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I had no way of confirming that what I’d seen was real. No word of Lunete’s arrival reached me, and my prison remained the same. I hoped they simply thought I’d been trying to escape. If T’sol had seen me like my gut told me, surely it would be only a matter of time before Lunete was threatened.
I begged the armbanded to speak to me, to help me. I could get them out, I promised, desperate enough to risk not knowing for certain. My daze returned sevenfold, and the guards at the end of the hall remained, their eyes hollow, their antlers molting and bloody. I tried to keep my behaviour the same, but the thought of leaving needed more energy than my limbs had. Eventually, I assumed it was leftover from the attack and, without meaning to, another week passed around me.
After a while, one of the women who brought me food must have felt sorry for me. She looked about my age. Sitting me up, she helped me wash and gently combed out my hair. My thoughts moved through tar, but the quiet understanding between us felt enough. She started leaving me little trinkets with my morning fruit. An iridescent shell, a long bunch of grass flowers in multiple hues of red, a small drawing of a masculine face, their strange curving letters wrapped around it like a blessing.
Without the will or strength to do anything else, the mere fact that she found that little bit more in herself for me made my eyes hot and my throat tighter than it already was. With something more to think about, I saw her gifts as what they were— the things she was freely giving because she could. It made me think of Áine and her sisters, holding on to each other because it didn’t matter what else they had or didn’t have. I thought of Urien losing his son, grieved by the whole community, and holding each other up. I thought about everyone having a say in what they did, and I couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been enough for me. It fit who I imagined my family to be and could see the happy life we might have led if there hadn’t been war. I thought of Olivia, my one close friend back home who helped me paddle, and Joanne, who had done the same for Mum.
If my father had known the next battle was on the horizon, if he was aware of what the Unseelie were planning, protecting his seemingly human family would have been his first priority. Wanting to hold his key and draw comfort from an imagined closeness, I began to search my pockets. When I couldn’t find it, I moved to my coat, fitful, but it was gone. It hadn’t been something I thought they’d take. It wasn’t important. But its loss felt too much to bear in that moment when I didn’t have anything else.
The days blurred into one, which meant it was one long night thinking about what I should’ve done and all the things I couldn’t do now. Only the woman’s little gifts seemed to break up the monotony. Sometimes she would clear them away, as if they were merely things I’d dragged in on my clothes. But just like the objects in Mum’s shop so long ago, I couldn’t help but imagine what that stone or piece of carving had seen. How had it come to be and who had it known?
Sometimes I would ask her if I could keep something, and only once did she look over the few trinkets I’d kept already. My prized piece was a small animal skull, a reminder of the time I’d spent and wasted that I wouldn’t see again. I tried to hold on to the idea that I really didn’t know how long it had been, and the jab of panic it brought helped me manage.
I knew I wanted to find Lunete if she was still alive. I knew I owed it to Olivia and Joanne to try to get back home. I knew that if I finally lost myself in a way of life, anything I wanted to fill it with would be better than living like this. I wanted to be able to give in return. I knew I might need to find the Pact archives I’d heard so much about.
Beginning small, I neatly tore a large leaf she’d given me into a rough square. Probably only a day or two old, it wasn’t yet crispy but the folds I made creased enough to hold. With just one mistake, I presented a basic flower to my friend the next time I saw her. The warmth I felt from her smile told me that she felt the same when she did it for me. She tucked it away carefully. I wonder now if she also knew that it meant a revival of some kind. It was all out of my reach. I couldn’t change anything around me and only by seeing what else there was, could things change, could things be influenced again. I could only change what I did.
As she left, the lock didn’t fully catch. It had not been locked before, I’d already checked that, but somehow the lure of the outside sneaking in through that window was all I needed to get up again.
––––––––
Neasa tracked me down on one of these excursions. I had found a balcony that was nearly always empty, the common route leading away as it overlooked one of the busier areas. Sitting side-on to the hall but watching those below, I noticed her figure come towards me. I knew what to expect now and kept my eyes following what I could see of the shadow. Was this to get me involved again? Were they about to tell me about Lunete?
It had kept me on edge being here. I was now awake enough to know the darkness was everywhere, and knew I’d have to keep myself steady to avoid drawing its attention or I risked a deeper drop the more I got involved. The time spent in my head allowed me to observe its changes.
