A loud crash sounds to my right. 

Shoulders hunched in surprise, I turn around slowly and see Elyna standing next to the sink, looking down at a pile of blue and purple clay shards.

“Shit,” she says, cringing slightly.

My eyes narrow. “Excuse me? Who gave you permission to swear like that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Come on, Aruna. I’m not a baby. I know what shit means.”

“The last time I checked, you were still thirteen and not old enough to say words like that.”

“Technically, I’m thirteen and a half,” Elyna huffs and crosses her arms over her chest. “That has to count for something, right?”

I chuckle and walk over to the closet, reaching for a broom and dustpan. 

“Nice try. Here, I’ll sweep,” I say, handing her the dustpan. “This is like the fourth bowl you’ve broken this month. Keep your hands away from the butter when handling the pottery, please.”

“Har dee har, I’m laughing so hard,” she says, grabbing the dustpan from my hand and kneeling in front of the mess. I start sweeping the pile into a small mound of debris before pushing it her way. It’s such an insignificant moment in my life, and yet I find myself trying to memorize the way Elyna’s nose wrinkles as she stifles a sneeze from the dust. 

I can’t shake the feeling that I need to remember this moment.

Time to get up.

My eyes dart to hers. “What’d you say?”

She looks up at me. “What?”

It’s time to get up.

My heart starts pounding, and a cold sweat gathers at the base of my neck. “Stop saying that, Elyna.” 

“Aruna, what are you talking about? I didn’t say a word.”

Let’s go, freak. Up and at ’em.

The burnt orange walls of the kitchen start to close on me, shifting to a dark grey that leeches any warmth from the air. My lungs constrict, and I can’t expand my chest enough to take a full breath. 

“Aruna? What’s happening?” Her voice sounds so small, too far away.

“No, no, Elyna, don’t leave. Don’t leave me!”

“Aruna? Come back, Aruna.”

“Elyna!” 

“I said, time to get up! Now, or you lose your breakfast!”

My eyes snap open, and I take in my surroundings. Adrenaline courses through my veins as I struggle to remember who and where I am. My tongue feels thick with sleep, and crust forms along my top and bottom lashes.

I squint my eyes against the dark as the room around me comes into focus. A swath of yellow light cuts a weak path through the space, illuminating a steep staircase that leads up to a small door at the top. It’s left ajar, and I can hear muffled noises coming from the other side. Smooth cement walls form a long hallway at the bottom of the steps that stretch out to me, the light from above only reaching half of the way down before dissipating into the air. 

“About damn time, sleeping beauty. Thought you were dead finally, and I was gonna have to start digging your grave. “

I whip my head to the left, head pounding at the sudden movement, and spy a slight man with small, wide-set eyes and shaggy mud-brown hair approaching, a tray of mush in one hand.

“Here,” he says. Snickering, he drops the tray onto the cold ground and shoves it forward with his boot. “Your favorite.”

My arms feel weighed down with sand as I slowly push myself to my knees and crawl over. He crouches down until we are at eye level, watching my fingers grip the edge of the tray and slide it toward myself, not bothering to respond as I shovel the tasteless gruel into my mouth.

It’s a sorry excuse for breakfast, but after spending 2 years behind iron bars in an underground prison, you learn which things are actually worth complaining about. At least it was sustenance.

The guard (I vaguely remembered him introducing himself as Orvyn) does little to hide his disgust at my frenzied eating. “Look at yourself. Don’t even know why the cook still bothers sending this slop down to ya anymore. You’re still wasting away day by day and getting uglier by the second.”

I fight the urge to look down at myself and force my face to remain neutral. Picking your battles is another thing you learn down here. Besides, I knew he wasn’t too far off base from the truth. Save for the occasional rag and bucket full of cold water thrown in about once a week, a luxury only granted after the guards started to complain about the stench, there wasn’t a ton of opportunity to freshen up whenever I wanted to. Grime cakes the undersides of my feet, and a film of dirt is permanently etched into the creases of my skin.

I push a lock of matted hair out my face and twist the tray toward the light, checking to make sure I didn’t miss a single crumb of mush. Satisfied, I toss the tray back to Orvyn (Orwyn? Orville?) with a flick of my wrist. I stand and press my arms up above my head to release some of the tension in my sore muscles, slowly leaning from side to side. 

“Pathetic,” sneers Orion. “I’ve seen week-old corpses look better than you do right now. Silver-eyed witch.” 

His boots swish across the floor as he bends and snatches the tray up from the ground and turns on his heel to leave. He reaches the top of the stairs and shuts the door behind him with a swift click. Dim light glows from the sconces on the walls, offering just enough light to make out the corners of my cell and the nothingness around me. 

It used to freak me out. During my first four months down here, the fact there was truly nothing besides a latrine, the metal bars of my cage, and my thoughts used to threaten to drive me insane. The corner I sat in, knees huddled to my chest in an effort to preserve warmth, still bears the worn-down impression of my ass from days of remaining in the same spot. 

