Chapter 64: Chapter 64

Lily

Lily stared at the cell wall without truly seeing it. Her long, wavy hair was matted and sweaty, and it itched all of the time. She no longer had the energy to lift her hand to scratch it.

She didn’t know how long she’d been stuck there. For the first few days she had scratched a tally into the wall, but as the little lines had grown in number they’d served to make her more melancholy rather than being a reminder of hope.

She also didn’t know where Efaffion had been taken. Apollo had come for him in the middle of the night – not that either of them had been sleeping – and had been all broad smiles and waggling eyebrows as he’d promised to take him somewhere deserving of a man with, “Such good ideas.”

It was a lie. Lily knew that, and yet she couldn’t find any sympathy buried anywhere within her for the eleve. Their tenuous friendship, if it could even be described as such, did not run deep enough for her to worry about him. Piece by piece, day by day, she’d begun to construct armour around herself: she had threaded imagined metallic links of chainmail together over her chest, first barring away her heart, and over the top of that she had created sleeves made of metal plates to protect her arms.

She could not quite let go of the memory of the garnet ring around her finger, though. Whenever Morvand or Apollo came to their cell to wrestle her somewhere, be it to clean the dishes or to do their laundry or just to rough her up a bit, she twisted the empty space where it had once sat. It brought her some small measure of comfort, but with each day that passed even that was beginning to fade.

Would Elijah ever find her? Would he even bother to look? She had stormed off; she had left him. Lily felt less and less certain that she would ever be rescued. She could no longer feel the mate bond between them.

Memories of fire kept her awake at night. Memories of Elijah standing amidst the flames blurred with a dreamscape of him, eyes black as obsidian, holding his burning hand towards her and setting her alight whenever she moved too close. There was no escape from the dreams, and so she slept little. Her body moved so infrequently, and her mind was so numb, that, aside from the days when Morvand would kick her around the pack house, her body had little need of rest.

It was then that the cell opened, the veil over it shimmering, resplendent, ethereal, its purple both there and not. And through it fell Efaffion, his face – her father’s face, though Lily no longer saw him as that; she saw through the illusion to the disturbing gemstones for eyes and jewels for teeth – set in a solid scowl as Apollo kicked him into the cell and locked the door behind him.

Lily didn’t bother to say anything. There were no words for this. Efaffion’s anger was answer enough.

“They had me cleaning boots. One hundred pairs of boots! That’s two hundred boots in total – well, slightly less, some of their army have only one leg or one foot – anyway! Near enough two hundred boots,” he huffed again. “Caked in mud that I am quite certain our dear witch has spelled to make it stick.”

Lily turned to look at him, though her expression did not change. In fact, she could have been looking at nothing for all the recognition in her eyes.

“Did you hear me, Lily?” Efaffion’s form rippled and shifted, and there was the grotesque, monstrous visage that no longer scared Lily. “They had me cleaning boots like a common servant.”

Lily swallowed once. Twice. Her throat was parched. She wet her lips with a dry tongue. “That is what you suggested, is it not?” she said pointedly, eyeing him without sympathy.

“Well, yes,” he grumbled, folding his arms across his too-thin chest, “but I did not mean me.”

Lily turned back to the wall. “Be thankful it was cleaning duties, and not something more physical.”

Efaffion came and sat beside her. The fragile peace between them swelled, and he patted her knee with a bejewelled hand. His fingernails – all gemstones – caught the dawn light struggling to break through the cloud cover outside.

“I saw something,” he said, in a voice that suggested he knew this would pique her interest. He dangled the words between them like bait, and it only took a few more swallows, and two attempts at clearing her throat, for Lily to bite.

“What did you see?”

“More of us – more Omegas. They’ve used magic to build more cell blocks, all around ours.” He snorted. Lily didn’t know how he had the energy, how he had the strength of mind and will, to keep his perverse sense of humour throughout such trials. “They shall have no land left at this rate.”

Lily nudged a stone with the toe of her boot. It was worn down, and the sole was coming apart from the upper, but she rarely took them off – if she had to run, she wanted to be ready. “They can just make more. We do not exist in the same realm as Eldda, not here.”

Efaffion sighed. Lily wasn’t sure how glittering rubies could look sombre, but somehow they did. “You need to hold onto yourself. Do not let them win.”

She scoffed. It was the most emotion she’d felt in days. “Who are you to tell me what to do, how to behave? You would see me dead.”

“Once, yes – and I would have taken great pleasure in it.”

“How wonderful.” Lily rolled another stone onto the top of her boot, and then flung it at the far wall.

“But not now. Stars forbid – we are a team. Without each other, we have little chance of getting out of here alive or dead.”

