Misty
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I open my eyes to darkness, blinking it away. My body aches like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, but I’m alive. I’m alive, and in a dungeon.
I rise to my knees, crawling to the bars that separate me from a dingy, damp hallway lit by flickering torches.
I hesitate before gripping the bars, but it’s iron, not silver, thank the Goddess. I’m not sure how much more I can take… wait a minute.
I lift my wrists to the torchlight. Twin silver bands–wide, and seamless–hug each wrist. They’re no chains between them. Nothing keeping me bound to the wall. Manacles. I immediately try to pull them off, but I can’t. It doesn’t hurt, though. I wedge a pinky between my skin and the manacle on my left wrist and feel… leather? Some type of barrier between the silver and my skin.
Still, even without the silver resting directly against me, it’s close enough to keep my powers at bay. My fingertips sizzle and send puffs of mist through the bars instead of strips of bright light. My healing powers gnaw at the deep bruises covering my body but don’t make much of a difference.
I grit my teeth and inhale deeply through my nose, then let the air out in a rush, my eyes going wide. “Georgia?”
Her sweet pea and violet scent is faint, but she’s here. She’s been using the same body wash since I met her. I’d recognize the smell anywhere. “GG? Where are you?”
“Misty?” Movement catches my attention in the cell across from mine. She reaches for the bars, but then thinks better of it, her hand retreating back into the shadows.
“It’s iron, Georgia, it won’t hurt you!”
She clutches the bars and painfully pulls herself into view. She’s horribly battered but alive.
Thank the Goddess. I’ll never skip temple services again once we’re out of this.
“Misty, what happened? Where are we?” Her voice breaks. “Where is everyone else?”
“I don’t know,” I rush out, shaking my head as I press my face against the bars. She’s wearing manacles too. Probably so she can’t shift, but she’s my age. Neither of us have come into our wolves yet. “I got knocked out. I saw you get tackled and then… I don’t remember. Georgia, why don’t you remember going to the Arcane Umbra party?”
“The party?” she whimpers, shaking her head. “I don’t remember, Misty. My head–everything in my head is a mess. I remember… I remember getting ready with you and taking a shower and then it goes hazy.”
“Don’t worry about it now, okay? I’m going to get us out of this, I promise.”
She nods, tears sliding down her face. A low groan echoes nearby, and we both go still.
“Hello?” Georgia croaks.
“Ah-fuck–what the fuck–” A male voice, obviously in pain, echoes toward us. “H-Hello?”
“Who are you?” I shout, unease prickling over my skin.
Another set of silver manacles catch the faint light in a cell next to Georgia’s. A young man grips the bars and grunts with effort as he pulls himself into view before slumping, resting his cheek against the iron. He looks familiar. I’ve seen him around campus, and… on the expedition this summer, during my internship. He’s a… cryptology student, I think. One of those weirdos that specializes in breaking ancient code, unlocking secrets from the past in languages we’ve lost to time.
“Are you Luke?” I ask on a whim. He’s one of only three people in that specialized program, so my odds are good.
“Yeah. Misty? Where the fuck are we?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, swallowing hard. “I have no idea.”
“How did you get here?” Georgia asks, scooching toward him and reaching through the bars to grip his shoulder in solidarity.
He’s too tired to even flinch away from her. I can see his arm from here. His left shoulder is hanging at an odd angle. It’s likely dislocated. He has to be in an immense amount of pain.
“We were dosed with wolfsbane, weren’t we? I can taste it,” he murmurs, wincing as Georgia runs her fingers through his hair to try to comfort him. I can hear dried blood cracking beneath her fingers, which turns my stomach.
I lick my lips and taste the same slightly sweet flavor. Wolfsbane, for sure. “Where were you when the attack happened? In the library?” I’m hoping the attack was contained to the library only, not the whole campus.
“No,” he croaks. “I was in the–the dormitory. I was just leaving to meet some friends for study group, and I–something exploded in the campus square. It’s hazy, the memory, but I remember running outside with a group to find out what happened, and it was just… madness. I tried to pull a girl out from underneath some rubble, but she was obviously dead and then… then the glass dome of the library shattered and….” His head slumps forward. I can smell blood in the air. He’s hurt badly, I can sense it. My healing powers–dim as they may be right now–prickle with the need to assist.
