I wondered what happened to the girls here when they got too old for this place. Were they moved to another institution? Or were they allowed to go home?
“Amelia, this is Harper,” the nurse said when we reached the front of the room. A large banquet table was set up with plates and several pots of steaming food.
Amelia was a large black woman who smiled when I met her eyes. It was the first truly genuine smile I had seen in as long as I could remember.
“Welcome, Harper. Don’t look so scared, girl. Everything’s going to be alright now,” Amelia said. She sounded so sincere, I almost believed her.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the tray she held out toward me. There was no soup, but there was some kind of warm meat and mashed potatoes with gravy. Green beans. My stomach growled.
“Drinks are here,” the nurse said. “And your napkin.”
I looked around. “What about silverware?” I asked.
“No silverware,” she said. “It’s not safe.”
I eyed my food. How was I supposed to eat this without silverware? I glanced around and noticed most of the other girls eating with their hands, scooping the potatoes into their fingers like children.
I took a napkin and a cup of water and followed the nurse to a table in the far corner of the room. Everyone sitting at the table straightened their shoulders and stopped talking as we approached. With the exception of one dark-haired girl on the end who kept her head down and rocked furiously back and forth, they all placed their hands in their laps and smiled at the nurse.
“Good evening, Nurse Joan,” a girl with two short, blonde pigtails said.
“Good evening, Miss Nora,” the nurse said. “Ladies, this is Harper. She’s new here, and I trust you will all help her to feel welcome. She’ll be joining Mary Ellen, Nora and Judith in room 1802. Please make sure she feels welcome. And Nora, will you please make sure she finds her way back safely before room checks?”
“Of course,” Nora said.
Dumbly, I stood there with my tray as the nurse nodded and walked away. Panic shot through my veins as she left me. No matter how much I may have disliked her, she was the only thing I knew in this place. I didn’t understand the rules or even where I was. How could she simply walk away and leave me here?
“Are you just going to stand there catching flies? Or do you plan to sit down and eat that meat loaf?” someone said. I snapped my mouth shut and looked down into the dark-blue eyes of a girl who looked as if she couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. “Because if you aren’t hungry, I’ll gladly take what’s leftover. I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving, Bonnie,” Nora said. “And yet you weigh twice as much as any of the rest of us.”
The other girls at the table giggled, but Bonnie didn’t look amused. Her jaw clenched and she rose from her seat, the bench scraping the floor.
“You’ll shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you.”
“Oh sit down and stop your complaining,” Nora said. She glanced up at me. “You going to join us, or what?”
I cleared my throat and nodded, setting my tray and cup on the table before stepping over the bench and sitting down.
“Harper, huh? I’m Nora, and this here is obviously Bonnie.” She pointed her index finger at each girl as she went down the row. “Judith is in the room with us. Hailey. Meredith. And our resident rocker over there is Mary Ellen. She doesn’t say much.”
Everyone waved as they were introduced, but Mary Ellen just kept rocking. She didn’t even lift her head or look up, and from the looks of it, she hadn’t touched her food.
“So, what’s your story?” Nora asked, spooning a glob of mashed potatoes into her mouth with her fingertips.
I shook my head, not sure what I wanted to tell her. I certainly didn’t want to say that I’d burned my own house down and apparently murdered a family I couldn’t even remember. I lifted a chunk of meat loaf to my mouth and took a large bite. My stomach revolted, and I nearly tossed it back up.
“Don’t you talk?” Bonnie asked.
I washed another bite of the meat down with a gulp of water and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know my story.”
Several of the girls at the table lowered their heads or exchanged glances before taking bites of food and turning their eyes away from mine.
“What?” I asked.
The only one who would meet my gaze was Nora. For a moment, her eyes dipped toward my arms where my dress lifted just enough to show the scars that marred my skin. Absently, I touched one and ran my fingertip along its upraised pink surface. I quickly pulled the edge of my sleeve down to cover it.
“It’s nothing,” Nora said. “Just some girls come here with absolutely no memory of their lives before Evers.”
“Evers Institute?” I asked. “That’s the name of this place?”
“Evers Institute for Troubled Girls,” Bonnie said. “If you want the full technical name.”
A chill ran across my skin like a ghost passing through me. I felt as if I’d done this before. A strange place. New girls. Something unpleasant tugged on me. When I focused on it too hard, though, a sharp pain exploded behind my right eye. I winced and lowered my head.
“What’s wrong?” Judith asked. She was sitting across from me and leaned over to touch my arm. “Do you need me to call for the nurse?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said. “It just hurts sometimes.”
“Headaches?” Nora asked.
“Yeah,” I said, opening my eyes and sucking in a deep breath. “I used to have them all the time. I think they’re getting better, but sometimes I get this shooting pain right here.”
I touched my hand to my temple, and Nora nodded.
“I’ve had that before,” she said. “It’s from the meds. It should get better.”
Behind me, a tray crashed to the floor and everyone at my table turned to look. A girl who looked to be about fifteen or sixteen stared directly at me, her eyes wide and her mouth open.
