5. Abyssus

abyssus ~ī, f.

1. (Late) an abyss

My skin wakes before I do—soft blankets, fluffed pillows, the air of a room gently circulating. I can feel. I can think. I can hear steady beeping.

I’m alive.

I bolt upright so fast, an IV jerks out of my wrist, and I stare blankly at the blood oozing over my skin. My hand juts to Mother’s redwood cross around my neck—relief first, terror second.

“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”

This is wrong. Why am I not dead? I rode a steed and impacted and— The beeping fluctuates wildly as I rip the sheets off my body. Everything’s white and smells sterile: a hospital, but not just any hospital—one of the fancy ones in the noble spire. They’ve wrapped me in a white gown and shoved me in this cocoon of a room to what? Recover? There’s nothing left to recover for. Did I ruin House Hauteclare? Did they DNA test me? I can’t remember, and not remembering is worse than even living.

I fling my legs over the side of the bed, and they buckle—can’t walk far. The door is no doubt guarded, but my life is not theirs to decide. I have to die. There are no sharp objects, not even a mirror to smash.

And then I see the window.

I stagger to it, and my fingers freeze over the sill—I didn’t know sunlight could be this warm. In open space, it sears, and in Low Ward, it’s nonexistent, crowded out by smog and the massive shadows of competing churches and unsleeping holoscreens. But here, it’s gentle, like an embrace—like Mother again.

“Oh, dearheart. I hope one day you’ll see the sun rise.”

Real voices ring outside the room. “She’s awake!”

I lunge my body up the sill, and the unfair brilliance of the noble spire hits me in its entirety—clean walkways, green bushes and blooms of all colors, sunlight captured and redirected and let free, evenly spaced buildings instead of crushed-together hovels. This is how people should live…this is how Mother and I should’ve lived. Shouts ricochet behind me.

“Stop her!”

“Get the tranq—now!”

Hands yank me back from the sill, but I thrash, claw, tearing at anything I can reach: clean skin, clean cloth, let me go, let me see the sun rise, you don’t get to give me mercy, I won’t be kept like one of your pets—

“Clear!”

A puncture in my thigh, and then something like hot honey rushes through my veins. They lay my heavy body back in bed and leave. My fist tries to clench, but nothing happens—only blinking, only breathing. They can stop my body, but they can’t stop my mind; the last thing I remember is the red steed charging for me. Did I pass out? If I was unconscious and kept my helmet on… If the cameras didn’t see my face… If I’d ruined House Hauteclare, I’d be dead by now. Burned beneath a plasma vent.

The world spins without moving, every inch of me darkening in free fall. Trapped in this hospital bed, I know only two things for certain:

One—I have failed in ruining House Hauteclare.

And two—I will not make the same mistake twice.

6. Clarus

clārus ~a ~um, a.

1. clear, bright

2. renowned, famous

Rax Istra-Velrayd stares into his teacup, the amber liquid shuddering with his mother’s every frantic step over the marble floor.

“How could you not know she was an impostor?” She snarls, wringing her paper-thin hands around her own cup. “We’ve risked so much training you—for what? For you to throw it all away fighting some common rat who snuck in and stole a steed? You should’ve known. You should’ve stopped the match before it ever took place!”

Before the fireplace, the projected hologram of her vis scrawls blue and translucent, screaming with headlines: COMMONER COMMANDEERS HOUSE HAUTECLARE’S GHOSTWINDER, RIDES AGAINST HOUSE VELRAYD. Rax shoots a look to his father standing motionless against the wall. The shelf of Rax’s many riding trophies glimmers ironically at his father’s side—gold and silver up to the ceiling. As per usual, Father doesn’t seem to want to say anything. Rax must clean up the pieces alone.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mother. The SCC declared it a null match. We didn’t lose any—”

“We could’ve.” She snaps her eyes to him, voice cold. “You don’t understand. You never do. You ride, but you don’t ever think—we came a hairbreadth away from losing every ounce of our family’s honor yesterday.”

“She fooled everyone, Mother,” Rax says. “Mirelle had no idea—”

The violence always comes in flashes. A white blur hurtles at his face, and then there’s the wicked sensation of porcelain cutting into his jaw as the cup breaks on him. The pain would hurt more if it were the first time. Rax can’t remember what time this is—the thousandth, perhaps. Ten-thousandth. He feels the blood drip gently down his chin and watches it drop onto the table.

“This isn’t about the Hauteclares!” Mother hisses. “Duke Velrayd is asking questions. We cannot have him questioning us—we are reliable. We are a Velrayd barony, now, and we will remain such at all costs. You will not ruin this for us.”

The embers in the fireplace flicker weakly over her face—shadowed, unrepentant. Her bodyguard in the corner shifts, waiting with expectant fingers on his baton. When Rax was younger, all it took was Mother to keep him in line, but as he grew, she started enlisting help—realizing it was perhaps unbecoming for a baroness to discipline her children herself.

Rax knows his next words will mean pain. His body aches with the phantom bruises. Still, he can’t help the soft laugh rising from his lips. “I’d ride against a hundred commoners if it meant I could be free from you.”