CHAPTER NINETEEN
When I was eight or nine years old, I took a school trip to the city aquarium. I’d never been to one before, my family wasn’t the type, and in a self-conscious effort to not look as excited as I was, I wandered off alone. It wasn’t long when I came across a dark room lined with tanks full of tiny fish. The room and tanks were so dark I pressed my face to the glass to see the little fish better and when one swam close enough, my brain couldn’t make sense of why the fish looked so weird. I stepped back to read the plaque, thinking maybe it held the explanation and ran screaming from the room.
The exhibit was of a species of cave-dwelling fish that live in such abject darkness they lose their eyeballs in adulthood.
People need light. It tells our bodies when and how to do things—sleep hormones, feel-good hormones, hunger, so many things depend on the triggers light gives.
The damp, cold air seeped through my leathers, sealing in a layer of clammy, chilled skin. My fingers and toes and the tip of my nose tingled with the cold and my best estimate was I’d only been in the total darkness of this cell for a few hours, though I couldn’t be sure. I’d examined the walls and floor a dozen times looking for a secret way out or a loose bar I could squeeze through. But there was nothing except me and the darkness and the cold.
I’d never been afraid of the dark as a child. I’d seen real monsters in the light of day so what did I have to fear from the darkness?
This was different. The sensory deprivation drove me to a peculiar sort of frenzy, singing to myself, hiding under the single, rough cover on the cot and jumping at the slightest noise.
Eventually, I fell asleep and when I woke, I tripped on three trays of uneaten food. Panic rose in me as I tried to will myself to figure out how much time had passed. Had I been asleep long enough for three meals? With no way of knowing for sure, I sat on the cot and tried again to think my way out of this cell and out of this realm with all my people in tow. Only I didn’t know what day it was or how many days were left until the ceremony and what’s worse, my brain refused to put two coherent thoughts together. It was like trying to think through oatmeal.
Then, I started hallucinating.
Flashes in my periphery of impossible things: an alligator, a semi-truck, a dancing Santa, Dex smiling at me with his dead eyes. Things that didn’t cast shadows or emit light so I shouldn’t have seen in the pitch blackness of the cell. Things that the sane part of my mind reasoned away.
Your eyes needed stimulation so they manufactured something to look at. Simple.
It made sense, but only to a point. A point that was tested the moment my hallucinations began speaking.
“Don’t let him break you,” said the alligator with a crooked smile and a scar across his snout.
My stomach dropped at the sound of his deep, masculine voice. Strangely, his words were unaffected by the reptilian configuration of his lips, teeth, and larynx.
I wanted to hide, squeeze my eyes shut and hide under the blanket, until certain the impossible alligator in my prison cell disappeared to wherever he’d come from—because everyone knows nothing can get you if you’re under the covers, even alligators.
“Yeah, well that would be easier if I weren’t so damn cold,” my voice came out thin but raspy. How long had it been since I’d spoken?
The alligator vanished.
Time passed, more trays piled on the floor but I wasn’t hungry and even so, I couldn’t make myself leave the safety of the cot and blanket. As hard as it was to keep my train of thought, I tried to shift around the pieces I had until they made a picture. I didn’t dare say them out loud in case a guard or Lucifer was listening but I shuffled what I knew for sure until my head hurt. Then I did it again.
Dex is a liar.
The Blood King isn’t crazy.
I’m not special or chosen. He only made us think so to get us here.
A scratching noise, like thick claws on the ground startled me, ratcheting up my heartbeat as my fists gripped the thin cover in my lap.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” said a muffled but familiar, masculine voice.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said, eyes squeezed shut. “I’m just not particularly fond of talking with hallucinations. Seems like it might hasten my impending insanity.”
“I’m no hallucination, Zurie.”
I turned, allowing my eyes to open just a crack. The alligator stood on its hind legs next to my bed, lips pulled back into a grin, with the end of a thick blanket clamped between his jaws.
“What the...?”
He dropped it on the cot and it took me a full minute to register the real, physical sensations that accompanied. Weight depressing the cot, the edge on my thigh, and the clean scent of the fabric. I scrambled for it, afraid if I waited too long, if I didn’t find it soon enough, the blanket would vanish. I sighed holding the soft, thick fleece in my fists and fought the sting of tears as I looked at the alligator once more.
I slung it around my shoulders, rubbing my face against the warm, dense fabric. “What is this?”
“A blanket, stupid. You said you were cold.”
I laughed, the sound foreign, a hollow echo of what it should have been. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant. But I’m glad to see you’ve kept your sense of humor.”
“Who are you?”
“That, I cannot say.”
“Fine, I don’t really care. I’ll settle for you getting me fuck out of here.”
The alligator sighed. Ask me what a sighing alligator looks like. Go ahead. Because it’s fucking hilarious. A surge of giggles welled in me that I was helpless against. I laughed so hard and so long, I clutched at my sides until my abs ached.
I forced myself to stop before I dipped a toe into hysteria, its call so close, its pull so insistent.
When I’d gotten myself together, the alligator leveled a hard gaze at me, his vertical pupils dilating to their full width. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted your magic stripped, didn’t you? You longed to be free of the constant strain on your body, am I right?”
“No, you’re not right. I wanted to find a cure for the drain on me, yes, but I never wanted to give it up. I wanted to use my power to help the realms and save my friend. Sure, I wished it were easier but I never once wished my magic wasn’t mine.”
“Don’t lie to me, girl,” the alligator hissed, jaws snapping, saliva dripping. “I know how much being Chosen took from you. You can’t convince me you welcomed it.”
I rounded on him. “Of course I didn’t want it! Not when it came with side-effects. Not when the power ate through all my body’s energy. But I trusted it. I trusted the prophecy. I didn’t question or wonder why I was chosen or wallow in how horrible it was. I did what I fucking had to do. So don’t you dare stand there all smug and reptilian and tell me I didn’t want this. Because I did.”
“So have it.” The alligator vanished without another word.
“Hey! Get back here! What the hell does that mean?” I yelled into the darkness of my cold cell.