Invisible bonds pinned her arms. They dragged her through the door and down a long flight of stone stairs. The light grew dim, the air cool and smelling of earth.
At the bottom of the stairs stretched a narrow corridor with heavy wooden doors set into the walls. Ash opened one, revealing a windowless cell with a ceiling barely high enough to stand upright. Kane shoved Cathrynne inside, sending her sprawling to the dirt floor.
“No!” she cried. “Wait!”
The cell door slammed shut, plunging the cell into darkness.
Minutes stretched into hours, hours into days. The absence of light was so complete that it made no difference if her eyes were open or shut. She had never known such darkness. Even on a moonless night in Arioch, there was faint lamplight through windows or the glow of embers in a dying fire.
Now she understood that the dark could be a living thing, pressing against your skin, filling your lungs with each breath.
Her stomach ceased its growling, settling into a hollow ache. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed sand.
Cathrynne was starting to believe they meant for her to die in this hole when a scraping sound came at the bottom of the door. A slot opened and torchlight spilled through. A metal cup slid across the dirt floor before the slot slammed shut, plunging her back into darkness.
She felt her way to the offering. Lukewarm water and what felt like a chunk of hard bread. She forced herself to eat and drink slowly, though every instinct screamed to gulp it down.
“Hello?” she rasped. “Is someone there? Markus?”
No answer. Never an answer.
She explored her cell, fingers tracing every inch of the stone walls. The door was thick wood, no metal hinges. When she finished, she began again. Anything to keep the panic at bay.
This must be what life was like in the klosters, although the seers had bars to look through. Some connection to the outside world.
The slot opened. Food slid through. She ate mechanically, tasting nothing.
She prayed to Minerva for deliverance. Thought she heard a voice whisper to have courage but feared it was her imagination.
Felicity Birch used to say that where strength ends, faith begins. Cathrynne had never quite understood what that meant, but she thought she did now.
She recalled a day she’d been pulled off regular duties and given a senior class of cypher trainees in their final year whose instructor was down with the flu. She hadn’t minded teaching, but she preferred the little ones. They were nicer to substitutes.
“I’d like to start with a prayer,” she said.
It was a hot morning and the classroom’s ceiling fan was broken. The teenaged girls looked sweaty and hostile. One rolled her eyes.
“Do you have an objection?” Cathrynne asked.
They swapped glances. Then the eye-roller spoke up. She looked like she did two hundred pushups before breakfast every day. According to the seating chart, her name was Justice Holly.
“Cypher Aspen doesn’t make us say a prayer. She goes right to lessons and then combat training.”
“Huh,” Cathrynne said. “Well, this one is dedicated to Minerva. Did you know she founded our order?”
A condescending smirk. “Yeah, we know.”
“Did your teacher tell you what happened to cyphers back in the day, before they were even called cyphers?”
Justice faltered. “Before? I thought we were always shields.”
Cathrynne leaned back against the desk. “Sadly, no. When it became clear that we were the ones responsible for the Sinn, and that our monstrous offspring were eating people, the witches created a special division to find infant cyphers and kill them.”
She had the girls’ full attention now.
“Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what this special division was called?” She looked around. “No one? Well, it was the White Foxes. Some babies were smothered. Others were left out for the wolves.”
“Is that really true?” The cockiness was gone. Justice’s voice was subdued.
