My shoes scrape against the cold stone when I open my eyes. Both my arms are being held tightly in the grips of two guards and I look to the left, crying from the pain of every movement. My right eye hurts to open, and the entire left side of my face feels swollen and sore. I lift my head to look up at the long corridor we are in. The corridor is made of stone, with a green rug stretched down the middle of it. I can see five archways that lead off somewhere else and the guards stop at the one in the middle, which has large wooden doors inside the arch. There are five guards outside the doors, who look at me with a mixture of fear and indifference, an expression I presume they have gotten used to showing. I stand up, not letting them drag me anymore, and look around, but don’t see Livvy anywhere. There are only empty corridors, and an eerie silence that seems to be filled only with our footsteps.

“Where is my friend?” I demand, but neither of them answer me as two of the guards outside the big doors open them up. The guards drag me into the dimly-lit room and all I can do is stare at the empty throne at the top of the room. The throne is made from solid silver that shines, and it is shaped like a dragon with a seat cut into the middle of it. The dragon’s head curls around to meet the end of its tail and the gap in the middle leads up to the seat that is covered in green fabric. On the wall above the dragon is a tapestry of a green dragon flying, with two swords at the bottom; it takes me a second to realise it’s the royal crest of the king. The room has five archways, which have dark green fabric hung over them to block the light, and there are ten or more lit fires in raised pots around the room. The fires are almost blue, and the heat from them is soothing.

“Stay here, and if you know what is good for you, don’t move,” one of the guards says before he throws me down on the floor as the other one lets go of my arm. I rub my arms, feeling how sore they are, and place my hand on the side of my face where I know it can’t look good. I wish Chaz was here. He could find something to place against my face, he could figure out a way to help me. The guards surprise me by walking out the door as it closes; their evil grins are the last thing I see. I pull myself up to my feet, standing still as a secret door behind the throne opens. The door is the whole wall, a wall that moves on a circle, and a man walks out.

Not just a man, the king. The king has long black hair that is going grey at the top, and dark blue eyes that could almost be described as black. He has on black trousers with a smart green shirt, which looks silky and made from something expensive. He looks familiar and nothing like I expected the most evil man in the world to look. He looks nothing like a man who kills my kind, a man told to be evil enough to kill a baby. His large crown sits on his head, the green swirls holding a green stone in the middle, and it’s beautiful.

“Tut, tut, tut. Did you not behave on your way here? That looks painful,” the king says. His voice is deep and has an almost seductive quality. I imagine a lot of people would do anything he told them. I stay still as he walks over to me, each step seems to be calculated as he spends his time looking up and down my body. I don’t move as he walks closer, until he stands directly in front of me and slowly tilts his head to the side.

“Are you not going to speak to me, changed one? Are you really that frightened?” he asks, his voice almost gentle, but I know it’s a ruse.

“I am not frightened of you,” I tell him, matching his gentle tone, but I tilt my lips in a small smile. “Why would I be afraid when death is certain for everyone, and you have promised me death my entire life?”

“Maybe you are just brainless,” he chuckles, a slow chuckle that sounds familiar to my ears. I look over the king’s face, seeing the light marks on his right cheek, the way his hair is kept off his face, the perfectly groomed appearance he has. I wonder why he looks so familiar.

“No. I just do not care. You will kill me either way,” I say, and he laughs, a large laugh that echoes around the room.

“You think I will kill you? That it will be that easy?” he asks me, but I doubt he wants an answer as he steps even closer and grabs hold of both my arms. I don’t move, keeping my face as blank as I can so I don’t give him a reaction. This is a game to him and I won’t play it.

“I haven’t seen a female changed one since I met my queen,” he comments, staring at me and making me more uncomfortable by the second.

“Your queen is a changed one?” I ask him, and he laughs.

“And I’m her only chosen,” he says and smiles. I look down at his hands on my arms, feeling them getting hot seconds before they set on fire. A deep red fire that gets bigger as I watch, speechless for a fraction of a second before I let out the loudest scream of pain I’ve ever done. The fire burns my arms and I scream and scream, my legs falling out from under me, but he holds me up. The pain is overwhelming, the smell of my clothes and skin on my arms burning are all I can focus on and then he lets me go, and I hit the floor with a loud smack. I roll on the floor, putting the fires out on my arms and holding in the tears as the king looks down at me.

“This is the child he chose to protect, he chose you and look at you,” the king says, kicking my stomach and I roll over as all the air leaves my lungs. The king kneels, leaning forward and moving a tiny bit of my hair off my face before pressing his finger into my forehead, right above my mark. The pain from my arms prevents me from doing anything but stare up at him, hating him with every tiny bit of me.

“The Sea God made a mistake with you and yet he told me I was the mistake, that I was weak.” He laughs, “But here is his changed one, the powerful one he chose to kill me, and she rolls on the floor, unable to save herself,” he says and sighs. The king pulls a piece of white fabric out of his pocket and wipes his forehead. The mark in the middle of his forehead slowly appears, a black circle with five black lines in the middle of it that cross over each other. I’ve never seen another changed one’s mark, and it is strange to see this one. I don’t know what “chosen” means, but I take a guess that the same thing happened with his queen and him, as it did Ryland and me. I wonder if Ryland could use my power?

“You will die here, Cassandra, that is certain…but only after I am done with my games. When I am done with you,” the king tells me, his voice dark and full of menace.

“Are you that scared of me? That scared that you feel you have to warn me!” I shout at the king’s back as he walks away from me. “I will not play your games!” I shout.

“I am not scared of anyone, especially not a clueless child. But I do like to listen to you scream, Cassandra, and you will scream, I will make sure of it,” the king sneers at me.

“How do you know my name?” I ask him.

“I know plenty,” he says, an evil grin on his face before he turns and keeps walking away.

“Get her out of here,” the king shouts, and the doors open behind me, but I don’t look away from the king as he walks up to his throne and sits down. The king leans back in his seat as I struggle in pain with my arms on the floor in front of him and he stares down at me.

“Oh, and Cassandra…Welcome to the nightmare court,” he says coldly, vindictively, as the guards pick me up and I don’t fight them. They don’t touch my burnt arms, choosing to hold me under my armpits instead, but every brush of air or their bodies against my arms is like a slow torture. They drag me out the room, but the pain is all I can focus on as I hold in a whimper when they turn down the corridors. I don’t even look where we are going, I just keep my head down, tears falling down my face and dripping onto the green carpeted floor. They take me down the long corridor, to another one, and then to a metal door opened by another guard. The guards carry me down the wide steps that seem to just go down and down in a straight line until we get to a row of dungeons. The dungeons are split with rows of cages on each side, cold stone floors, and the middle path between the cages lit up by fires in thin metal cages shaped like towers. Even seeing the fire makes me feel sick, it makes me want to run and, for the first time, nothing but fear fills me as I look at the fire.

“This one,” one of the guards says, one of them who is holding me. I look up in time to see him open a cage door and throw me in, my body hitting the cold floor and pain shooting around my left arm that I land on. I cry out, rolling onto my back and lying in the dry room while pain shoots through my arms. Thankfully, sleep takes me before I can hear myself scream.