Six days had passed since the attack on Erasmus. For six agonizing days, they had endured the journey to this place. It was a fortress built with thick walls of heavy stone, windowless save for the towers.
Its dungeons lie beneath the fortress, a countless number of prison cells. As they were led through its winding corridors, Severin could feel the vast weight of it all pressing down on him from above, a tremendous sense of mass and confinement. Faint sounds echoed through its halls--
The cries.
The moans.
The screams.
But even the sounds were not the worst part of it.
Ultimately, it was the stench. The smell of death and decay clung heavily to each chamber they visited.
As they passed by one cell, a prisoner threw up his forearm to shield against the lantern light. His hair was greying, disheveled and matted through long years of neglect. In another cell, Severin spotted a figure of a man--or what it appeared to be--crouching at the wall below his window, scraping at the stones with long, curved nails. Dried blood mixed with dirt was caked beneath them.
The other captives fared no better. All of them were dirty and threadbare, with faces lacking any sign of life. The odor of human waste wafted through the air from the chamber pots too-seldomly emptied, coupled with the faint smell of decomposition.
How long had they been kept here? Would he be left in this place to rot like the others?
When they had stopped, he was roughly pushed into a cell along with the Asharan princess. The thick wooden bars slammed shut, chained in place by a single lock.
Their own prison was a stony chamber not even ten paces wide. It held a pallet of straw ticking, a low wooden stool and two buckets; one containing water to drink and the other to be used as a bedpan. High on the opposite wall, there was a single window from which a chilling breeze drifted through.
North. They were somewhere north.
Twice a day, a guard brought in food, varying in quality and quantity alike. Sometimes they were given nothing more than stale bread and old porridge, and at other times it was fish broth or a slab of mutton. At first, Severin had been scarcely able to keep it down, but when the hunger came, one could hardly be fastidious. And so, he forced himself to eat.
But she did not.
Their journey had been carried out in silence as neither one spoke to the other. Since their imprisonment, the Asharan princess sat huddled in the far corner of their cell, facing the stone wall and unmoving from her spot. For the past few days, she did not eat. She did not sleep.
Was she ill? His heartbeat sped at the possibility.
"Here," Severin offered as he carried a bowl of soup over to her, "You should try and eat something to keep up your strength."
"I'm not hungry," Aaliyah answered as she simply turned away from him.
For once, he had sought to do someone else a kindness, only to have his efforts dismissed. Did she take him for some tedious servant? A scowl formed on his scarred face. "Then starve to death if that is your wish," Severin said, more harshly than he intended as he placed the bowl onto the floor beside her. His eyes narrowed vehemently as he waited for a response. When she made no movement, he continued, "My conscience is not so fragile as to try and save your life against your will. If death is what you wanted, then I should have let him kill you and save us both the trouble--"
"Why didn't you?" she asked in a strange intonation.
His body stilled. Why he had surrendered, he did not completely understand. A part of him did not want to see her die, as so many others had died by his hands. Despite the war between Ashara and Drustan--regardless of all hatreds justified and imagined--she was personally blameless.
There was another reason; one closer to heart. Throughout the years, he had watched men live and die on the battlefields. The women and the children--they were no exceptions either. He had watched families torn apart, and he had heard their cries of sorrow.
But a large part of him was desensitized to a great many deal of things. Perhaps that was for the best. A man such as he could not afford to feel. Saying farewell was a thousand times more painful when it is said to someone whom you love. That had been the reason why he chose to distance himself from others. He did not want to love. He did not want to care.
And yet, that night on the ship when they last spoke, he had felt something. As the general listened to her song, he dreamt not of an empire borne from war and death, but a place of grace and beauty. He imagined a life not filled with bloodshed, where each day was lived in uncertainty whether he would see the next rise of dawn.
He had tried to envision the homeland which he had never been a part of--a house built by a river's edge, surrounded by lush fields of swaying grass. He would've had a wife and children, and a family to call his own. It was something which he had never sought for himself, until she had briefly mentioned it.
It was a strange notion.
Would he even be the same person? Had history been different, they might have been friends instead of enemies.
What might have been. What could have been. Those words belonged only in dreams and songs--intangible and meaningless--for they held no purpose in the present world. There was no point in wallowing in regret or sorrow, as history still remains unaltered. Despite her assurance of otherwise, a part of her will always despise him for who he is and for what he's done.
He stood before her now as a remorseless killer, undeserving of any sympathy. His hands were stained in blood, a taint which could not be washed clean by any method.
"I had acted rashly in a moment of weakness," Severin answered bitterly, "A mistake now sorely realized. Do not take it for a kindness." He did not know he had expected from her--not tears of gratitude, surely--but even a simple acknowledgement would have sufficed. A sliver of his subconscious had hoped for something more than indifference.
The Asharan princess opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it and said nothing more. The silence between them was soon filled with a quiet prayer, for the girl who had died the night on the ship, so that her soul might be guided to the afterlife.
Was this the reason for her refusal to eat? She was grieving over the worthless life of serving girl? It was absurd. "She was just a slave," Severin remarked callously.
The Asharan princess turned to him with an angered expression on her face, one which he had never seen before. "She was my friend."
"If you must pray, then pray to your gods to release us from this hell... and what ever good that will do," Severin mocked. "Perhaps Setesh will be moved by your pleas, and come flying here on his great winged horse to whisk us away," he added in a sarcastic tone.
The general was being deliberately cruel again. Of this, he was well aware. It was an inherent facet of himself which had never been fully tempered, and the unpleasant surroundings further brought out the worst in him.
It was this place. It was the stench. It was never-ending screams which faintly echoed through the dark corridors, slowing driving him into insanity.
But his point still stands, as her effort was for naught. The gods have never answered to prayers. They did not listen, nor do they care.
A woman dressed in grey garb stood leaning by the entrance. Vex was her name--not the one she was born with--but the one that she was given when she had joined the guild as so many others had done before.
She was nearly six feet in height--taller than most men and no less fiercesome to those who knew her well. Her light hair was cropped short, highlighting the prominent bone structure of her face. And it was a solemn face; one which never smiled. Indeed, there was nothing pretty about her save for hereyes, which were the color of amber in sunlight. And now, Cadeon found himself under the scrutiny of its golden gaze.
"You called for me?" she asked in a bored voice.
"Have the Asharan princess bathed and brought to my room."
"I am not your servant, Cadeon," she replied indignantly with arms crossed against her chest, one brow raised as if to challenge him.
"Yes, but I still outrank you," he answered in an even tone, "And besides, you're the only other woman here."
For a long time she stood in perfect silence, causing him to wonder if she had heard. Finally, she spoke, "Why is the girl still here? You know what the orders were--"
"I do not need you to lecture me," he interrupted. "Go, and do as you're told."
"Fine. But don't expect me to be the new caretaker for your little pet," she answered curtly as she turned around to leave.
Cadeon sighed wearily as he listened to the sound of her footsteps echoing as she walked down the hallway.
Vex. There was not a more fitting name for one such as her. Although she followed his every command with exact precision, there was always a look of disdain in her eyes. A silent defiance. But despite her troublesome nature, she was useful enough.
Aaliyah, he whispered. Now that was a pretty name, one which brought a smile to lips.
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