“Charlotte?” Elison’s voice, heavy and ominous, fills the quiet cell like a storm cloud.
I keep my eyes pressed shut and try desperately to focus on anything but the pressure of her lingering, anticipating question hovering over me.
“I know you’re awake,” she says, annoyed. “Your eyes twitched.”
I release the breath I’d been holding, my favorite curse exhaling along with it as I finally look at her. “What?”
But she’s not looking at me. Her gaze is fixed upward, as if she’s searching the black ceiling for something other than the nothingness above us.
My annoyance dissipates.
“I…” She takes a moment, struggling to find the words. “I didn’t know he told you.”
Of everything that could’ve come out of her mouth, this was farthest from my mind, for once. And I wish she’d have kept it like that. I don’t want to do this. To talk abouthim and her.
“When did he tell—”
I cut her off before the concern in her tone can ooze with too much pity.
“The day I was caught.” This time when I roll over, flipping onto my side so I don’t have to look at her, I can’t close my eyes. They sting too much. They need to stop. I am not some weeping waterfall of human emotion. I am a steel sword, hardened and cold.
“He sent me to look for you,” I tell her, fixing my voice with as much indifference as I can muster.
Silence returns to the room again, but it bears with it the same tone as her earlier question. For too long, I lay there, wondering if the tension filled clouds are going to pass without incident, or if they will flood us.
Finally, just when I’m about to close my eyes and try to get some sleep, Elison speaks.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was going to tell you. And I didn’t know that he’d send you after me once he did. That…isn’t a great place to put you in—"
“Stop.”
The word is barely more than a whisper at first, but it carries with it a threat as deadly as any storm.
Elison’s mouth makes an audible snap shut.
“Just stop.” Propping myself up on one elbow, I whip back around to face her. “We don’t need to talk about this. We don’t need to talk about the fucked up mess that the three of us have found ourselves in. You two are having a baby. I know what that means, and I’ll be fine—Iamfine.” I pinch the brim of my nose, and exhale until I’m laying back down, the cold stone floor pressed against my skin. “Let’s just focus on getting out of this place. That’s all that matters right now.”
Silence again.
“Okay,” she says after a while. “Not another word from me about it unless you ask. Good night, Charlotte. And thank you…for coming for me.”
Tonight, sleep comes just about as naturally as breathing while underwater. My chest won’t stop aching and my mind won’t calm itself. If I’m not lamenting over the ways I practically pushed Rowland into Elison’s arms, I’m mulling over our options and our very abysmal odds for escape.
In time, I do finally succumb and darkness blankets me…
Until the blanket is torn away. A small legion of noctis storm into the dungeon what feels like only moments after I’ve just shut my eyes. The prince leads them forward, key in hand when he stops before our cell.
He smiles through the bars. “Rise and shine. Your presence is being requested.” When the three of us start to stir, he holds his hand up to Mira. “Not you.”
Elison and I exchange a wary look first with each other and then back at her.
Leaving her alone in this place just seems wrong. There’s something childlike about her, something innocent and pure that makes the idea of abandoning her in such a dark and corrupt place seem evil.
Seeming far less worried about it than we are, she simply mouths the word, “Diet.”
It’s not as settling as I think she hopes it will be, partially because at first it looks like she’s saying the worddie. But then it registers, and my stomach growls as if accentuating her meaning, and I remember what she said the other day about being assigned a meal regiment.
I suddenly find myself wide awake.