“Try to stay awake,” Georgia coaxes, her voice heavy with grief.
“I got tackled. Someone hit me over the head with a brick, I think, or a really fucking heavy book. I don’t remember anything past that.”
A door opens nearby, spilling bright light into the hallway. Luke doesn’t have the strength to shy away from the bars like Georgia and I do. We watch a hooded figure open Luke’s cell door, and another figure wearing a mask and hood helps his companion lift the injured man to his feet.
Luke cries out sharply in pain. Goddess, he can’t even use his legs.
“Let–” I cry out, clutching the bars again. “Let me help him. I can heal him! Please!”
They ignore me and drag him away. Georgia chokes on sobs. “What are they going to do to him? Misty? What’s happening? What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I tell her, trying to remain calm, but I’m crumbling to pieces.
Two more people enter, this time opening Georgia’s cell. I shout at them, and she’s screaming in fear as they roughly drag her away.
I’m next. I have to be next. When my cell door opens several minutes later, I swing my fist, meeting the groin of the man that’s come to try to drag me away.
“Gods damnit, Ashton,” his companion curses as the man kneels in pain, taking several rapid breaths. I’m grabbed and lifted by my grimy, tangled hair and hauled upright.
I try to spin out of his grasp, but he’s twice my size. He leaves his friend behind to tend to his busted balls and unceremoniously marches me, kicking and screaming, out into… daylight.
A sun-soaked staircase leads up high to a wide balcony overlooking miles and miles of desert. Nothing but bright blue sky and endless, golden sand.
Sand races in a soft breeze from the roofs of several golden towers, glass windows glinting in the unforgiving sunlight. This is a huge fortress. A castle. An ancient one. It reminds me of the castle in Moonrise. And as I’m led down a long, open air corridor overlooking a patchwork of courtyards six stories below, I realize with shock that this has to be a Firestone castle, one that rose out of the sand over twenty-five years ago when my aunt put on her crown.
I close my eyes for a moment, feeling faint and weak. This is impossible. No one, and I mean no one, knew there was a Firestone fortress like this in Tarsian. We are likely very far from Serpentia… and even further from any help.
I think of my parents. My heart lurches as fresh tears spill from my eyes, which I squeeze shut. The hot breeze blasts my raw skin with sand. I cry out in fear, grief, and frustration.
I tell myself to turn those feelings into anger. It’s the only way I’ll survive this hellscape.
When I open my eyes again, I’m being bustled through an archway into a wide, brightly lit throne room. There’s a crowd here–men in black cloaks watch as I’m led to the center of the room and thrown on the ground at the feet of the Umbra Mortis.
In the light, I can see his features clearly. He’s old and gnarled. He looks older than my grandpa by decades, but they’re likely the same age, based on how spry he is when he moves in my direction. Hatred can do that to a person, I guess.
“Princess Mystica,” he grins. “Pleasure to see you again.”
I scream, trying to get my powers to respond, but nothing happens. I’m too weak to even rise to my feet, so I stay kneeling. I’m not in cuffs. No chains bind my hands and feet together. Just the manacles on my wrists, and they’re light as air but powerful enough to make me useless.
“I am going to gut you like a fucking pig,” I sneer, raising my eyes to meet his.
“You have a foul mouth for someone of your rank.”
I laugh at him. “If you were expecting a fucking damsel in distress, you’re going to be sorely disappointed by me.”
“Ah, we’ve heard about you,” he says, pacing back and forth in front of me. I crane my neck to try to catch a glimpse of the twin thrones at the far end of the room, expecting to see Cole resting in one, but I can’t see him through the haze of black fabric blocking my full view.
“I’m sure you have. You can think about me when I slit your throat,” I croak, giving him a deranged smile. “I’ll make it slow, so we can savor the moment together.”
“You must think your family is going to show up any moment now to swoop in and save you,” he chuckles.
