by Ivy Asher
“She’s alive,” he replies quietly. “She seems to shut down after a certain point when Morax is…”
He doesn’t say torturing her, but he doesn’t really need to. I heard her wake up, heard her gasp when I was being cut. She can see the state of my body.
I file the word Morax away. I haven’t heard it before, and I don’t know if that’s Ophidian’s real name or something else. When I have the use of my mouth and vocal cords again, I’ll have to ask.
“Who are you?” she asks again, not missing the fact that he hasn’t answered that portion of her question.
“Does it matter?” he asks, and I can hear the defeat in it.
“Well, yeah it matters. You just want me to call ya hey, you while we work together to get out of here?” she questions, and it’s as though she has no doubt that we will be getting out of here.
I’m not that optimistic.
The chained guy scoffs quietly, like he’s also not at all impressed by her positive thinking.
I wonder how long he’s been down here? How long has he suffered under Ophidian’s wrath before I showed up?
I feel my wings disappear at my back, and relief cascades through me. Ophidian cut those up too, so it’ll be one less thing I’ll feel healing when my control kicks back in. I’m not really sure what to think of the appendages and their blinking in and out. I find it ironic that I’ve gone from people flickering in and out of being monsters, to me doing it.
My wings disappearing seem to draw the girl’s focus from our green-skinned cellmate back to me. “Sable, I don’t know if you can hear me, but my name is Medley Bell. I’m gonna get you out of here. My mates’ll be lookin’ for me. So will Delta and her mates. We just gotta hang on until they find us,” she tells me, and I wish I could reach out and clutch the hope I hear in her voice, but I can’t.
It’s not real.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Ophidian will come back, and when he does, either she or I or maybe both will start to wish we’d never even been born. I just hope I can shove the darkness out of my limbs fast enough to get some answers before that happens.
5
I must’ve passed out at some point, because when I wake up again, I’m back in my cage, lying on nothing but the shredded remains of the scratchy blanket. There’s a plate of food waiting near the bars, and even though it doesn’t look anywhere near appetizing, my stomach clenches at the sight of it.
I test my fingers and toes before I try to sit up, and when I can successfully wriggle all twenty of them, I tentatively push upright. A groan slips past my lips, and I look down to see some black and blue bruises still marked up my sides. I grimace as I press against my ribs slightly, and even though it’s tender, I’m glad to find that my ribs don’t feel broken. You never know with Ophidian. It’s not like he goes easy on me.
My bare legs look terrible with pink healing lines marring them all over. I look like I got in a fight with a crew of razor blades and lost. But at least they’re not bleeding or even scabbed anymore. Yay for healing quickly—even if I don’t understand how.
“Sable?”
My eyes snap up to the woman who’s peering at me through the bars that separate us. I pull my knees against my chest, because other than my filthy bra and panties, I’m still naked.
The woman has pale lavender hair and wings that are the same color. I can’t look away for a moment, because her face...there’s something familiar about her.
“Here,” she says, and then she’s pulling off her shoes and handing me the socks right off her feet.
I don’t move, my eyes flicking from her outstretched hand back to her eyes. Her gray eyes.
“Who are you?” I ask, my voice raspy with disuse.
“Medley,” she says, wriggling the socks, and I remember her telling me that before. “I’m…” She hesitates, like she’s not sure whether or not she should hold back or not. “Just take these. Please. You’re shiverin’ harder than a hairless cat in a snowstorm.”
I look down at myself and realize that I am chilled, but I’ve gotten used to it. Ophidian has never given me any new clothes since he tore my pants off and my wings wrecked my shirt.
“Your toes are near blue. Please,” she pleads again, and I finally scoot over and take the socks from her.
They’re still warm as I slip them over my feet, and my toes curl inside the fabric, trying to burrow into the foreign warmth.
“You should eat too,” the voice of the monster on the other side of my cage comes through the bars like a low rumble. “You’ve been out for a while.”
