I willnot.
My gut finally acquiescence with a final grumble, my desperate body softening, easing, cramping in my middle extending out to my limbs and into a distinctly painful jabbing sensation in my head that goes away, too.When I sit up once more, I’m even stronger than I had been, reminded of my drakonkin blood when I make a fist and feel my muscles bunch and release.
Lucky.Were I fully human, I wouldn’t be here to recover at all.
I completely ignored the sack in my desperate thirst, but my fellow captives don’t, hovering nearby, not retreating.Something touches my foot.I flinch, but lean forward a moment later.A hand presses something into my palm, and I take it, bringing it to my face.The strip of some dried meat forces saliva I find I can generate to stir and sluggishly fill my mouth.This I take my time with, tiny bites, not hungry at all, far past that point.But despite the nibbles that taste like death, I force down every single morsel.
Whatever comes next, I’m going to need my strength.
“Thank you,” I whisper into the darkness.“You could have eaten all of the food.Thank you for leaving some for me.”
No one answers, though I feel a sigh as much as I hear it, and that terrible razor wire of anxiety seems to ease, our shared cage no longer crackling with terror.
I sleep again.
Waking is easier, bright outside once again, and there’s water left, so I help myself when the others don’t come to take it.I don’t finish it, even if I would love to, leaving enough for a mouthful for each of them, settling back against the curved hull.
I could despair.It’s tempting.This is the first real moment of clarity I’ve had, and when it sparks, I’m sitting up straighter, catching my breath.Atlas.Zenthris.My loves.The kinspark—
A surging hope hits so hard that I smile as I reach for them.Atlas!Zenthris!
The silence of feeling, of mind, is so profound that it takes time to sink in.I wait far too long for a reply before I accept that one isn’t coming.
And then I’m crumpling sideways, sobbing that betrayal into the revolting straw beneath me.
Nottheirbetrayal.I will never believe they abandoned me.It’smybetrayal, or that of the kinspark, somehow broken, that has cut me off from them.The bond that had begun with the rogue, that linked me to the Overprince and then he to Zen, that tie that bound us, let us feel what the other felt, was meant to be forever, or so I was told.
Where has it gone?Why did it forsake me?
When I sit up again, wiping snot and tears from my crusty face, my hands come away with flakes of old blood that have me prodding my scalp just past my hairline.Memory joins the touch, where a healed-over wound reminds me of the night I was taken onboard this ship.I struck my head, was pulled out of the water.I heard them then, didn’t I?Or was that before, with Vivenne?It doesn’t matter now.I do know I tried to tell them where I was.The drug—
It cut me off from them.So much so that I’m only now remembering.How much else have I forgotten?I’m desperately combing through my memories when it strikes me that I’m being a fool.How will I even recall what I can’t recall if it’s not there anymore?
Breathe, child.Mother’s voice is soothing, even though in life she never would have used that tone with me.Panic serves no warrior.
If it’s only my own mind protecting me, I’m not arguing with it, drawing several shaky breaths, pushing myself up and out of despair again.
Breathing.Which leads me to the one thing Icando.That I need to do.
Meditation is normally easy for me, trained into me from childhood, a practice I’ve always treasured.Now?I fight distress that the quiet of the mind evades me, eludes with shouting fear, creeping despair, the hammering pulse of my heart palpitating as it strains to recover, physically and emotionally.
Only to remember why it is that I meditate in the first place.
And this lesson is not from Vivenne, either.It’s from Mother, from the southland people she came from, taught by her father to her and to my aunt.
Passed to me.I’ve never been so grateful.
This practice is not meant to swallow your thoughts, she’d said.It is to show them to you, so you might master them and yourself.
My mind is loud and angry and scared and afraid.And it deserves my attention.
Inhale for a five-count, Remalla.Hold the breath until your chest aches.I make it to three and have to let it go, try again.It takes several attempts before I’m lost in the rhythm of my breath, the memory of my mother chanting the lesson.But it comes back to me, it all comes back, and I’m sinking, this time of my own accord.
When I push to find the kinspark, I almost lose my place.Only to breathe again, just breathe, to feel the hate for Vivenne, for Portuk and his betrayal, to blame Fethest and allow sympathy for her passing, nonetheless.Dichotomy is part of the process.The image of the healer dead, neck broken on the dock where I was taken, is still crisp, complete.
There’s so little left to me of the time inside the monster of the drug, though, that the spiral of distress ending faster than it might have normally.I’m calm, level again, myself at last, in short order, too.It’s the muttering of voices that brings me back out, surfacing from the quiet that finally settled around me, in me.I hold it close as I open my eyes and realize that I’m hearing someone overhead, through the decking, voices speaking in that language I don’t understand.
It irritates me suddenly, not being able to decipher their words.
