withstand.

Misa pulled herself out of bed with what little willpower she had left and drew a bath for herself in the connected washroom. It was a lavish bathroom—one she would never have set foot in with her family's social standing. Tiled with black marble and filled with scented soaps near the porcelain tub, it made her feel strangely out of place. Misa relaxed in cold water, too impatient to have it heated up before she jumped in. She tried—again—to slip the bracelet off, smearing soap in the crease where it met her wrist, but it seemed to clasp tighter around her bone when she pulled. Giving up, she circled her arms around her knees, and she found herself staring at the gentle ripples in deep thought.

Everything she'd learned from Rithian wheeled around in her head in a whirlwind of emotional turmoil. Of all the spells she could turn to, why had it been bewitchment that found her? Why couldn't it have been fortune telling like Sha'ka or enchanting objects like Rithian?

She had figured she'd be able to learn other spells that would allow her to use such abilities, but she didn't want to know more about witchcraft than she needed to. It was dangerous to consume such knowledge, and even after she rid herself of her magic, she would have to bear the baggage that had come with it—the sick knowledge of how to bewitch others.

Misa sank into the water, allowing it to cool her cheeks and caress her hair with its cold fingers. She only came up when she felt her heart burn with the need to breathe. It was a cold comfort that she wanted to stay in for the rest of her life, but she forced herself to finish up.

After drying herself, she slipped on a bathrobe. She had no intentions of leaving for the day, especially in preparation for the training she would be faced with that night, so she let her hair down, kept the door locked, and drew the curtains so the room was blanketed in dim light.

The servants had knocked on her door for their daily chores, but Misa sent them away with the promise that she would take care of it herself. Eventually, they left her alone, and Misa sank into the bed with her sketchbook in hand. Firelight danced beside her from the lamp she'd turned on to light the paper. She held her charcoal over an unfinished sketch, thinking of where to go next.

Nothing had taken shape yet. She had wanted to sketch the building behind the fountain, but she couldn't remember any of the details. The black lines had only created an empty skeleton that lost the inspiration Misa had held dearly when she began it. With a sigh, she ripped the page out and crumpled it.

The blank page behind her missing sketch taunted her. She pressed the coal on its soft surface, but she didn't know what to draw. Frustration, anger, fear roiled inside her, bubbling into steam. She began to move her hand, letting her emotions lead it on. It circled around, slashed the cotton, stabbed blackness into shadows. Misa scribbled, her hand moving faster and faster, creating something on the page that absorbed her vents, all the hate that had boiled in her, the ugly emotions that would inevitably prove Rithian right.

Misa drowned in the coal, she drowned in the whirlpool of nonsense it created, the monsters lurking in the shadows, a young girl with her back turned and hugging her knees, her ankles shackled, clawed hands reaching through a cage to devour her, to take everything she had.

She was so absorbed in bleeding into her art that she didn't notice the pounding at her door until her coal snapped in two. Small pieces scattered over her bed, leaving a trail behind them. The servants would not be happy. Her turbulent storm declined until only a drizzle was left in its wake.