“You didn’t look like the type to succumb so quickly,” Neasa said half under her breath, examining my blank features. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a loss to force your hand.”
My eyes fell on her, and I hoped to show my lack of amusement. I hoped my silly deal stopped them from forcing my hand too. A corner of her mouth tilted, cruel pleasure in the planes of her face.
“What did T’sol promise you?”
I continued to watch her for a second, attempting to control my face as I realised he hadn’t told her. Which meant that those Pact archives weren’t an option. How guarded were they if Neasa couldn’t access them? And how little could I say? Though it felt like she oversaw much of what went on here in the city, it also felt like T’sol held the upper hand due to his control of the shadow.
“I don’t think he made any promises.” It wasn’t a lie. “I just didn’t want to be involved with any of this.” As nonchalantly as I could, I turned back to the dull-eyed public, who hurried from one hallway to the next or sat as quietly as I was in corners and along the walls. There didn’t seem to be much in between. I tried to take on the same careless look, disdain for everything that kept me here. Neasa lifted a hand and grazed a long nail along my temple. It was powdered in black, the same way I’d noticed others in court wearing their nails. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear.
“And what do you want now?”
“Nothing,” I replied after a moment of imagining what everyone else would say. “I’m just trying to survive.”
She lifted an eyebrow, and I couldn’t be sure if she believed me. “Is that what you were trying to do when you left the house and went into Falias?”
I hadn’t been that far again yet and wondered if it hadn’t been that long, “I was only trying to stretch my legs. Sometimes I wake up and think I haven’t been out at all.” I added, watching her in my periphery. I couldn’t know what information made its way back to her, so I had to assume all.
Whilst her stare burrowed into the side of my face, perhaps working out if I knew anything else, she seemed somewhat satisfied. She stood to leave, and I couldn’t stop myself thinking that if they wanted me to remain lifeless and unthinking, herding my thoughts and finding a way to do anything at all was my best resistance.
My sitters remained in sight, even as she took her leave. I released a satisfying breath but remained where I was, watching through the carved balustrade. Neasa didn’t walk back through my sight and so must have headed towards the more maintained rooms.
I had long assumed the shadow clouded my consciousness and had seen its effects in others too, but something lingered at the back of my mind, nudged by Neasa’s visit. When I’d woken up from my vision of Eoghan and Hazel, I’d tried to go over the details, in case there’d been something important. The fact that T’sol and Neasa had been friends—or at least accomplices—for a long time had escaped me. Though T’sol had been the one to take the lives that created the living darkness, had she planned it? She had been around the prime family for a long time, slowly manipulating the situation and T’sol’s life, but to what end?
The longer I sat there, I felt like I was seeing how things unravelled. Watching the people below being preyed upon, I was simultaneously reminded that the Unseelie Council had talked about time, and that Eoghan, a lifetime ago at my first meeting, had theorised the dark creature may have been collecting something.
I thought of how my days had slipped into one since I’d been here. I thought of the unquenchable pit that weighed me down since we’d left my father’s house. I thought of the childhood fear that had followed me, the dark side of life, hiding where you least expected it, out of sight. The longer I thought about it, the more it made sense. Was that what the shadow was collecting? Didn’t the very gates that my father’s family protected traverse the time gap between our worlds? Hadn’t even that disappeared when T’sol had created the darkness?
It was only a matter of waiting, T’sol had said. It was only a matter of time.
I knew Eoghan was clever enough to piece this together as well. I knew that Drust had probably already learnt so much more about the shadow’s nature. Some part of me hated how much I felt like I owed them. All of their patience and care when I hadn’t realised I’d needed it yet, how much they all had going on in their own lives. I had been selfish in a nation of selfless people. I had been so focused on what I’d needed at the time, I hadn’t stepped back to see that it required less effort to help everybody as they helped me, rather than more on my own.
I realised this too late of course, helping the Seelie was now as out of reach as helping the Unseelie. Unless I could find a way to change our Pact. In all my watching, I hadn’t seen anything that resembled paper, so wherever they were sealing these documents, they didn’t go far. As I headed back that night, I resolved to find out if the vision had been real. I needed to help Lunete if I could. I needed to reach the limit of what I could do against our deal. And hope it was enough to show me the next step.