The cell was darker that night.
Or perhaps I had simply been too long in the shadows to remember what real darkness felt like.
I lay curled in the corner of the stone room, my back pressed to the damp wall. My wrists were raw from the chains, my breath shallow and warm against the cold. Hunger had become a dull ache. Sleep came and went in pieces, and when it came, it brought no peace—only flashes of fire, echoing screams, and the sound of Keal's voice, hollow and distant.
I don't know how many days passed.
The ones who brought food no longer spoke. They slid the wooden tray beneath the iron bars and left, never glancing my way. I stopped trying to ask questions. I stopped asking anything.
Because silence answered better than words ever could.
They hadn't killed me yet—but that didn't mean they wouldn't.
They wanted something. Information. Leverage. A weapon to wield.
Or perhaps they just wanted me to break.
And I was beginning to wonder if I already had.
Sometimes I thought I heard Nira's voice in the dark. Or saw a flicker of a white cloak just past the edge of vision. I'd whisper her name, lips dry, heart heavy—but no one ever came.
Sometimes I imagined my mother, lying still in her cold bed, dreaming nothing, never knowing what had become of the daughter she'd once held in her arms. Sometimes I imagined the king sitting on his throne, unmoved, unmoved, unmoved.
Had he sent anyone?
Had he even noticed I was gone?
Was I only valuable alive? Or just convenient dead?
These thoughts hollowed me worse than the chains ever could.
But the worst came at night.
That was when they whispered.
I don't know who they were—men, women, shadows. But I heard them through the cracks in the stone. I heard them chant in a tongue I didn't recognize. Sometimes they laughed. Once I heard a scream—not mine—and I pressed my hands over my ears until I bled trying to block it out.
They were doing something. Preparing something.
And I wasn't just their prisoner—I was part of it.
That realization was what kept me awake, trembling in the dark.
---
On the seventh night—at least, I think it was the seventh—I was pulled from the cell.
They dragged me up stone stairs lit by fire bowls that gave off no heat. The hallways curved in ways that made no sense. I was too weak to resist, too cold to care. My feet dragged, and I only barely registered the iron door they pushed me through.
The room was circular. No windows. Just carvings—ancient, deep, circling the stone in repeating, spiral patterns. Symbols I'd never seen before.
Torches lined the walls, and in the center stood a chair.
Not a throne.
Not a seat.
A restraint.
I froze.
"No," I whispered, but my voice cracked and vanished.
They forced me into the chair. My arms were locked down. My ankles, too. Leather and metal. They gagged me. Blinded me.
And then they waited.
For what, I didn't know.
Until I heard the voice.
"Finally," it said.
Male. Calm. Familiar, though I couldn't place it.
"She was meant to fall into our hands. The girl born of ash and flame."
Fingers brushed my face. I jerked back.
"You do not yet understand your place, little fire," the voice whispered. "But you will."
I screamed into the gag. It didn't matter. No one came.
---
I don't remember what happened next. Only the pain. The burning that came not from fire but from within.
Something moved through me. Not magic. Not entirely. Something deeper. Something wrong.
I felt pieces of myself unraveling.
They were doing something to me—marking me, testing me, breaking me down.
And I feared… that it might be working.
---
When I came to again, I was back in the cell.
No explanation. No voice. Just me. Shaking. Blood on my tongue.
I curled in on myself, trying to hold the pieces together.
You are Delbeyrah, I whispered to myself. You are fire. You are not broken. Not yet.
But I didn't believe the words.
Not that night.
---
They came less frequently after that, but every visit was worse. Sometimes I woke with no memory of what they'd done. Sometimes I remembered too much.
And sometimes, in the haze, I saw a face.
A boy. No older than me. Silver-blond hair. Eyes like frost. He watched me through the bars. Silent. Unmoving.
Not a jailer.
Not a rescuer.
Just... a witness.
---
I don't know how long it lasted.
Days bled into each other. My body weakened. My thoughts wandered. I stopped asking if anyone was coming.
But somewhere, deep under the ash of what I'd been, a spark still smoldered.
A whisper that said: They fear you. That's why you're here. That's why they haven't killed you.
They needed me for something. That meant I still had value.
And value was leverage.
I began watching the guards again. Not their faces—their movements. The way they locked the door. Which one lingered longer than the others. Who avoided eye contact.
One of them was afraid of me.
And that meant I had a way out.
Eventually.
Someday.
I clung to that thought like a lifeline.
Not hope.
Just strategy.
Because hope had no place in this hell.
But revenge?
Revenge could survive anything.
---