“Oh, you talk now?” I retort snappishly, even as I snatch the iron plate of food and begin shoveling the dry, dense biscuit into my mouth. I don’t know why I care that he’s suddenly talking now after he ignored me, but I do. He’s also probably not deserving of my frustration, but it feels good to release it somewhere.
He doesn’t respond at first, and my eyes flash up to him, but all I can see from where he’s perched in the shadowed corner are his slightly glowing gold eyes and his propped up silhouette as he watches me. “No point making friends. You could distract me for a time, but you’ll be dead soon, same as me,” he says blandly.
“Hey! Don’t say that!” Medley snaps, and I look over at the vehemence in her voice as I choke down the rest of the dry biscuit before I grab the hunk of meat that tastes like smoke and cracks off onto my tongue like charcoal.
“Why? It’s true,” he says with bored derision. “The sooner you both realize that, the better. Once Morax has you, you never get away. You have no choice but to do whatever he tells you.”
“Morax is Ophidian?” I clarify.
He moves closer, the chains bound around his chest and back clinking. “Morax. The Ophidian. The corrupt Abdicated. The Controller. He has many names.”
“I would’ve just gone with psychotic asshole, but that’s just me…” Medley mutters.
The monster stops just shy of the bars that separate us, and for the first time since I’ve been here, I get a clear look at him in the light of the burning torches. His face is angular, strong lines and high cheekbones that wouldn’t look so severe if it weren’t for the weight he’s dropped from eating the provisions the guards barely remember to feed us in here.
He doesn’t have wings like Medley or Morax, but his sage-green skin covers a lean, taut body, and the iron chains bound over his chest have left bruises behind from where they lie heavy against his skin. Limp black hair hangs long around his face and brushes past his shoulders, but it’s his eyes and the stark black markings tattooed on his abdomen and arms that hold my attention the most.
He has dark circles beneath his eyes and a haunted look in the gold-lined irises that I’m sure my gray gaze is reflecting too. He’s handsome, in a monster kind of way, but he’s broken; I can see it in his gaze. Possibly even more broken than I am.
“Who are you?” Medley asks, once again voicing the question I’m wanting to know.
For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer. But then his eyes scan from Medley to me. “My name is Toreon.”
“Well, Toreon, we don’t need that kind of negativity in our lives right now,” Medley reprimands, and I nearly smile at her sweet voice carrying such crack whip chastisement. Obviously, the sight of him doesn’t scare her at all. Maybe she’s used to monsters.
Maybe she’s seen them her whole life, just like me, but instead of people claiming she was insane and hallucinating, she grew up knowing they were actually real.
“If you think your life is going to be anything but pain and regret now that you’re in this cell, you’re sadly mistaken, Nihil.”
My brows pull together at his nickname, and Medley bristles. “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, if you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all?”
He frowns. “No.”
“Well, now you have, so shut it,” she says before turning to look at me again. I swallow the last of the disgusting burnt meat and
then shove my plate away, downing the single pitcher of water that was left for me. Toreon was right about one thing—having company is a distraction, one I welcome.
“Sable,” Medley starts, her voice softer as she addresses me.
“How do you know my name?”
She chews on her bottom lip, and when her lavender wings move, my gaze hooks onto something behind her. My eyes widen. “What...what is that?” I breathe, my voice shaky.
Medley looks over her shoulder, her eyes falling on the weapon I can’t take my gaze off of. It’s double-sided, a long staff of dark wood and metal bands, and two curved blades on either end, and even from here, I can tell they’re very sharp.
“That’s my scythe,” she says, and there’s a forlorn tone to her voice as she looks at it. I hear more than see Toreon go stiff as he straightens up to peer around us.
Call to your scythe, Sable. The memory of Morax’s order circles in my mind, and I swallow hard.
“How...why…” I shake my head, not even knowing what to address first. “Morax has been trying to get me to call a scythe. He thinks...I don’t know what he thinks,” I admit, combing my hand through my tangled, greasy black hair. “But you have one,” I say. The pieces are there, but I can’t fit this all together. “I don’t understand. And why is it in your cell with you?”
