Death is immortality.
Death is your second chance.
Velian Terrashine belongs to a classless society of equality, art and democracy; a land full of creativity and mindfulness. It is in that perfect political system that one wrong movement, one carele...
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DAY OR NIGHT, sunlight or moonlight never reached Denfer's room.
I'd lost count of the number of days I'd spent laying in bed, which was always empty on his side. I remembered that when I'd been hauled out of another dream with that blue-eyed guy, I'd found Denfer taking off my boots, telling me to go back to sleep. Then, he'd walked out of the room and never come back. That must have been the first night here, when I'd been too tired to even consider asking for something else to wear. I remembered that the second time I'd woken up, folded and clean clothes had been left at the edge of the bed for me to change into them.
Amanda sporadically visited my room, either to bring me something to eat or to just start a conversation. Neither of those things ended particularly well. For I didn't have any desire to talk to a stranger woman who breathed fire and darkness and I couldn't stomach the idea of having to put in my body something coming from that place. Even if the food seemed ordinary—roast chicken, bread, fruits—my stomach was always tight, and every bite was a slow torture. Amanda's eyes would fill with unholy irritation whenever I'd declare that I didn't want to eat, and would always make me choke down another bite of whatever was in the menu that day.
Denfer and Jersen hadn't appeared in the Castle of Sunlight in days, Amanda had informed me on a murky evening, even though I hadn't asked her anything about them. Then, she'd started talking to me about the parties they'd been hosting in the castle's garden every now and then, some of them open for everyone to come, some of them only for their trusted group of friends. Those times were long gone, she'd later declared. Now no one seemed to care about celebrations and feasts, endless nights playing games and downing exquisite beverages that would turn into lazy mornings of sleep and dizziness.
I hadn't asked what had caused them to change their minds and she hadn't bothered to dive deeper into the topic, either.
Then, more days had passed. Filled with sleep, one-sided conversations with Amanda and me trying to find my lost appetite. These days, every glimpse of magic in me had disappeared—maybe it had even died out. There was nothing burning through my skin, flaring my mind, my body and my heart. It was the only pleasant thing that had happened to me ever since I'd come here.
Jensen had come in Denfer's room—that had become my room—one day, offering me to show me around the capital, its people, their past, their plans. I'd declined, coming up with the useless excuse of not feeling like going outside, which hadn't been such a tremendous lie after all. In such a deep, unending slumber I'd never fallen before. It cleaved me, hatched me and leeched every last ray of hope out of me. For I was alive but had been carried to a world of dead people who claimed to be as alive as me but somehow immortal since they were immune to diseases.
It could be a fraud. It could be my doom.
Now the room was dark since the door was closed and I'd lit the few candles that were scattered on Denfer's desk except for one, just so that I could walk around that dark cell without falling.
