Chapter Twenty-Three
Theo
Who could had ever imagined that even silence with a loved one means something? The minutes we spent awake but in silence felt like a cleansing of all the pain that the past had cast on either of us. She was so beautiful even in the moments where she was most in pain.
Every time the sun rested on her skin and the candlelight started becoming a banal existence, we would feel the loss of time. At any moment, we were expecting the king. But he took longer than we expected, so long that we began feeling the changes of our bodies.
Perhaps that was what he wanted, or at least we thought so. It started when I felt the flow of blood in my body become faster than what it was the night before. I felt anger again, and this time the anger was making my arms stronger. We hadn’t eaten or even drank water the entire time we were trapped there.
I kept pulling the shackles again, and this time it was working. The chains were getting weaker with every pull. Elise was beginning to fall asleep. It wasn’t like the sleep we knew but a different kind—the kind in which your whole body sleeps from its frailty but your mind continues dwelling on the fears that it has lurking within it.
Rocks began falling from the ceiling with every pull. I looked up and saw that the chains were tied to the ceiling on some sort of metallic ring that was fixed deep into the bricks. I heard guards coming from far, rushing upon feeling the quivering of the cell.
I didn’t stop pulling. Instead I pulled the chains harder and faster. The door of the cell was pushed open, and one of the Hawks kicked it. His glare fell on me as I pulled one last time with all my might. The sound of the cracking relieved me, freed my arm as the metal chains swung in the air above me. He was running toward me when I swung the chains as hard as I could, hitting the side of his head and knocking him out, a sound of key chains shuffling on his legs, and he fell right next to Elise.
More guards were on their way. I kept pulling the chains on my other arm, this time with the power of both arms and the whole of my body. I was about to release myself completely when I felt several blows strike my face and body. The guard’s heavy boot struck my stomach, leaving me gasping for breath. I turned to look at Elise and she was untouched, but the next thing my eyes could see was blackness.
When I opened my eyes, a heavy blur sharpened, and the sound of chatter pierced my ears along with an awkward buzzing sound that was coming from outside.
“You have caused enough trouble, young man,” I heard the king’s voice merging with the buzzing sound.
I turned my eyes toward him and began to see his face clearly. He held my head up from the chin, stopping whatever words I was about to say from escaping my tongue.
“I do admit, you have some strength in you,” he said, “but not anymore.”
He took out a thick needle that protruded out of a syringe with the dark red liquid and plunged it into my shoulder. I felt the coldness of the liquid flow through my veins, weaving into my blood and spreading to my heart and every other part of my body. The coldness was followed by a sense of frailty that only made me feel my intense hunger and dehydration even more.
The kind of slow death that the king had set out for me and Elise was quite the torture. I couldn’t talk to Elise anymore. We had no ability to speak for a very long time. The sun set again, blank and pointless.
Elise was still unconscious. Something told me that she was dying. The king had done something that made sure I wouldn’t try to release myself from the chains again. One arm was tied to the wall behind me, and the other was tied to Elise’s chains so that if I tried to pull the chains I would tear her arm off her body.
There was no way out, and eventually I realized that our fate would be similar to that of all the people whose dead bodies surrounded us.
“Theo,” I heard Elise’s whisper from next to me.
“I’m here,” I said, with a hint of hopelessness in my voice.
“Can your hand reach for mine?” she asked me.
I thought that she needed the comfort of touch in those last moments of living that we both were going through. I pushed my wrists through the shackles until they were tied right before my elbow. My hands had more freedom to move. I reached for her hand and held it.
But it wasn’t her hands that she wanted me touch. I looked into her eyes and she was smiling, a smile of triumph. I felt the coldness of a metal key sliding into my hands.
“Unlock my chains,” she said. “Quickly, before anybody hears us.”
I slid the key into the keyhole in her shackle and turned it. One of her arms was released. She took the key from my hand and quickly released herself from the shackles on her other hand and her feet.
There were more guards outside, standing quite close to the cell that we were in. It all had to be done as discreetly as could be.
“Where did you get the key?” I asked her, still unaware if this was a reality or a dream that would be broken by the bleakness of the grim truth.
“The guard that you knocked out had the keys with him. He fell right next to me, and before he hit the ground I grabbed the key from the side of his pants,” she said, panting.
Both our bodies were very weak, and the smallest effort she put into unlocking her own chains made her sweat and pant. She unlocked my chains, and finally the both of us were free, but still we couldn’t yet escape the cell that we were in.
There were many guards outside, and there was no way we could take them all down in the state that we were both in. The moment I was completely free from the chains, I took her into my arms, hugged her tightly, and felt the hopelessness escaping both our bodies through that tight embrace.
“What now?” she asked me.
“We wait until our bodies grow stronger,” I told her, unable to think of any other way we could escape this. “Patience,” I added, remembering my father’s only remarkable words to me.