“Let me guess…” Toreon says. “Compulsion?”
Medley nods, anger and frustration clear on her face. A face that I can’t quit looking at, because there’s just something about it. “I can’t even reach for it,” she admits glumly. To demonstrate, she lifts her hand, but it’s like she gets blocked by an invisible wall, and she can’t move any closer. “See?”
“So it’s true?” I ask. “When he talks funny like that, he’s doing something to control people?”
“Yep,” Toreon replies, his eyes snagging onto me before he spreads out on his back, his arms stretching up as he rests his head on his hands. “But you...for some reason, you’re able to fight it.”
I look away from him, unsure if I should deny that fact or not. Hedging his observant revelation, I speak to Medley before she can ask me to confirm what Toreon just said. “But why did he leave your weapon in there with you?”
“Morax likes mind games,” Toreon says, once again answering me.
“Why does he have you?” I ask him pointedly, because maybe if I can figure that out, I can figure out how I fit into all of this.
But of course, he doesn’t reply. Figures. The prick only answers when he feels like it.
“Sable, how long have you been here?” Medley questions, her body as close to the bars that separate us as she can possibly be.
“I don’t know. Maybe a week?”
For some strange reason, her eyes flood with tears, and then they’re dropping down her cheeks, and I find myself staring at her gray gaze again.
“I’m so sorry, Sable.”
My brows pull together, but at that exact moment, a sharp, quick pain rips down my back, and my dark purple wings suddenly appear again. I flinch for a second as the appendages pull at me, weighing me down. “Why are...you sorry?” I ask, my teeth gritted as the echoes of pain wear off just as quickly as they came.
She watches my winged transformation with a wince, like she’s sympathetic to the pain they cause when they appear. “Because this is all our fault. We tried lookin’ for you and…” She shakes her head and brushes the tears away from her face. “We didn’t find you in time, and I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t understand. How could you even know to look for me?” I ask, brushing my hair—that’s now dark purple—out of my face. “Who are you?”
Her watery eyes lift to me, but that familiar nagging sensation suddenly snaps into place at exactly the same moment that she replies. “I’m your sister.”
6
I stare at her blankly as her words look for a perch in my mind, but stuff in my head is entirely too messy for something like I’m your sister to find an easy place to land. I study her gray eyes, the shape of her mouth, her cheeks, and the way her nose turns up slightly in a hauntingly familiar way.
I’m learning down here that there’s no point making friends with denial, because as enticing as it is to simply say to myself no way, I’m painfully aware that I don’t know what’s going on, and I can’t just dismiss things as fake anymore.
Had this been a week ago, I would’ve flipped off the sister-claiming delusion and sat in the corner waiting for her to flicker away. But as I stare at her face, her light purple hair, her wings, her eerily similar gray eyes, I decide there’s no point in rejecting what she’s saying just because I can’t make much sense of it.
Her eyes are beseeching as they stay fixed on mine, and she gives me time to adjust to the bomb she just asked me to hold like it was no big deal.
“How?” I ask quietly, my voice surprisingly calm, even though my insides are roiling with so many emotions I don’t know which will surface and take over.
Shock, puzzlement, dismissal, validation, anger, outrage, everything is fighting to the forefront of who I am, and I don’t even know where to begin dealing with any of them.
She gives a little shake of her head. “I just recently found out myself when I met our other sister, Delta. But our mother, Nefta, left us with families in the Mortal Realm to help protect us.”
My head spins even more at the revelations that apparently, I have not one, but two sisters.
“Mortal Realm,” I repeat. “What does that mean? Where are we now?” I ask, my mind reeling like I’m in a Tilt-A-Whirl.
Medley looks hesitant, as though she’s not sure how to explain things. I watch as she debates for a moment, and then her resolve seems to harden, and I have no idea what to expect next.
