Blood & Cinders- Choose your Own Adventure Story

Chapter 23

There was no day and night in her cell, only darkness. 

The flickering of torch light that seeped in from her small slatted window kept her sanity. Food was given twice a day through a small opening at the bottom of the door, barely large enough to slide in a tray. Her time was counted by the changing of the guards. A gravelly voiced male , who kept to himself and one with a smoother tenor dripping with disdain as he would rake his whip across the bars-taunting. She had not seen Adam since that night and she replayed it in her mind's eye, holding onto the sweet taste of those memories to stomach the sour slop she was fed.

Whispers fluttered through the barred cage, words muffled by the heavy metal door. The guard was changing once more. Isabelle eyed the door, squishing herself further into the corner. One night, one of the guards had tried to slip in. His eyes wild through the slat and his teeth glistening as he salivated over her flesh. "Just one bite," he'd snarled. "One taste."

Isabelle had slammed her body against the door just in time to crush one of his fingers in the opening and screamed for help till another guard dragged him away. The guards did not get to feed the same as the nobles and they seemed particularly starved for blood. It was odd that it had to be fresh. The old wounds on her back had little effect despite the fact that the whip marks had festered and reopened.

She held onto the hope of Adam's promise that he would find a way out. For her and Rosie, but her hope that he would come and whisk her away dwindled with the dimming of the torch light. And she began to wonder what had become of him.

Days slipped into weeks, and her loneliness consumed her. She wished to chat with someone. Rosie. Adam. Anyone.

And then her wish came true.

The door opened abruptly one day and an old man was shoved unceremoniously inside, falling on his knees into the cold dirt of her cell. What was left of his peppered gray hair was thin, brittle and stuck up at odd angles. And his hairline as recessed as the creases under his eyes.

"You got a friend here, till we can clear out another cell."

Isabelle helped the man to his feet, grabbing his arm. He was thinner than her. Nothing but skin and bone, the baggy tunic and trousers deceptively big. But now she could see they simply hung on him like a pretty dress on a wire frame.

"I'm Isabelle," she offered a grime-covered smile, her hair partly matted to the side of her cheek.

"Jean," the man wobbled to his feet, leaning heavily on the wall for support. Placid gray eyes started back at her, their fire for life, long gone. "What brought such a pretty mademoiselle here?" He offered a gapped tooth grin and Isabelle guided him to her most comfortable spot against the wall, where the rock was smoothest.

"I insulted the king, " Isabelle stated plainly, "though if you ask me he's being rather childish about it. I was just trying to help and he wouldn't even give me the time of day!"

Jean chuckled, a cough racking his body half way through.

"Ah yes." Jean gave a knowing look, his eyes reflecting the dim gray of the sky that she longed for. Any color really, other than the dark four walls she had been looking at. "The king has quite the temper, almost as bad as my late wife."

He chuckled at his own joke and Isabelle humored him with a smile.

"Why are you here? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she added, not wanting to be intrusive. A lady ought not to pry.

"It's quite alright. A foolish thing really. You see, my family supplied pigs for the king's feast. Though with the kingdom taking more people from outlying villages, we were short farmers and there were not enough crops grown to feed them. Out of twenty only half the pigs survived. I was supposed to supply ten pigs to the king. I only gave nine. I had to feed my family."