“Oh, them? Well, duh. Of course they’re coming for me. But you should be far more worried about me in the meantime. I will flay the skin away from your body and make myself a new cloak with it. That’s a promise.”
“You horrid bitch! No one else would dare speak to me in such a way. Do you know who I am?”
“A disgusted, wrinkled, old fool? Yes, I am well aware.”
“You’ll hold your tongue, girl, or I’ll cut it out!”
I slowly stick out my tongue at him, smiling around it as his expression twists with disgust and frustration.
He stalks toward me, pulling a black cane from his robes and raising it with the intent to strike me, but then Cole’s voice booms through the throne room behind me. “What is the meaning of this?”
The Umbra Mortis halts with his cane in midair. “Your Highness–”
“What are you doing?” Cole cuts in, his footsteps coming to a stop several feet behind me, just out of view.
“Interrogating our prisoners, Your Grace, of course.”
“Who gave you permission to speak to the princess in my absence?”
“It doesn't matter,” The Umbra Mortis says, lowering his cane. “She–”
“She will not, under any circumstances, be in your company, or the company of any other order members, when I’m not present. Am I understood?”
“Yes, but–”
“Am I understood?” he booms, calm fury lacing each word as he draws out the syllables.
The Umbra Mortis looks furious as he rests his cane and tucks it back in his cloak, bowing his head in submission. I don’t miss the slight smirk on his withered lips, however, or the way he scowls at the king, who’s slowly walking around me now.
I should probably lower my head in a bow. That would be the appropriate thing to do.
Instead, I glare at him as he comes into view. I do put my tongue back in my mouth.
“I apologize,” he says quietly.
“You apologize? For what? Attacking my school? Killing my friends? Letting your men beat me into a fucking pulp?”
His jaw flexes, but he keeps his gray eyes locked on mine for several seconds, searching them. He breaks from my gaze and continues to walk across the room, looking at each man he passes. “No one goes near her without my approval. No one touches her. No one even breathes when she’s near. Am I clear?”
A rush of the words, “Yes, Alpha,” passes around the room.
He continues, pacing back in my direction, “The princess is our special guest and will be treated as such. If I hear that anyone, and I mean anyone, has touched a single hair on her head….” He drops his voice to a whisper meant for the Umbra Mortis, I’m sure. He stops in front of him, hissing the words directly into the old man’s ear. “I won’t be conservative in my punishments, am I understood?”
Nods. More rushed confirmations that the entire order is heeding his demands. But the Umbra Mortis is grinning. Cole sneers at him, stepping past him in my direction.
“Your Highness?” The Umbra Mortis asks, whipping his cane out again and tapping it against Cole’s back.
I watch… pain… yes, that’s pain, echoing through his otherwise steely expression as the cane presses against his middle back.
The Umbra Mortis lowers the cane, but Cole doesn’t turn around to face him. His eyes are on mine.
“Her family has been made aware of her situation,” the old man croons, entertained, apparently, by my predicament.
Cole ignores him, looking past me to the group of men standing in the archway. “Have her moved to her new quarters. The other girl, too,” he says to them with less vibrato than the rest of the order members, like he trusts these three masked men more than the others.
New quarters?
“Your Highness, I’m speaking,” Umbra Mortis snaps. Cole continues to ignore him, which seems to greatly annoy the leader of this fucked up society. “Your Highness, it’s imperative that–”
“Enough,” Cole cuts in, turning to face him as I’m hauled to my feet by more masked men in cloaks.
“If you’re going to breed her,” he sneers, “it must be done as soon as possible. The clock is ticking.”
My heart nearly stops. I turn my shell-shocked gaze to Cole who’s in a stare down contest with the Umbra Mortis. For the first time, I’m questioning who’s actually in charge here.
“What the fuck did you just say?” I squeak.
“Has it not been mentioned?” The old man laughs, his eyes glowing with excitement. “Congratulations, Princess Misty. You’re a breeder now. Just like your witch of a grandmother. Your spawn will be the next King of Tarsian. You should be honored–”
“Take her away, now,” Cole rasps, refusing to look at me.