“You’re in Hell, Sable. Or at least, I think so. It smells the same as it did around the Gate, but I’ve never been down here before. Delta could probably tell us for sure, but thankfully, she’s not here. He didn’t get her,” she rambles, and I find myself stepping back until my wings are pressed against the bars.
“We’re in Hell,” I say numbly, and Medley nods. “So everyone I see…”
“Demons,” she tells me in a quiet voice.
Demons. Not monsters, demons.
I slide down until I reach the cold stone floor and then pull my knees in as I try to understand what she’s saying. The swirling emotions inside of me set me off-kilter, and I cross my arms in front of me, tapping my finger against the inside of my elbow like a comforting tic. I glance at Medley’s scythe on the ground, hearing Morax or Ophidian or whatever his name is, screaming at me to call to one, and slowly, things start to connect.
“What am I?” I ask, fitting the next logical piece into the puzzle to the information she’s giving me.
“You’re somethin’ very special, and we need to get outta here so that Morax can’t use it against anyone.”
Her statement is tender, and her eyes are soft. Her hands twitch around the bars she’s tightly gripping, like she’s tempted to reach out to me but doesn’t follow through with the instinct. It’s probably for the best. I don’t know if I could handle that right now. Not with what’s warring inside of me.
I thought sadness might win out in the end against my other turbulent emotions, but I was wrong. Another emotion bitch-slaps the rest and comes stomping forward, demanding to be acknowledged.
Anger.
Years of being told what was wrong with me, all of the diagnoses and medicine and treatments, the monsters...I didn’t make them up. I didn’t hallucinate things at all.
I was just seeing what no one else could.
My heart races, and I wish I was a fire-breathing dragon that could open my maw and melt down all the years of my life when I listened to others tell me I was broken. I let them take from me the things I knew were real, and warp them and me into something shattered and unrecognizable.
When I was little, I always thought I had sisters. I remember telling doctors that I could f
eel them. They gave me pitying looks or sighs of irritation. Just another delusion added to my file.
But I was right.
I was right about all of it.
Rage bubbles up in my throat like thick acid, as though my body is doing its best to answer my call to breathe fire and raze my life and everything I know to the ground.
“Before, they used to flicker from human looking to monsters, why?” I ask. “Why doesn’t it happen down here?”
“Demons ward themselves in the Mortal Realm. The flickerin’ you experienced was you just seein’ through their wards. Down here no one has to hide what they look like,” she explains, and it sinks into me heavily with the weight of truth.
I run my fingers through my stringy hair, angry and hurt and so incredibly confused.
“Sable, I know this is a lot to take in, but just breathe,” Medley tells me as my breaths become more labored and an angry itch starts just under my skin.
I’ve spent most of my life in one institution or another, and for what? I was never crazy. That realization is heady and disorienting and yet incredibly validating.
Memories slam through me, and I feel them like I feel Morax’s hits: being left behind by who I now know are my adoptive parents, all the fights or attacks from other residents, and sometimes even cruelty from the staff.
My mind assaults me with how hard I worked to see past the terrifying monsters so I could escape and live some semblance of a life. My apartment and the job at a coffee shop that I loved. The man cloaked in evil, and the way he looked at a little boy who was running around one day during my shift. I knew he was going to hurt him. I knew I had to protect him.
But when I tried, it was me who was looked at like I was some evil villain. They threw charges at me like kidnapping and stalking, and they wouldn’t listen about the evil that I saw that was hunting the boy. I would never hurt him, but no one would hear me.
All they saw was crazy. Someone who couldn’t be trusted.
I hear my ex-boyfriend’s voice as he yelled at me, the old words ringing in my ears. I hear him calling me a liar and a bitch because I didn’t tell him about how I grew up or about my issues. He said I was just another psycho and that I deserved to be locked up forever. At the time, I agreed with him. I agreed with them all, thought I was a danger to society, but they were wrong. They were all wrong, and they stole my life from me.
