The descent to the under-palace was a study in engineered discomfort. Every step from the Hall of First Light toward the dungeons shed color, warmth, and air until the corridor itself became an act of refusal, a denial of Myrae’s cultivated ease. Allandra preferred it that way.
She walked with measured tread, Daravan at her shoulder, his silence more forceful than a brigade of guards. There was no music in the stone; it amplified only what was useful. Today, the corridor vibrated with a pulse that did not belong, a sharp metallic clank, arrhythmic but relentless, the sort of sound designed to keep the mind’s teeth on edge.
Ahead, the cell door’s little viewing grille spat out a strobe of light, then went black, then pulsed again. Daravan had devised the system himself: mirrored plates set to reflect sun-fire in random intervals, interspersed with hammer blows to the cell bars. It was not pain, but it was the kind of torture that wore out the will by thinning the boundary between night and day, sleep and waking, self and not-self.
Allandra paused at the cell, the ancient wood gone gray and splintered with use. The grille snapped open and a wedge of glare cut across her eyes. She did not blink. She let Daravan unlock the mechanism, then dismissed him with a small tilt of her head, a gesture both necessary and perfectly legible: be ready, but unseen.
She stepped inside.
The first impression was of heat, dry and bitter, the way lime kilns felt in early autumn. The second was of movement, Serali, already upright, shoulders squared, iron at her wrists stretched taut to keep her balanced against the wall. Sweat slicked her hair to her skull, made dark rivers along the sharp ridges of her cheeks, but her stance was not that of a woman broken. She watched Allandra with eyes that would have been beautiful if not for the red that rimmed them, the violence of it so raw it seemed the air itself might bruise.
“Your Majesty,” Serali croaked, voice gone to gravel.
Allandra let the pause play out, watching the way Serali’s focus lagged by half a second. The girl was exhausted but unbowed, which was itself a problem.
“I see Daravan’s methods have not gone unnoticed,” Allandra said, voice smooth as the first layer of ice on the fountains at dawn.
Serali bared her teeth in something that might have been a smile. “I’ve had worse,” she said, then coughed, which undid the bravado somewhat.
Allandra let her gaze fall to the manacles, the rawness at each wrist, then back up. “Then you should be more willing to talk.”
“I’d rather watch you get creative,” Serali said. There was a flicker of humor behind the pain, a spark that matched the old rumors about Night Fae: that they preferred to die on their own terms, even if it meant suffering a little extra to salt the wound.
Allandra moved closer, the Sun Fae light she carried in her own body a constant, unwavering counterpoint to the cell’s harsh flashes. She let the orb, her concession to mercy, placed in a prior visit, hover by the pallet, its gentle radiance now all but drowned by Daravan’s weaponized strobes.
She did not sit. To sit would be to concede a measure of equality.
“Tell me about the mission,” Allandra said, lowering her voice. “Not the story you gave me last week. The real reason Xuiven blood runs all the way to the heart of Myrae, disguised as a stowaway.”
Serali licked her lips, dry and cracked. She said nothing.
Allandra waited. The silence grew, filled with the hot-cold buzz of the tormented air. She could have let it ride, let Serali sweat out an answer, but Daravan’s new timeline was unambiguous. “We need her open by the month’s end,” he’d said. “Not a day longer. The city expects it.”
The Queen of Sun Fae was not in the habit of indulging city expectations, but she understood the principle.
She shifted tactics. “You’re not a soldier,” Allandra said, a bit softer. “You have the scars, yes, and the training. But you’re too quick with the mouth. You don’t know how to take orders. Even your lies are crooked.”
This provoked something. Serali’s chin lifted. “I didn’t come here to spy. I came to leave. You people make that very hard.”
“‘You people,’” Allandra echoed, lips curling. “Do you think I’m the one chaining Xuiven girls to breeding benches and using them for spell fodder?”
Serali’s eyes darkened, the pupils swallowing color. “I think your court would do the same if it suited.”
Allandra stepped forward, sudden enough that Serali’s arms tensed, ready for the blow. Instead, Allandra gripped Serali’s jaw in a thumb and two fingers, forcing her to meet the Queen’s eyes.
She searched for fear. She found only the thick, inarticulate hatred of the truly cornered.
For a moment, Allandra could see herself reflected in the violet-black irises; her own face, impassive, hard as the mountain light. She squeezed, just a hair harder.
“You’re going to talk,” Allandra said, low and slow. “Or Daravan will take a turn. I’d rather not waste your mind before I have to, but if I must, I will.”
Serali spat, missing Allandra but not by much. “If you want a story, ask your guards. They’ve been writing my obituary since I got here.”
Allandra did not let go. She leaned in, close enough to feel Serali’s ragged breath. In the old days, she would have enjoyed the contest, but now the nearness felt like something else, hot electric line drawn too tight.