I reach my arms down to the ground and straighten my knees, a soft ache gathering in my hamstrings. My hair brushes the floor as I hang my head and roll my neck from side to side.

Month five was when the pacing started. After months of sitting and refusing to move, my body protested the movement so badly I felt like a newborn calf learning to walk. It took a few tries to unlock the joints in my lower body and press them up until I was standing, wobbly knees knocking together, leg muscles screaming after going unused for so long. My first step almost sent me back down into that corner, but I forced myself to continue. One step became two, which became four, then turned into twelve. Before I knew it, I was wearing a new type of impression into the ground, this time with my feet. Within three days, I could close my eyes and make it from one corner of the cell to the opposite in sixteen steps, heel to toe, and stop just as my nose was about to touch the wall.

Straightening myself back up, I plant one foot in front of the other and sink into a forward lunge position, arms raised to steady my balance. I breathe in deeply and exhale, dropping a little deeper with each loosed breath. I hold it for 20 seconds before switching legs, repeating the movements.

Months seven and eight are what I like to refer to as my reflecting age. The times when the darkness seeped into every corner of my brain, and I asked the gods over and over, “Why me?” Memories of my life before my capture played on a constant loop in my head, a performance that I had watched so many times before that I knew when the final scene was coming, but no matter how hard I sobbed and begged for it to change, it played out the same way every time. 

I fought it so hard. The first year I tried so hard to push the darkness away and sought positivity from everything, no matter how small. A small mouse scurrying down the steps to make my acquaintance. A peel of laughter from the other side of that door I could have sworn was meant just for me. The small grin the second shift guard threw at me as he brought down my lunch.

I drop my arms and press my hands into the ground, kicking my legs behind me until I’m lengthened into a plank position. Bending at the elbows and making sure to keep my core tight, I launch into push-ups.

Another hard lesson learned from the dungeon: there is no such thing as a positive gesture down here. 

The laughter turned out to be the kitchen staff daring one another to see who could go further down the steps before vomiting from the smells of my cell. 

The guard’s smirk was the only warning he gave before hurling himself at the metal bars, grabbing a fistful of my hair while simultaneously fumbling to undo the buttons of his trousers. My hair is still regrowing in the spots that got yanked out as I flung myself backward to escape his grip.

And the mouse? The fucker bit me hard enough on the ankle it drew blood, forcing me to stomp and break its little neck. Three days later, the small wound was seeping pus, infected.

Sweat drips down my forehead into my eyes as I complete my third set of pushups. I sit back on my knees and focus on catching my breath for a beat before moving on to backward lunges.

The hardest part of adjusting to life in an underground cell was figuring out how to live without my flames. The second I stepped foot into this gods awful dungeon, I felt my magic be sucked away like juice through a straw, some type of magic stripping element embedded into the walls. Nobody ever bothered to tell me why. I had never experienced such a loss before, and I wasn’t prepared for a vital part of my identity to be stripped away from me so easily.

Month thirteen is when things really started to get bad. Without my magic, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was truly alone. That there was a hole inside of me, empty and void of any emotion. A hole so vast it swallowed my voice, my thoughts, my will to live.

I try not to think about month thirteen.

I’m just starting a round of crunches when the door opens, and a tall man wearing impeccably clean boots saunters down the stairs and up to my cell. 

“Good morning, Aruna,” he says, peering through the metal bars to watch as I exercise.

“What do you want, Njal? Isn’t it a little early to be awake? I thought your bedtime playthings didn’t leave until midday.”

He lets out a dry laugh. “They actually stay until the sun begins to set and the night shift starts, but I appreciate you noticing nonetheless.”

I ignore his gross remark and continue with my crunches. 13…14…15…

“I admire your dedication to preserving some semblance of normalcy down here. I thought you were gone to the wind the first few months down here.”

I pause my workout and shoot him a glare. “Is there a reason you came down here?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, there is,” he says. His black hair is trimmed neatly on the sides and slicked back with an obscene amount of oil and gel, the gaudy perfume of it wafting towards me. His navy blue fitted suit hugs the muscles hidden beneath and makes the sage green of his eyes stand out more than usual against his tawny skin. On the outside, I know most perceive him as handsome, ravishing even. But the cruel personality that I’ve come to know lurks beneath that pretty exterior, curdling the acid in my stomach.

Njal has always been intimidating. He’s put his hands on me more than a few times, slapping the air from my mouth when I wasn’t smart enough yet to bite back my sarcastic retorts. Occasionally, after he’s had one too many glasses of mead, he’ll stumble down the stairs and rattle the bars of my cage, reaching in drunkenly to paw at the front of my dirty clothes, forcing me to retreat to the far end of the cell. None of that, however, is as frightening as his ability to make me feel less than a speck of dirt.

