Gilded Heart

| 6 |

When Ameerah finally awoke from her deep and dreamless slumber, she found herself in a cell, the only light in the entire room the smallest flicker of a candle. She was chained around the neck, wrists, and ankles by cuffs and chains made of iron, the burn slow and still painful. Groaning from the throb in her head, she slowly sat up from the floor she slept on, looking around her. It was a plain cell with iron bars, no windows, and the candle only lit her cell, not the room around it. She did not know how long she was out for, how long it had been. She did not even understand how and why she was still alive.

She heard the slight movement of someone in the room and she looked to her right, seeing two men glowing gold--werewolves--guarding what must've been the entrance to the dungeon. The more consciousness she regained the more she could feel the burn of the metal. She jerked at the chains a bit, the pain shooting up her arms. 

"Quiet over there!" snapped one of the guards. "Hybrid scum."

"Am I going to be executed?" she asked and they growled. 

"We said quiet, bastard!"

She kept her mouth shut, the chain around her neck making it hard to breathe, to swallow. Was it the right choice to have them capture her? Did she make the right choice? Should she have kept running forever and ever, never turning back, never stopping to eat or sleep? She couldn't survive that way but, then again, she surely couldn't survive this way either. 

"Move out of the way!" said something softly, pushing past the two guards.

"Hey! Atlas! You cannot be down here!"

However, the man they called to did not listen as he rushed over to her cell, grabbing onto the bars, staring at her in amazement. He was a tall, slim man, with long blonde hair that was tied neatly into a low ponytail. He had one eye that was a deep brown color and another that was nearly white, a long slender nose, thick, blonde eyebrows. He was covered in dark blue cloaks and robes with intricate silver and blue embroidery over it. He smiled brightly at her, examining her intently.

"Oh, my! How I wish these bars were not dividing us! I would really love to learn more about you, about your kind. It would be one of the few missing pieces of my research. Unbiased samples. Unbiased information. How splendid!" he cheered, his eyes full of nothing but pure fascination. 

She was shocked to find one single person that looked at her with something other than pure rage and disgust. She blinked a few times, trying to find something to say but nothing came to mind. 

"Guards! I beg you! Let me in! Let me see this creature with my good eye!" he turned to ask them, pointing to his white eye. 

"Absolutely not, Atlas. We're under strict orders. No one is even supposed to be down here. You'll get us all in trouble!" one of the guards said, his voice urgent and quiet. 

"Oh, please! I must! The King surely won't be mad at me!"

King? 

She was confused, totally and completely lost. Now there were Kings? She never knew there was. Then again, she knew very, very little still, she believed. There was so much more she needed to learn, so much information she was lacking. She barely understood enough about her own kind, the main thing she understood was that no one liked Hybrids.

"I will cover for you both, no one here will get in trouble! You must let me see her," he begged still.

"You can see her through the bars," said the other guard. 

"Oh!" he snapped angrily. "You stupid brutes! No one here has any compassion for science and magic and research! No one appreciates the work I do for this Kingdom! Don't you understand, learning more about her gives us an advantage you fools!"

Ameerah's eyes widened at the man's boldness. From the way he smelt, he was not a werewolf and the guards called him 'Atlas'. Surely, he must be in a high enough position to speak that way to werewolves, men who could easily rip him to shreds. And, not to mention, he said the King would not be mad with him which must definitely mean he is in a good standing here. 

"You will damn us all, foolish Warlock," snapped one of the guards, heading over to her cell and unlocked the barred door, allowing Atlas to step in.

"Dear Baynore, you will not get in trouble for this," he said happily, not bothering to hide his excitement. "Neither you Tylin."

The two men grunted. "You get five minutes, Atlas," said the guard named Baynore, standing close by to ensure that Ameerah did not try anything funny. Although, she could hardly do a single thing with the iron pressed against her skin, sucking what energy she had left out of her. 

"Goddess Divine, it is true," he nearly gasped. "Hybrids are susceptible to iron, like werewolves are to silver. I would really like to understand how, why." He stepped closer to her, kneeling right before her, his white eye examining her closely. She looked at him, watching as her vision made his white eye glow golden. 

"The source of your power," she began softly, catching his attention. "Is in your eye."

His eyes widened a bit and another grin spread over his face. "Wonderful, just wonderful! What other abilities do you have, creature? What else are you able to do?"

"My name is Ameerah," she struggled, the iron around her neck burning. "I can just see. Very well."

He clocked his tongue, looking down at the iron cuff around her neck. "This just won't do. You cannot tell me anything valuable with that thing around your neck. Surely, the iron on your wrists and ankles is enough to keep you deathly still, isn't it, Ameerah?"

She smiled slightly, happy that finally someone used her name instead of calling her creature or hybrid. She nodded. "I do not wish to bring anyone harm," she said, grunting at the pain. "I just want to live in peace."

"You truly are an odd hybrid, Ameerah. Do you not know anything of your kind? The history of hybrids at all?" She shook her head. "Five minutes is just not enough time. I have a meeting with the King soon, I would very much like to convince him to let me study you. You can be my apprentice, would that suffice?"

Her eyes brightened. "How can you trust me? No one here particularly likes me because of what I am," she said quietly. 

"Time is up, Atlas," Baynore said.

"Hybrids have always been mutated creatures in history, wild beasts in human bodies. Bloodthirsty. Worse than rogues. Just you talking is proof enough that you are the first Hybrid that is not a savage--" he blurted out quickly as Baynore grabbed his upper-arm pulling him out of her cell. "This is very important information to relay back to the King! You could very much be the key to what we have been missing all along!" He shouted through the dungeon as Baynore drug him out, forcing him out the door and completely out of her sight. 

Savage? Hybrids have always been...wild beasts in human bodies? If they have always been worse than rogues, an immanent threat, then that explains why everything--man and wolf--was after me. 

Slowly, piece after piece was beginning to come together but it still was not enough information to understand what else was happening, what other reason she would be there for, why they have kept her alive. She shut her eyes a moment, trying to focus, trying to think, she struggled hard. She had to focus past the pain, trying to recall everything the wolves were saying when she was captured. 

"Liar! The great Reinald Rolayne could not be your father! Let alone could the great Maynord Rolayne be your grandfather! They would never be stupid enough to bring a Hybrid into this world and raise it!"

There was something else she was missing about her own family too, her grandfather, her father. She still knew very little about herself, just when she thought she was understanding it, putting things together--there were more questions that arose and more left unanswered. What would truly become of her in this place?