“Harper?” she whispered.
Confused, I studied her face. “Do I know you?” I asked.
“We’ve never met, but I know who you are,” she said. Tears slipped from her eyes and fell onto her gray dress, leaving dark marks on the fabric. She pressed her fists against the side of her face, her voice growing louder. “If you’re here, the world is lost. You can’t be here. You don’t belong here.”
I swallowed, her words like a punch in the gut. What the hell was she talking about?
Nora grabbed my arm, and I spun around.
“Ignore her,” Nora said. “Someone needs to shut that girl up or things are going to go very badly for her. You don’t want to get caught in the middle of that.”
The girl behind me screamed, and everyone in the entire room froze.
I turned around, angling my body so I could see what was going on. Two nurses rushed to the girl’s side. One of them inserted a long needle into the girl’s neck.
The screaming cut off abruptly and the girl went limp, falling into the arms of the nurses. They lifted her and carried her away so fast they were practically running.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said.
“Just turn around and eat your food,” Judith said in a loud, rough whisper.
The noise in the dining hall gradually returned as girls went back to their food and their conversations, but I couldn’t force another bite.
I turned to glance toward the door, but Nora grabbed my arm. When I looked up, she shook her head sharply back and forth. There was a panic in her eyes that frightened me.
I lowered my head and stared at the food on my plate. My hands were trembling, so I hid them under the table, clasping them together in my lap.
“Who was that girl?” I whispered, so low I wasn’t sure anyone could even hear me. “What did she mean by that? That I don’t belong here?”
“Her name is Robin. She�
��s insane,” Bonnie said, leaning close to me. “She’s always causing trouble, saying things that don’t make any sense. Just ignore it. She probably didn’t even know what she was talking about.”
Bonnie sounded so sure of herself, I might have believed her. Except for one thing.
As far as I remembered, I had never seen that girl in my entire life.
And yet, she had known my name.
The Truth Of It
My muscles ached from working all day, but while the other demons groaned and complained, I sat in one corner of our cell, enjoying the pain.
I’d spent a week in solitary confinement without food or water, but today they had brought me back out to the quarry. The wounds from Ezrah’s lashing still pulsed along my back, and my muscles begged to be stretched. Any normal demon would consider it agony to be pushed so hard and beaten so badly, but my heart swelled with gratitude.
This pain belonged to me. Just as my heart belonged to me. My mind.
My own mind. Everything else here was just temporary.
“How is it you can smile after such torture?” The old demon, Trention, walked toward me and rested his side against the stone walls.
I looked up briefly and met his eyes. Had I been smiling?
“I don’t know how to thank you for your kindness on the line the other day,” Trention said. “I deserved those lashings, and it pained me to see you have to take them for yourself. When you didn’t return to our cell for several days, I was worried something terrible had happened to you.”
I held my tongue. I’d already drawn enough attention to myself this week. There was a rumbling among the others already about my display of power and my defiance. I knew I should tell this demon to move on. I wasn’t here to make friends.
I nodded and looked away.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I just wanted to say thank you for what you did. Your kindness will not be forgotten.”
He turned to walk away, his steps slow and pained. One hand clutched his shoulder, and he leaned against the wall for support.
For the most part, everyone here had left me to my own thoughts. Already, though, I’d been getting curious looks throughout the day.
I’d done a good job keeping my head down as Ezrah asked, and I wanted to keep it that way. But for some reason, I had a soft spot in my heart for this old demon.
Growing up as a young shadowling, I had not known him personally, but I had known of him. He didn’t belong in a place like this. He didn’t deserve this.
“Want me to take a look at that wound?” I asked.
He looked back to me, his head tilted in surprise. “Looking at it won’t do much good, I’m afraid,” he said. “But you’re welcome to see it if you want to. I haven’t even had the courage to look at it myself.”
I stood and walked over to him, helping him sit down on the pile of rags that was the closest thing I had in here to a bed.
Once he was settled, I pulled the fabric of his tunic off the top of his shoulder. Trention winced and sucked a breath through his teeth. The fabric had stuck to the wound, and when I got a good look at it, my heart sank.
“This is infected,” I said.
“Oh, I know,” he said. “Been that way for about two months now. I kept hoping it would heal on its own, but the way they have us working every day keeps opening it up. It’s hard to lift that axe over my head without upsetting it. If they were smart, they’d just use magic to mine those quarries. I don’t understand it.”
I didn’t want to tell him that they all probably had me to thank for this particular daily task. Someone in charge likely thought it would be fun to watch me have to mine the very type of stone that had held me prisoner for so long.
“I’m guessing you already asked the guards for some kind of ointment or a trip to the shaman?” I asked.
Trention nodded. “A few times, but Karn told me if I asked again, he’d deepen the wound by double,” he said. “I have to tell you, I never believed this would be the way my final days would go.”
“You were a scholar in the castle,” I said.