Serali’s jaw worked against the grip. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth a line of fury, and for a fleeting, traitorous second, Allandra thought: She’s more striking when she’s angry. There was a geometry to her, a raw edge, the kind of face that could divide a room or hold it in thrall. Allandra filed the thought away, then squeezed again until Serali winced.
“You will answer me,” she said. “Or you’ll regret it.”
Serali blinked, slow, defiant. “I already do.”
Allandra released her, abrupt. Serali stumbled, but did not fall.
The Queen drew herself up, reasserting the length of her spine, the measured steadiness of her breath. She let her hands fall to her sides, fingers flexing once to remind herself of the control she still had.
“Very well,” Allandra said, her voice regaining its earlier ice. “Daravan will continue. When you’re ready to speak, say so. I’ll have them leave your tongue intact.”
She turned and strode to the door. As she passed, she let her eyes flicker to the orb she’d left, the gentle, warm light she’d hoped might soften the cell’s edge. It seemed small now, childish, nearly invisible beneath the glare.
She left the room without looking back.
Behind her, the metal clanged again, and the world went white with another burst. Daravan would be waiting, silent as a priest, ready to resume his careful clockwork of torment.
Allandra walked the corridor back to the Hall of First Light, her jaw clenched tight enough that it ached. She told herself it was anger at the prisoner, at Daravan, at her brother and the whole backward city for needing this to begin with.
She did not admit what she had felt in the cell: a single, unguarded moment of admiration for the very thing she was supposed to break.
Upstairs, the sunlight poured through the high windows, pure and yellow as fresh-cut hay. The Queen paused at the foot of the stairs, one hand to the rail, letting the color seep back into her bones.
She had the next move, as always. But in the depths below, there was a counterplay, ugly and alive, waiting for her to slip.
Chapter 20: You’re Done
Days lost meaning in the patternless dark, replaced by a rhythm measured only in clangs and flashes. There was the iron bar, banged against the cell at odd intervals, and the white pulse of Daravan’s stuttered sun-fire, which burned the shape of its own absence into Serali’s vision every time she shut her eyes. She learned to read the false night from the afterimages: a perfect blue-green square, floating just behind her retinas, repeating until she saw it even when she was awake.
Her body learned, too. The tremors started in her hands, at first only when she tried to hold the water cup, later when she tried to stand, and finally even as she slept, her fingers jerking in unison with the metal strikes as if they were attached by wire. The food got worse, or maybe she did; every mouthful turned to paste before it even touched her teeth, and once she went a whole “day” (or two, or four, she didn’t know) without swallowing a thing.
She hallucinated, sometimes, or thought she did. Voices in the corridor that belonged to no one, a breeze that never reached her face, the cold sweetness of Lyehiran snow melting on her tongue. She dreamed that she was outside again, hauling kindling up a mountain path with her sister, the air so thin it sang when she breathed. When she woke, the only song was the buzz of her own hunger, the burn at her wrists, and the slow drumbeat of the cell being itself, over and over.
Still, she tracked Allandra’s visits with absolute precision. There was a timbre to the queen’s approach; her boots hit the flagstones with a clean, clipped authority, never sliding, never stumbling. The guards outside the door snapped to at attention in a way they never did for Daravan. The silence before the key turned was longer, deliberate, as if to let Serali know that Allandra could stand on the other side of the wood for as long as she pleased, measuring her prey before she entered.
Serali told herself it was tactical to pay attention. That knowing when Allandra was coming meant knowing when to brace for questions instead of noise, and that questions, at least, could be answered or refused. But as the deprivation dragged her consciousness thin, she started to admit another truth: Allandra was the only real thing in the cell. Everything else; hunger, light, pain, the slow progression of her own disintegration, was background. The queen was the moment when color bled back into the world, when lines reasserted themselves, when the game resumed.
She might have liked her, in some broken, sleep-deprived corner of her mind. Allandra was not a coward, and she did not insult Serali with the easy lies of pity or negotiation. When she threatened, it was real, and when she was angry, it was honest. Serali decided this was the deprivation talking and resolved not to think about it again.
The next time Allandra came, Serali was slumped against the far wall, arms limp and ankles crossed. The manacles had dug so deep that the old scab on her right wrist had vanished, replaced by a smear of something wet and black. She did not bother to hide it; if they wanted her alive, they would have to leave her hands attached.
Allandra entered with the same composure as ever, though her face was less lacquered, her hair loose at the temples, the sleeves of her gown rolled back to show the fine lattice of burn scars. She closed the door with a click, stood just inside, and waited.
Serali beat her to it. “If you’re here to see if I’m broken, you can go,” she said. “I’m too tired to even play at it.”
Allandra’s mouth twitched. “I’m here to see if you’re ready to talk.”
Serali shrugged. “About what? How a Sun Fae queen has nothing better to do than harass a dirty bastard in a hole? Or is it that you’re lonely, and the court is full of cowards?”