As far as I know, Njal doesn’t possess any magic. Although, somehow, that makes him even more menacing. His piercing stare radiates power and the promise of death while also managing to feel like it’s stripping you down to the flesh. During the first few months here, I did everything I could to avoid that gaze. From physically shielding my own eyes with my hair to turning around and facing the cement walls for weeks at a time, it was never enough to escape the weight of his stare as it trailed down my body.

The first time he entered my cell and grabbed me by the chin to force me to look at him, my bladder let loose on its own account. The embarrassment and shame that flooded my nervous system were only slightly alleviated by the amusing realization it had dribbled onto his obnoxiously shiny boots.

When I began to realize he basked in my fear and the ability to make me cower, I stopped avoiding his gaze and met it head-on. Still, it’s impossible to mask the goosebumps that trail down my arms every time I match his glare. 

“I came to tell you that we’re to have company in two days’ time,” he says, flicking an imaginary piece of lint off the cuffs of his jacket. “I need you on your best behavior.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes, knowing doing so would only cause him to lash out. “Best behavior for who?”

He smiles at me, lips curling back to reveal pearly white and impossibly sharp teeth. The sight makes my skin crawl with foreboding. 

“It seems a highly regarded and wealthy individual caught wind that I was keeping a valuable creature in my basement. He’s sending a scout to discuss prices.”

In the back of my head, a low buzz forms, reverberating through my whole body.

“Prices for what?”

His smile turns feral. “Why prices for you, my sweet. That flame of yours is going to fetch me a pretty penny. Besides, you didn’t think I planned to keep you forever, did you?”

For me?

My mouth gapes open as my brain struggles to make sense of the words.

He means to sell me? 

Why do they want my fire?

Wait.

Does that…

Am I getting out of here?

The wheels in my head are turning so loudly that I barely hear Njar’s key turn in the cell lock before he swings it open and stalks over to me. I scramble away from him, dust clinging to the sweat that lingers on my arms, but I’m not fast enough. His hand snakes up to my throat and slams me back into the wall, my teeth vibrating from the impact.

“I suggest you wipe that look off your face before I do it for you,” he seethes. His hand squeezes harder to emphasize his words. I struggle to take a breath, blood rising to my cheeks. “This is not for your benefit. In fact, I think you’ll rather miss this cage when you realize just who it is that means to purchase you. The sanctity of this cage is something you will wish for someday when you realize what awaits on the other side. You will claw and fight your way back to this hole eventually, and when you do, I can’t wait to throw you in and never look back.”

His words hit their mark. Dread slithers its way into the forefront of my mind. Because the reality of it is, he’s right.

I’m leaving one cage, purchased like a prize sow, only to be thrown into the depths of an even greater, unknown threat.

Suddenly, the fear of the unknown takes over, and the fight that left my body two years ago re-enters with a mighty force.

I kick my leg out, aiming for the soft part of his groin, but he’s expecting me to lash out. He catches my ankle and pins it to the ground, tightening the hold he has on my throat. I thrash in his hold, hoping to loosen either hand that traps me, but it only succeeds in brushing my body against his. I cringe and stop fighting, but don’t release any of the tension reverberating through my veins.

Njal lowers his face and presses his body closer to mine. My throat aches, and I know if I live through this, a hand-shaped bruise will bloom where he holds me. 

“See, this is the opposite of how you need to act in front of our guests,” he says. His breath smells of sour whiskey, making my stomach churn in response. “If you so much as think about acting a fool, I will strike you where it hurts most.”

I still. There’s only one thing that would hurt me more than any slap to the face, any blow to the ribs, and he knows it.

I refuse to show him that his words have an effect on me but give up the fight against him, making my body go limp.

“There’s my good, docile girl,” he croons and releases his hold on me. I sputter as my lungs painfully draw in gulps of air, my throat still screaming in pain. “Rest up while you can, Aruna. You have a long journey ahead of you when this sale goes through.”

He turns and strolls out of my cell, whistling as he goes. The metal bars clang as he swings it closed and locks it before walking down the hallway and up the stairs. He’s almost to the top when I call out to him.

“Where am I going?”

He half turns, a wicked look on his face. 

“Why, Cissonia, of course.” Njal opens the door and closes it with enough force to send dust particles flying into the air.

Cissonia.

The name clangs through my brain, settling in an uneasy pit in my stomach.

There’s only one person that I can think of in Cissonia, the capital city of Rokos, who is both highly regarded and wealthy enough to get Njal to release his hold on me. 

I slump against the wall, mind racing through every possible outcome that could happen at the hands of High King Osric Ashforce. The edges of my vision are fuzzy and edged with black. 

A thought flits through the haze, and before the darkness consumes me, I wonder if my next cage will have metal bars or if they’ll be switched for something stronger.