CHAPTER TWENTY
The growling chasm in my middle finally got me off the cot, away from the strange sense of safety it provided, and to one of those metal trays scattered on the floor. I poked at it first, testing to see if I could discern from texture alone what food I’d committed to eating blind. Hard, stale bread and a gelatinous, lumpy mess in the middle of the tray.
I sniffed at the goop in the middle.
Meaty.
I licked the smallest bit off my finger.
Cold, congealed stew. Whatever, I needed food. I ate it and two more tray’s worth. Then, I counted the trays piled against the cell door. Or, I tried to at least. I kept losing track. It was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen. That’s, what, six days’ worth of meals?
Six days.
“Have I been here that long?”
“The darkness changed your sleep cycles. It happens to everyone.”
I spun around, kicking a tray by accident and coming face to face with the alligator once more.
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re eating again. It’s what the Blood King charged me with.”
“Making me eat?”
“Keeping you alive until the ceremony, foolish girl.”
I folded my arms. “What’s it matter if I’m alive for the ceremony?”
The alligator grinned at me, scaly lips pulling back to reveal pale pink gums and broken, pointed teeth. “Now you’re asking the right questions.” When he didn’t continue, I gestured for him to do so. “Oh, I cannot tell you why. What fun would that be?”
I growled at him. A feral and wild sound that made the alligator take a half-step back.
Let’s just revel in that a minute. I made an alligator nervous.
“I cannot tell you,” repeated the reptile.
Okay, fine. He wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me that one. What about this one? “Why am I being kept separate from the others?”
He grinned once more. “To drive you mad.”
“Why?”
The gator shook his long snout at me. “That you must work out on your own, Zurie.”
“Enough! Just tell me what I need to know, damn it!”
He stepped closer, his snout only inches from me. “I told you, I cannot.” The alligator came even closer, the tip of his scaly nose brushing against my own. “But I’ll wait here while you fumble with the pieces.”
I pushed him away, both palms flat against the long smooth scales of his underbelly. He stumbled back, tripping over the tray I’d kicked earlier, but catching himself with his huge tail before he fell.
The sight was so absurd, so laughably ludicrous, I almost didn’t notice the most important thing.
I looked at my hands, then back to the alligator again.
“Who are you?” I asked once more, knowing he wouldn’t reply but needing to ask all the same.
The alligator’s gazed drifted from my hands to my dumbfounded expression. “You have your answers, Zurie. I suggest you act on them.” He disappeared, leaving me alone in utter darkness once more.
I stroked my palm, trying not to get ahead of myself. Trying to think this through one step at a time.
As soon as my palms touched the creature’s cool underbelly, a familiar sensation trickled through me. It wasn’t as strong as I remembered, it wasn’t as obvious as before, but it was there all the same.
Touching that gator flooded me with a sense of hope.
Like that treacherous bastard Dex.
“No,” I whispered to myself, quelling the urge to scream. But oh, how I wanted to howl and roar and throw every tray against the cell door.
That abomination was here, trying to trick me yet again!
I fumbled my way to the cot and sat down, mind whirring, pulse thudding in my neck like Sorin’s….
A lump formed in my throat at the thought of my Shifter King, of all my kings, my queen, and my friends locked away in a void of Lucifer’s making. I squeezed my eyes shut against the burgeoning flood of tears.
“Get it together, Zurie. You don’t have time for this.”
I shoved all thoughts of my horde into the deepest corner of my mind and tried to make sense of what happened.
If that alligator was Dex in some strange shifted form conjured to make me crazy or worse, to trick me into trusting him, then I couldn’t believe anything he said. Not what day it was although the trays seemed to support his assertion.
What else? What else did he say that I could discount?
That I was in this hellhole to drive me mad.
I believed that one.
That I was being kept alive until the ceremony.
That one rang true as well.
I struggled to recall any other claims the Dexigator made.
He’d been clever enough not to assert much, resorting to snide remarks about figuring it out myself.
I shook my head. I was getting sidetracked. It didn’t matter if Dex lied or not. What mattered was I still felt something when I touched him. What did that mean?
Did I still have magic?
Had Dex given me a bit of magic, a small fraction of what his father had?
That had to be it, right?
“Then have it.” The words he’d spoken after I insisted I’d never wished my magic away.
He’d given it back.
I reached deep, searching for that spark, that twisting vein of power within me. I still felt nothing, emptiness.
My mind raced for an explanation.
CRACK!
The cot sunk and a soft, furry head pressed against the back of my hand. “Chicken?” I whispered as I reached to stroke her familiar form.
“Yes, sweet Zurie?”
I froze, hand locked in mid-stroke, hanging limp above my cat’s head. Okay, now you really have lost your fucking marbles.
“I’m sorry for the delay. They only just turned you back on,” the sweet, musical voice said.
Not only was my cat talking to me, she wasn’t making any sense, which definitely meant I’d gone crazy.
A long moment later, she bumped her head into my hand again. “Are you all right, lovely?”
I swallowed hard. “Chicken?” My voice broke on the vowel.
“Mmmm?” the sound trilled from her feline throat.
“Are you really talking to me right now?”
“Yes. This place has so much magic! Far more than any other place we’ve been. Why did we ever live in the place with no magic? And why are you in such a dark room?”
I shook my head. “It’s a long story. Can you make it not so dark?”
“Well, I don’t know. I only just discovered this place with so much magic.”
A moment passed, another sharp crack sung in the air and a small glowing orb, about the size of a golf ball appeared over Chicken’s head. I squinted, blocking the light, but soon my eyes adjusted and I stared into the perfect green gaze of my fucking superhero cat.
“You look awful.”
I shrugged. “Living in a hole will do that.”
Chicken looked at me like I was the dumbest person to ever talk to a cat. “This is not a hole, Zurie. It’s a room.”
I smiled and scratched her behind the ears. “Noted.” Also noted: cats don’t do sarcasm.
Chicken’s tiny pink tongue flicked out to meet her raised paw as she set about cleaning her lovely face, and I couldn’t help thinking how much her silly name didn’t match her musical voice and regal disposition. “Sorry about the name.”
She nodded. “I never worked out how you came upon that one but it’s mine and you gave it to me. On that merit alone it’s a good and worthy name.”
“Well, it’s because you like to sit with your paws tucked….” I trailed off as she gave me a stare that said both “I don’t care,” and “Please stop explaining the joke of my name.”
“So, how did you find me?”
“Don’t you listen? I already said they just turned you back on.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means, Chicken.”
She turned away. Hopefully to collect her thoughts and not because of how stupid her human was. After a time, she faced me once more. “The thing, the magic that lets me find you, it was off. Now it’s on. There. I can’t say it any simpler than that.”