Page 31 of While the Dark Remains
Two guards set an ivory throne down in the center of the room. The king sinks into it. Two more guards drag a Skaandan prisoner between them. He shakes and sweats; he reeks of blood and bile. He’s young, perhaps a year older than the new Skaandan singer, and has dark curly hair and liberally freckled skin, like me. A thin gold chain glints around his neck, and a gold bar in his right ear marks him as a guard of the royal house.
My gut clenches. This is not what happens when the king acquires someone new for his Collection. This is something different.
Below me, in her cage bordered with orange trees, the Skaandan singer shrieks and pounds against the glass. She’s shouting at the king, shouting to the prisoner, who jerks his head in her direction, a sudden horror in him. In the space of a heartbeat, he wrenches himself from the guards’ grasp and lunges toward the glass cage, reaching for the singer’s hands between the bars.
They cling to each other, tears pouring down the singer’s face while the young man tilts his head against the bars. His words are soft, but they echo in the vast room, all the way up to my cage: “Promise me you’ll get free of him. Please. Promise me.”
“I love you, Hilf.”
“Promise me!”
“I promise.” The words choke out of her.
Hilf gives her a single, fleeting smile, lifting one hand to smooth his thumb across her cheek and wipe her tears away. “I love you. Don’t worry about me. Remember your promise.”
“Hilf—”
The guards snatch his shoulders and haul him away from the cage.
“Hilf!”
One of the guards slams his fist into the side of Hilf’s head and he goes limp, gasping for breath. They drag him back before the king, throw him at the king’s feet.
The singer screams his name, over and over, and tears pour down Hilf’s face.
The king sneers at him. “Did you think I’d keep feeding you in my dungeons forever? Did you think someone was coming to rescue you? You have no talent with which to charm me, like your little singer friend.”
In my cage I am shaking hard enough to rattle apart. I wish I had magic. I wish I could stop this. But I don’t. I can’t.
The double doors open again. Nicanor drags Ballast in with him, and my heart plummets like a lead weight. Zopyros, Ballast’s half brother—the king’s oldest son—follows with a muzzled lion on a lead, the one that two months ago so frightened Xenia.
Dread grips me. I blink and see the mangled bodies of the rats from my childhood, hear the echo of Ballast’s ragged, gasping sobs.
Today there’s blood on Ballast’s face, more blood seeping through the back of his shirt. Rage bursts bright behind my eyes becausehow dare his father hurt him like that. He can hardly stand. I want to burstthrough the bars of my cage and put a knife in the king’s heart. I want to grab Ballast’s arm and haul him away from here, away from pain and terror and cruelty. I want to ask him why he told me to stop coming all those years ago, if he truly meant it, or if he was simply afraid of his father.
I look at the king and the lion, at Ballast and the Skaandan prisoner, and the horror cuts deep. I don’t move. I don’t make a sound. Because I can’t stop what’s about to happen, and if I protest in any way it could be me down there instead.
I am a vile, gutless coward. I keep silent.
Below me, Hilf begs for his life and the singer screams and Ballast slumps there in Nicanor’s grasp, an awful blankness crawling into his face.
Zopyros sneers at Ballast, though his hand shakes as he loosens the muzzle from the lion’s mouth. The lion doesn’t move, held in check by Ballast’s will. Zopyros drops the muzzle and lead, and takes a step back.
“Please,” says Hilf. “Please. Spare me.”
The king’s gaze flicks carelessly over him and fixes on Ballast. “Kill him,” he orders.
Bile churns in my gut, rises burning in my throat.Stand up to him,I plead with Ballast in my mind.You don’t have to do this. Please, Ballast. Please.But of course he can’t hear me.
Slowly, Ballast straightens, shaking Nicanor off him. He’s breathing in quick, shallow gasps, and the effort of standing on his own makes him tremble.
“Do it, boy.” The king’s voice is cold and hard. “Or I will kill her. And then I will kill you. I have many sons. I don’t need you.”
Ballast stands there, shaking. Zopyros’s right hand twitches at the hilt of his sword.
Hilf has stopped begging, just looks toward the singer in her cage, who weeps uncontrollably. He mouths something to her. I don’t know what he says, but I feel the love in him, and I see the moment he accepts his fate.
My heart beats, beats. Everything inside me is screaming.Please, Ballast. Don’t.
