I WOULDN’T ALWAYS BE IN THE PIT.
Ilina’s vow still echoed in my head. And my parents were surely doing everything in their power to secure my release. The Pit was a life sentence, but all my life I’d been an exception. I was Mira Minkoba. The Hopebearer. The Luminary Council needed me.
Didn’t they?
Ghosts of anxiety still urged me to scream and cry, but I squashed them. There was nothing useful about letting the panic take over if I could push it back. The facts were these: I was here, on Khulan, and in the Pit. There was only one thing I could do now.
Survive.
All I had to do was wait until my parents got me out of here. The Luminary Council would see reason.
If I wanted to survive, I needed to fit in.
The Drakontos mimikus was one of the more misunderstood species. Lots of people thought they mimicked other dragons to mock them, but the truth was that their scales changed color, their voices changed timbre, and their movements shifted to match the dragons’ around them for protection. They weren’t very strong on their own—as far as dragons went—but if they looked like another species, other dragons were less likely to pick on them.
I could be a Drakontos mimikus. Blending in with the tougher dragons.
Which meant I had to stop crying.
Too late for that. If Altan and the others had seen the panic attack—
“They didn’t see it,” I whispered to myself. “No one saw it.” Even the girl across the hall was still in the same position. She hadn’t seen it, either.
But surely others had heard.
They weren’t guards. It didn’t matter.
But . . .
“Stop.” I scrubbed tears off my face. Grit from the floor scratched my skin, and my stomach turned at the patches of oil. And . . . a small, painful bump right on the tip of my chin. Oh, Damina. I was falling apart.
A small whimper escaped my throat. Yes, I had a pimple. Normal girls got them all the time. Once a month, Ilina complained about a blemish that grew just above her jaw. She always treated it, covered it, and no one ever noticed. It was hardly the worst thing that had happened to her, and it certainly wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me.
With a deep and shuddering breath, I closed my eyes and listened.
To someone sniffing down the hall.
A cough.
A faint, tortured groan.
And someone crying in their sleep.
The three stone walls around me did nothing to muffle their voices. My own sobs must have been so loud and—
“Stop it,” I muttered. The dregs of the first attack nipped at my mind. I couldn’t let the spiral start again. I wasn’t even sure how much time I’d lost to the first one. It felt like night, because of the stillness, and it was usually night by the time my attacks faded in a medicine-filled haze of relief, but maybe it was still the first day. Or the next day. Hours could have passed and I’d never have known, because the quality of light never changed. It stayed pale and dirty, slanting through the metal grille of my cell door.
“Do they ever cover the noorestones?” My voice was low and hoarse; it hurt to speak.
No one answered, but a sneeze echoed through the cavernous cellblock.
“I’m Mira—” I stopped short of adding my surname. It wasn’t wise to announce my identity. After all, I didn’t know why anyone else was in prison. Even Altan thought it was best to keep my identity secret. I’d have to be more careful in what kind of information I released.
Trusting the wrong people was why I was here in the first place.
Pulling myself off the floor was difficult. Though the air was warm, my muscles felt cramped and stiff. My throat scratched with thirst, and my stomach hollowed with hunger, but who knew when they fed us here. If they ever did.
By the pale light of the hallway noorestones, I took stock of everything inside my cell.
1. A low wooden bed that ran the length of the left wall.
2. A thin lump on the bed that turned out to be a blanket, or something that used to call itself a blanket. Filthy, but it was all dirt from the floor and not from . . . other things that could have been smeared on it.
3. A pillow. Most of the stuffing was gone.
4. A rusted iron lid over a sewage hole. It was better than a bucket, but not by much. Even though the hole was dark and empty and hopefully let out into a refuse area far away, the stink was overwhelming. I couldn’t replace the lid fast enough.
I shuddered. During the journey here, I hadn’t spent much time imagining prison; I’d been too busy being miserable about my immediate situation. But this . . . This was a hole in the ground. This was an insult. This was cruelty.
The noorestones went dark.
I jumped and screamed, then slammed my hands to my mouth to cut off any sound. It was just the dark. The light would come back. Surely.
It was so dark, though. Complete blackness. No matter how wide I opened my eyes, no light touched them. I couldn’t see anything. Was this what it felt like to be blind? Complete blackness?
Noorestones didn’t work like this. They didn’t just go dark; they needed to be covered at night. This shouldn’t be possible.
The absence of light was disorienting. Oppressive. Desperately, I squeezed my eyes shut until tiny stars burst behind my eyelids. It was something. Almost like I was in control. If I refused to acknowledge the darkness—
What if the warriors had done this to release some sort of slimy creature into the cells? The idea of a venomous snake slithering around my feet sent a spark of panic through me.
No. Not again. I wouldn’t let the panic win again so soon.
I opened my eyes, desperate to see, but that just deepened the sensation of isolation. Like I was the only person alive. The only thing. This darkness was tangible—another medium to exist in, like water—and I just wanted to step out.
This was ridiculous. There was no creature loose. The darkness wasn’t a force.
I breathed through the surging adrenaline, counting each exhale. One, two, three . . . Everything was fine.
Down the hall, someone else started to scream. A little relief trickled in, because I wasn’t the only one who was terrified.
But his voice echoed off the walls, as strong as the blackness. And he wouldn’t stop.
I tried to ignore the shrieks, but it was hard to keep track of how many breaths I was taking when his voice was overpowering. There was nothing to see. Not much to smell or taste or touch. Which left hearing as the sense I should have been able to count on, and it was like the darkness all over again. Instead of counting my own breaths, my mind switched to counting the number of seconds he screamed. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen . . . How long could he possibly go on?
With my fingers stuffed in my ears, I imagined running to my door and shouting for him to stop. Begging. But I’d never been confrontational, and demanding someone to stop screaming when he was terrified—I couldn’t. So I toed my way toward the bed, and when my knees bumped the edge, I shuffled around to sit. All I had to do was wait him out.
“You can wait, Mira.” Not that I could hear myself.
Twenty-seven seconds.
Silence.
My ears rang, but the noise was gone. At last. Someone down the hall groaned in relief.
It was premature. Before I could relax, the screaming started again.
I whimpered and dropped my head between my knees, pressing on my ears so hard that my head ached. Someone else shouted, urging the screamer to be quiet, but the noise went on and on.
A small groan climbed up my throat as I grabbed for the pillow and blanket, and scrambled underneath the bed. Like that could protect me from his voice.
I wrapped the blanket around my head to muffle the noise, then squeezed as close as I could to the wall.
There, in the darkness, in the noise, I waited it out.