Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 30

All I know is stone ground under my skin, ringing silence, and endless night without a star in sight. Sometimes I wonder if it’s me. Have I gone blind and I just don’t know it?

Days must have passed since that fateful fight—since the world crumbled beneath my feet and I woke up here in this purgatory of nothingness. It’s a guess. There have been no signs of guards coming in or out, aside from the scent of stale bread beside my face, metal cups of water beside it. They seem to always wait until I slip into unconsciousness before leaving my food. By my hunger I assume it comes less than once per day. Pride eludes me in the moments where I consume it like a rabid beast.

The air feels… empty. Like there is nothing here for me to wield, even when I know this to be impossible. When I reach out my mind, seeking anything, it is as if someone is talking to me, but I’ve lost my hearing. I can tell there is communication happening, energy sparking, but I can’t hear it, can’t feel it .

The torment is question-less. Without interrogation from my captors. Purposeless.

Why am I alive?

A head rolling on cobbled stones.

Fionn’s head slamming into the ground as he looks back at me. Gold eyes meeting mine across a battlefield, wide in fear for me, for us.

Blood spraying, a rock crunching through bone.

I tried to save him.

I hope he’s dead.

At least then he wouldn’t be subjected to this imprisonment and the guilt that salts my wounds.

Even if the thought of never again seeing his molten eyes soften with want for me makes the air scald my lungs. The thought that I’ll never again feel his rough hands softly wander over my skin pangs through my emptiness.

My tears have dried up. I’ve received too little water to form them. So I sit in the ache they make in my eyes.

What is there to rage at but my own failures that led us all here? What do these feelings do but become acid eating at my soul? Who is there to destroy but myself?

I’ve crawled every speck of ground in this cell. Felt the crack where the doorway is, felt its solid stone, tore every fingernail in my desperation to open it.

My foot touches the door even now, hoping to be awakened by a guard coming in.

I should stop eating. Let myself waste away until I truly am nothing but a husk. End my own torment.

My instincts are becoming my enemy. They are unwilling to let me die. If I had only been strong enough to fight them all those other times. When I stared at that lump in the ground as the sun rose and fell. When I first felt those claws in my mind, grabbing, taking. I should have let them .

My toes smash into the stone wall behind the door. Someone’s coming in. Sharp light assaults my eyes.

I would fight the large figure who yanks me to my feet, but my joints are frozen in their bent position. I’ve barely moved in what feels like an eternity.

When the guard throws me out the door, there is no choice but to stumble on blind feet and blind eyes until I collapse once more. The stone beneath my knees is rough, but blessedly less cold—downright warm. I press every inch of my skin to it, still squeezing my eyes shut. Practically prostrating myself to whatever fate awaits me in this bright room just to end the agony of freezing.

I can feel the dark presence when he stands in front of my prone form.

My eyes still cannot bear the flaming light of the torches. I curl in on myself, protecting my organs.

His voice is deep and rumbling when he says, “Another poor showing from the Fae. What a pathetic excuse for life you are.” His steel-toed boot pushes me over.

I squint up at my tormentor.

Gaunt skin is cloaked in black-as-night armor from neck to toe.

There’s a raw wound where his eye should be. Even with my limited vision I note the swelling, the crusted blood around the jagged cuts that are evidence to the method of removal. There is deep purple and red bruising all around the flesh. His other black iris watches me as I take him in. The torchlight flickers in the reflections off his bald head.

He’s waiting for me to say something.

There is a panting in the silence, somewhere behind the guard. Deep, like a giant dog after a sprint. The light illuminates the green stone walls, polished and smooth, so deep in shade it nears black, with gold veins glimmering throughout.

The castle.

The only place made of this stone.

That is who holds me.

The Pretty King.

I look to the Fomorian who stares down at me hungrily.

There is nothing left for me, even as I feel distant sparks of energy now that I’ve left my cell. I can’t wield such power; I cannot even wield my own limbs.

What can I say to change an inescapable fate?

He squats down slowly, meeting my eyes with his one remaining, unashamed of his wound.

His nose scrunches up, such a human movement of disgust. “You reek.”

Surely I do. The skirt from the day I readied myself to go see Raith is stuck to my skin with my own piss. I haven’t had the awareness to notice it until this moment, as it melts in the warmth of the room outside my cell. “No matter, I can always get you cleaned.” He tilts his head, the move all lupine predator. “The king—he says if I can get you to break, I can have you.” He bares his white teeth in a smile, looking over my emaciated body before meeting my dead eyes again. “What a treat that would be.”

Something in his tone is sarcastic, the most personality I’ve ever known a Fomorian to show.

He moves his leather-gloved hand over my raw and scraped jaw, the move burning. “Now that I have you warmed up, you can tell me what I want to know.”

I just stare and listen to the deep panting in the corner.

What he wants to know? What could he possibly want to know?

“How many were traveling with you?” His eyes gleam, excited.

I have nothing if not my allegiance to the people who helped when they had every reason not to. And I will not fail them now.

He tilts his head the other way. “We have your friend. What’s his name? The one with the gold eyes? What pretty eyes the Fae always have. What pretty eyes you have. Two different colors.” He shakes his head and looks closer; I can feel his breath on my face. “Fascinating.”

I hope he sees hatred burning in my “fascinating” eyes.