“Reassuring,” said Lily, putting as much scorn into her voice as she could – which was admittedly not an awful lot.

“It is. No matter the company, we should both be grateful for it.”

Lily eyed him with blank eyes, which spoke more of her distress than any emotion could. Her fire was fizzling out; with every day that passed another log crumbled, another storm came, and the dampened flames could only hold on for so long.

Efaffion nudged her. “Besides – who would you talk to if I were not here?”

“Nobody,” she said, turning away. “And it would be preferable.”

“You do not mean that.”

“Do not have the audacity to be hurt by that.”

Efaffion smirked. “There she is.”

“You want me to be angry?” Lily rounded on him, suddenly furious. Her heart thundered in her chest, pushing boiling blood through too-tight veins as she stood and glowered at him. “I am! I am so unbearably angry that it hurts to even think of it. I am angry at you, and them, and Atticus, and Elijah, and – and myself!”

He did not rise to her outburst. “That is quite some anger.”

And then, just like that, it left her. She sank to her knees, grubby palms pressing to her grubby thighs, and Lily felt the unfamiliar tightness in her throat and the burn in the back of her nose as the first tears she had felt in – in how long? Days? Weeks? Months? – rose, unbidden, to blur her vision. Time did not pass the same here, that she knew; it did not change the surreal feel of sand sliding both too fast and too slow as it trickled down an hourglass that never stopped turning.

“There’s more,” said Efaffion, in a voice too gentle for a creature with glittering jewels for teeth and rubies for eyes.

“Tell me.” It was tiny, that spark – a glowing ember in an endless heap of coal, easily missed but there despite all odds. Lily cupped it between her hands, blew upon it with care, with reverence, and it bloomed as Efaffion leant in close.

“They have been fighting,” he said, flicking strand of autumn-leaf red hair behind his shoulder as he did so. Though not impervious to dirt, somehow he still managed to glow from within. Lily knew her own glow had long since burnt out.

It did not seem like much, Lily thought. But it was more than the gathering of new Omegas to serve them, and it was far more than nothing, so she tucked away the information and rolled onto her side to fall into a brief and uneasy sleep.

* * *

Sleep was pulled cruelly from her, quite literally, not two full hours later. She had slipped from dream to dream, all about Elijah: she had seen the bright glow of his pale eyes turning to slate grey and then to midnight black as he had looked upon her. She ran her hands over her body, feeling the hard, jutting lines of her ribs, feeling the cell dirt that coated her clothes. She felt his disgust through the mate bond, raw and unforgiving, and then it disappeared.

Morvand’s hands were on her. Lily shrank away. In the low light, his sharp nose looked like a crow’s beak.

Long, bony fingers came to rest beneath her chin. “Come on. Get up.”

Too tired to resist, Lily followed him wordlessly. She knew where they were going. She could assume why.

Her legs were numb as Morvand pushed her towards the pack house. Efaffion had been right, she noted, the smouldering spark in her chest jumping at the sight of the myriad new cells that surrounded her own.

She fumbled around for the feel of Elijah, somewhere, anywhere, buried deep within her, but she felt nothing. The cold of the cell had seeped into her bones, had seeped into her heart, and it eclipsed the twinge of sadness. Her armour was built too thick, too resilient, and so she let Morvand shove her, she let her feet stumble, and she saw the burgeoning sunrise – streaks of mauve and tangerine and bright, bold red – painting the sky with no joy, no hope, and no feeling at all.

She walked into and through the pack house in a daze. The colours were dull to her, despite the vibrant display created by the dawn.

He led her, with a hand firmly wound in the back of her shirt, his nails digging into the small of her back, to one of the rooms she was most familiar with. It was barely furnished, save for a platform at one end with some weaponry and armour on, and a long, flat wooden floor that stretched to the far doors.

Today, nearly two hundred pairs of mud-caked leather boots made four lines down the centre of the room.

“You are to clean these.”

Lily’s brow furrowed in annoyance. “Ef – my father just cleaned these, not four hours ago.”

“And yet they are, quite clearly, in need of a clean.” He shoved her to the floor. “Get to it.”

With a disgruntled sigh, Lily shoved her tangled hair out of her face and dunked the scrubbing brush in the bucket of water left out for her. At least they would leave her alone for a few hours. This task was tedious, but it wasn’t painful. She couldn’t hope for any more than that.

* * *

Based on the sun’s position outside, Lily thought it was noon by the time she was halfway done. Her skin was wrinkled and her joints were stiff. Convinced that Efaffion had used magic to get the boots cleaned so quickly, she let herself be consumed by mild annoyance towards the eleve to help pass the time. It was better than dwelling on memories or dreaming of an escape she doubted would ever come to pass.

Then she heard voices.