He looked up, surprised, and smiled. “How did you know that? Most of the demons around here assume I was just some fisherman living out on the Black Cliffs before I came here,” he said. “I never bothered to correct them. I figured if they knew the truth… Well, it doesn’t matter, I guess, now does it?”
I didn’t tell him how I knew, but he seemed to appreciate that someone had finally recognized him.
I wished I had any tools that might help his wound heal, but they didn’t give us much inside the cell. No running water. No food or clean cloths. There was only one thing I could think of that might work.
I brought my wrist up to my mouth and bit into the skin at the base of my thumb. When I tasted the sharp sting of blood on my tongue, I held the wound out toward the old man.
He backed away slightly, scared for a moment.
“What are you doing?”
I moved forward and dripped blood across his wounded shoulder. The blue drops soaked into his skin in an instant, the wound drinking it like it had been dying of thirst.
His body immediately relaxed and he moved his shoulder back and forth. His jaw fell open and he leaned forward, taking a closer look at my face. I turned my head to the side, letting my dark curls hide most of my profile, but he simply reached over and pushed my hair back.
“It’s you,” he whispered. “I thought I recognized you when you first arrived, but it’s been so many years since I had seen your face. I thought it was impossible. When you disappeared, we were all told you had died.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I’d gone too far. Exposed too much. Healing was a rare ability in the Shadow World. Only a few families held that power in their blood. I’d made a mistake. “I hope that helps your shoulder, but if you’ll excuse me—”
“How did you get free?” he asked, reaching out to touch my hand. His voice was reverent and full of wonder. “It’s impossible that you could be here in this world or even in this place. No one ever comes back. I don’t understand it, but it’s you. It’s really you.”
I shook my head. The last thing I needed right now was for this guy to tell everyone that I was the long-lost son of the king’s most trusted advisor. Or that I had been strong enough to somehow escape the Order’s slavery.
“I’m telling you, old man, I’m not who you think I am,” I said, my voice harsher than he deserved. Softly, I added, “And even if I was, there might be a reason I didn’t want everyone to know.”
He slowly nodded and glanced toward our other cellmates.
“Your secret is safe with me, Aerden,” he said.
I looked up at the sound of my own name. He said it with such reverence it nearly brought tears to my eyes.
“I don’t know how you did it, but if you’re here it must be true. I’d heard the rumors, but none of us actually believed it,” Trention said in a whisper. “But how did you end up here? How could a great warrior such as yourself become a prisoner in your own kingdom?”
“I could ask you the same thing, scholar,” I said.
“Does this mean our princess has returned as well?” he asked.
For the hundredth time that day, I thought of Lea and the words I hadn’t yet been able to say to her. We’d spent months together in Brighton Manor. I’d had every opportunity to tell her the truth about the heart stone and why I had left the King’s City all those years ago.
So why had I never told her?
Because I was a coward. The truth of it hit me harder than Ezrah’s whip.
I’d distanced myself from my brother—the only one who’d actually believed there was hope of ever saving me—because I blamed him for Lea’s broken heart. But the truth was that Jackson was the one who’d been true to his own heart. He hadn’t asked me to pour my own love into that heart stone. I had done that all on my own, thinking it would make Lea happier.
And Jackson hadn’t been the one to willingly walk away from his duty to the kingdom. Not until my life was on the line.
I had once been groomed to someday take over the King’s Guard. Money and time had been poured into my training, and my people were counting on me. I left because I was too much of a coward to stay and watch my brother marry the woman I loved.
Everything that happened was my fault.
Hearing this demon call me a warrior made me sick to my stomach. I’d spent so much time blaming everyone else, that I’d never realized that I was the one to blame.
How would things have been different if I had stayed? Or if I’d told Lea the truth about my feelings before her engagement? If I had faced my fear and been true to my heart, I might never have spent a hundred years in slavery. Lea might already be the Queen of the North, leading this realm to victory against the Order.
My fear was the cause of so much pain, my heart couldn’t even comprehend.
I turned away from the old demon, holding back tears. I hoped he would walk away and leave me to my thoughts, but he stayed, placing his hand on my arm as if we were old friends.
“I’m sorry to have upset you, warrior,” he said.
“Don’t call me that,” I said. “I am nothing. I’m not responsible for my freedom. I was rescued by the ones strong enough to stand against her.”
“And the others?” he asked. “Those who were also held captive by the sapphire priestess? What of them? I had a daughter who was taken many years ago. My youngest.”
“If the human who hosted her was still alive, then your daughter is free,” I said.
He clutched my hand and held it tightly in his own. “A true priestess of the Order of Shadows is dead. There is hope, after all.”
I thought of Lea. Everything that had kept us apart—our duty to the kingdom and my slavery—was gone. If I could prove to her that I was worthy of her love, would she ever find it in her heart to love me back?
In that moment, though a prisoner in the deepest depths of the king’s dungeons, I vowed that somehow I would face my fears and restore my power. Somehow I would become the demon she deserved.
Forgotten Darkness Page 10
