Path to Destiny

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

I opened my eyes to darkness. Spots blackened my vision, and the world tipped in every direction. My cheek sat against a cold stone floor. I rolled over.

Immediately, pain swept through my body like nothing I had ever felt before.

I wanted to speak. I felt groggy and nauseated and I wanted to fall asleep again.

Something slapped my cheek. "Stay awake, Lannie."

"Stupid," was the only coherent word that came out of my mouth.

Another slap. "Respect me."

I turned to see Clarice. "No." I rested my head on the ground. "Stupid girl," I slurred, feeling my tongue fuzzy against my throat.

I saw her face contort into something strange. It was like a laugh and I didn't know what else. "You are hilarious when you're in pain. We should choke you more often."

I didn't reply to that because her response was clearly not funny. Why would it be funny that I was choked?

Wait, I was choked? By what?

The darkness. The pain.

Jada.

I sat up so suddenly my vision went black again. Clarice caught me before I slammed into the ground. "Be careful," she said irritably. "You aren't stable enough to move. I just barely kept you from bleeding your life out."

Bleeding?

My vision came back once again, and everything was painfully crystal clear. Cuts crisscrossed from my wrists to my shoulders. My neck was covered in ripped fabric, and beneath my linen shirt I felt cuts and scrapes.

"You know first aid?" I asked once my speech returned. "I'm...impressed." Breathing was difficult, like the shadows had carved through my veins and sliced my ribcage.

"It's one of the things I learned from Baruch," she said, a hint of pride in her voice.

Once my vision came back and stopped spotting, I finally realized that we were in a dungeon, with iron bars surrounding us. "Where's Titus?" I asked her.

Clarice did not reply.

"Where is Ezra?" I asked, harsher this time.

She looked away. The front of her golden gown was covered in blood -- mine, no doubt -- and I saw several scratches on her cheek.

"Clarice," I said. "What in Etheia's name is going on?"

"It was Jada all this time," she said. "Jada tried to make you believe that it was the cardinals who tried to kill her." Clarice grabbed her arm and closed her eyes. "Without the cardinals to restrain her, she is taking over the kingdom."

"But I saw the magic circle," I said. "The cardinals were trying to kill--"

"As the young lady pointed out, we were trying to restrain her," a familiar voice answered from an adjoining chamber. Through the bars, I realized several other prisoners sat in confinement. The eight cardinals were separated on the other side, their hands in chains. Sybil's hood had been pushed back to reveal her black hair and a bloody jaw.

"If you hadn't stopped me," she said, "I would have restrained her from her tyranny."

"And then what?" Coral piped in, uncharacteristically brave. Her golden cloak had taken on a dirty brown. Without her hood, I saw the clear dryad in her: antlers curling around dark hair and blue skin. "Would we place a dummy on the throne instead?" she snapped. "We were unprepared, and we failed."