Darkness has a sound. It breathes.
The first thing I registered when consciousness returned was the weight of silence—not the absence of noise, but a silence that pressed , that watched . My wrists ached. My throat was raw. My body felt broken in places I couldn't even name.
I blinked into nothing.
There was no light. Just damp stone under my cheek, and the sour taste of blood clinging to the back of my tongue. My arms were bound, strung above me with some kind of rope or chain—I couldn't tell which, but every time I moved, it bit into my skin with searing malice.
I tried to breathe deeply, but the air was thick with mildew and rot.
Where was I?
What had they done to me?
The last memory I had was the wind brushing my cheek at the edge of Ethen's Spine, and then the world turning upside down. The scream of my horse. The thud of a blow to the back of my head.
Then this.
I didn't cry.
But I shook.
I bit my tongue so hard it bled, just to feel something besides the terror rising in me like a tide.
Who had taken me?
The Ember Ring?
No. If it were them, I'd be dead already. They didn't waste time. They didn't chain you in silence and let you stew in fear. They'd slit your throat and smile doing it.
So… who?
The rope creaked above me as I shifted, and a sharp pain jolted down my spine. I gasped involuntarily, the sound echoing like a scream in that hollow dark.
I listened hard.
Footsteps? Nothing.
Breathing? Only mine.
I was alone.
Or they wanted me to believe that.
Time passed, though I couldn't tell how much. Hours. Days. The cold never left. I slept in snatches, plagued by feverish dreams—my mother's dead eyes, Keal's smirk as he turned his back on me, the king calling me daughter with blood on his hands.
Sometimes I screamed in my sleep.
I think I whispered my mother's name once.
And hated myself for it.
I was a warrior. A commander. But here… chained and helpless… I was seventeen again. Seventeen and broken.
Was anyone looking for me?
Did Nira know I was gone?
Had my father even noticed?
They fed me only once—some foul broth that tasted like ash—and I drank it like a starving dog. It was humiliating, how quickly pride shriveled when hunger took hold.
Once, someone entered. I heard the groan of a metal door, slow and deliberate.
A figure.
Male. Heavy-footed. Breathing hard. He circled me without speaking. I felt his presence like poison in the air.
And then he left.
No words.
Just the sound of his boots retreating.
I started talking to myself after that.
Anything to stay sane.
I recited the names of my White Shadows.
I repeated battle tactics.
I whispered my own name over and over.
"Delbeyrah."
"Delbeyrah of Delyra."
"Daughter of the king."
"Commander of the White Flame."
As if the titles could shield me.
As if they could remind me I was more than this girl, trembling in a prison she couldn't see.
Then came the rats.
I heard them before I saw them. Small claws scraping stone. A high-pitched squeal. They were bold. One climbed onto my thigh as I dozed and bit me.
I screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
No one came.
Not to silence me.
Not to save me.
It broke something.
After that, I stopped talking.
I counted my breaths. I listened for changes in the air. I let my thoughts drift into strange places.
What if I died here?
Would the king mourn?
Would anyone remember me as more than a failed pawn?
Would Nira burn the world for me?
I didn't know.
And that… hurt more than the chains.
Eventually, I started imagining voices.
My mother's lullaby.
The rustle of winter wind through the birch trees of Sevila.
The hush of snow.
Anything to make me forget the silence.
On the fifth—or fiftieth—day, something changed.
A different voice. A whisper at first. From the dark.
"Are you awake?"
A woman's voice.
Real?
I opened my cracked lips. "Who…?"
No answer.
Just silence again.
I wept that night.
Silent, bitter tears that soaked the stone floor beneath me. I wept for everything I'd lost, everything I might never find again.
And when the crying ended, I breathed.
One breath. Then another.
Because even in the dark, even in the chains… I wasn't done.
Not yet.
They hadn't broken me.
Not completely.
And gods help them… if I ever got out.