The slap was sudden, a precise, open-handed crack that left Serali’s head swimming. For a second, the world went black, then blue, then green, then snapped back to sharpness. Her cheek throbbed, her ear rang, and she could feel the hot, insistent outline of Allandra’s palm on her skin.
She did not flinch. She let the silence hold.
Allandra stood above her, eyes narrowed and unblinking. “You will answer,” she said. “Or the methods change. I told you that.”
Serali blinked, once, and tasted copper. She tongued the blood, letting it fill her mouth before she swallowed. “I have nothing left to give.”
The Queen’s nostrils flared, a flare of heat in the otherwise frost-bound voice. “Then you’re done.”
She left, not bothering to close the door quietly. The sound echoed, a single exclamation point at the end of a sentence that had run too long.
Serali sat, blinking. The pain in her cheek was a clear, cold thing, a new sensation, almost pleasant compared to the blur of everything else. She let it ground her, let it anchor her to the floor, to the wall, to the certainty that she was still here, still herself.
She understood, now, that her time was measured not in days, but in the number of times Allandra could be bothered to return. That there would come a morning, soon, when it would be Daravan’s voice at the door, and the only thing waiting would be the final question, the one no one ever survived.
She listened for the next clang, and when it came, she counted the seconds until the flash.
The next morning, if it was morning, if the world still obeyed the tyranny of sun and season, Serali set herself to work. She counted the time between the opening of the meal slot and the arrival of the tray: thirty-three seconds, enough to shift from the pallet to the door and back, to pace the full length of her chain, to breathe. The guard always waited a beat before sliding the tray in, as if he expected a trap. He never looked her in the eye.
She watched him for a dozen cycles, then made a plan.
The food came at odd hours, but the guard was always alone. He carried the tray with both hands, balanced it awkwardly, set it down to manage the lock, and never noticed that Serali’s manacles gave her just enough reach to touch the foot of the door if she lay flat and stretched. She practiced the motion; moving slow, making herself small, waiting until the guard’s attention flagged, then snapping back, silent, to her usual posture. She bruised her shoulder twice on the stone; she did not make a sound.
The last time Allandra visited, she left behind a phrase Serali could not shake. “You will answer, or you’ll regret it.” It wasn’t a threat; it was a promise. The next time the queen came, Serali would have to decide whether to talk, or to die in this hole.
She did not intend to do either.
When the meal slot scraped open, Serali was curled on the pallet, knees tucked to chest. The guard, thinking her asleep, rattled the door before unlocking it, then hesitated. She did not move. He opened the door halfway and leaned in, tray held close to his ribs.
She waited for the moment his shadow fell over her. Then she snapped upright, using the slack in the chain to hurl herself into his shins. He toppled, tray clattering, and she was on him before he could shout. The chain itself was a weapon, she swung it once, catching him across the temple, and he went slack, eyes rolling up. She pried the ring of keys from his belt, dragged his body into the cell, and locked the door behind her, leaving the man to bleed quietly on the straw.
The corridor beyond was brighter than she remembered, the walls washed in the clean, early blue of sunrise. She did not stop to savor it. She ran.
Her legs were weak, the muscles melted to rubber, but she forced them into motion. At each turn, she checked for the sound of pursuit, nothing, then a yell, then nothing again. She navigated by instinct, following the gradient of cold air toward the stairs. Twice she turned down the wrong passage and had to double back, the chain on her wrists dragging behind her like an accusation.
The main hall was empty, the silence so profound it made her want to scream. She reached the bottom of the grand staircase and hesitated: up, or out? Up led to the Queen. Out led to the city, the unknown, the sky.
The alarms sounded before she could decide. A bell, heavy and slow, then another, higher and insistent, layering chaos over her escape. She ducked into a side corridor and ran blindly, not thinking, not planning, just following the nearest seam in the world.
The hallway dead-ended at a nondescript door, unguarded, unmarked. Serali heard the clatter of boots behind her, the echo of shouts. She turned the handle and pushed.
Inside, it was dusk. The light was gold, soft, filtered through curtains the color of egg yolk. The floor was covered in a thick rug, woven in a sunburst pattern, and every surface was crowded with toys; wooden animals, carved horses, puzzles in a thousand shapes. A window seat ran the length of the far wall, cushions piled high in a riot of green and yellow. In the center of it all, a little girl sat, cross-legged, reading a book.
She looked up. Her eyes were bright, green as the Queen’s, and her mouth made a perfect “O” of surprise.
Serali froze. For a moment, the alarms vanished, the pain and blood and hunger shrank to nothing, and there was only the girl, and the light, and the soft, impossible hush of a world without enemies.
The door clicked shut behind her, sealing the two of them inside.
Serali stared. The girl stared back, then cocked her head.
In the hallway beyond, the bells kept ringing.