The corner of his mouth quirks up again as he takes my hand and places it, palm down, on the stone floor. “It’s just been so long. So long since I’ve seen one of you. Since I’ve tasted one of you. Such boring morsels, humans are. They taste so bland. They fight so poorly, there’s no enjoyment in it. They have so little to offer.”

“Then why bother with them?” I rasp, sounding as if I’ve been screaming for days. Perhaps I have.

He smashes the metal hilt of his blade down on the knuckle of my pinkie finger, shattering it.

I scream in agony.

He moves to whisper in my ear, “Because they have something that belongs to us.”

My hand is on fire as I meet his glittering onyx eyes again, gasping as my whole body begins to shake at what I know I must endure before the end.

“How many were in your group?” he asks again.

“Just us. Just him and the other two your men killed,” I sob. I will not crack.

He strikes again, shattering the knuckle of my ring finger.

I wonder if Fionn is here. If he hears my screams and thinks I deserve it for landing us here .

In my bleariness that rings with pain, I note windowless doors lining the room. More cells.

“Please lie to me again. You scream so prettily.” He laughs, maniacally. “Where did the others go? The three that ran off.” He lifts his eyebrows.

Mad. He’s insane. And suddenly I know.

I know none of this will end quickly.

He will keep me here, breaking every bone in my body with joy in his heart. He will peel the skin from my bones and flay me alive. When he’s done, he will rape what is left of me. I see it in the run of his eyes over my breasts, my legs. He’s making plans. How best to take what he wants.

He sees my realization and nods with a smile.

The hardest thing I have ever done is keep the sobs from ripping free from my chest. The tears are already running from the pain, my body already trembling from shock.

I try to let the fear filter through my eyes though, play off the reactions my body is too far gone to hide.

My lies come out in big blubbers. “They are going to the southern continent. There is a ship that was supposed to take them, it has probably already left.” I look in his depth-less eyes, begging him to believe me.

He cocks his head again. Giving nothing away.

Death cannot come soon enough.

My plan has been unfurling in the back of my shielded mind.

I jab my finger in his injured eye, feeling it tear through the still-healing wound. Flying into the attack as abruptly as my broken body will allow.

Blood spurts from his eye as he chokes out a low shout.

I kick, scratch, and punch any weak point I can find through his armor, hoping to send him into a blind rage.

My torturer shoves me to the ground, half-blind by pain, grasping at my flailing limbs.

My claws on my good hand rake down his face, talons of vengeance and desperation. Blood wells in their wake as he grips my wrists and smashes them to the stone by my head.

I scream too, my newly broken bones crunching against the stone.

I kick out at his abdomen with every bit of energy I have, earning a grunt.

He works his way between my thighs and my bare feet hammer desperately at his lower back, aiming for kidneys.

He grips my shoulders, picking my torso up and slamming me into the ground again and again.

I let my neck go limp against every instinct, feeling the back of my head cracking on the stone again and again.

The sound of it echoes in my head and the room around me.

Torchlight blinks out of existence—once—twice—but they come back as I struggle for breath against all effort.

The wrath twisting his face, blood-streaked from his re-opened wound, tells me it is not enough. Close, but not enough.

He doesn’t break another finger.

He rips me to my feet by my arm and begins dragging me as I stumble behind him.

He brings my back to his chest, face to face with a nightmare.

He brings me to face the source of the panting from the corner—no Surin beast.

Built of shadow and ether, a hound-like projection stands, twisting and writhing as if in pain. Elongating limbs crack into spindling claws. Teeth snap at the air as they grow upward, towering over even the Fomorian who holds me.

The metamorphosis settles as a hunched beast on two legs of glowing red eyes and blade-like teeth.

My torturer whispers in my ear as I face the most horrific creature I’ve ever encountered, “Look at him. Look how he looks at you. You thought I would kill you?” I feel his panting breaths on my neck as he shakes his head. “Usually it takes years to break you Fae. Looks like the time in the human realm has caused you to weaken as they do. What a shame. I do wonder which you will taste like though, but I’ll hold off until I get my king’s permission.” He spits the word out like a curse. “The Pooka made no such promise—has no such loyalty. Things get out of hand at times, it’s unavoidable.” He lurches me towards the beast—the Pooka—laughing as I press back into him, somehow the lesser of two evils.

The beast drops slightly, one of his fists curling and meeting the ground as he leans forward to smell me. I can feel flaming hot fluttering breaths on my arm.

The Pooka growls low.

The Fomorian’s hand caresses my filthy hair as a lover would, right over the part of my head that’s cracked and bleeding from being smashed into the floor. I grit my teeth. He whispers in my ear, “I think… that I’m done for today. I think I’ll let my beast have his reward.”

He throws me at its feet, backing away with a releasing whistle.

I look up into the red glowing eyes of a nightmare as paralysis creeps over me.

The Pooka grips my arm in its claws, blood rolling from the places it pierces. His breath is hot on my neck, fluttering in moist exhales before he bites down, tearing at the place where my neck meets my shoulder.

The pain is drowned out by a sea of nightmares—so many bloody visions of a life lived alone that feel as fresh as the first day.

Visions of rattling, bloody coughs, lumps in the ground that have no reason, freezing toes in the snow, screeching beasts of a silver fogged bog, and screaming. It’s amazing I recognize them all. Horrible that I recognize them all. Fionn’s, Aine’s, Elva’s, Mariana’s, my mother’s, my father’s.

It goes on forever.

It goes on forever.