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Drip.
Maddening.
It is driving me insane. I have no idea how long I have been trapped in this fucking basement; I am pretty sure it has only been days, but between the boredom and the dripping, I don’t know how many.
There is a window. Tiny, dirty, and useless. Just a peek at the outside world. Just like Theo’s.
Theo. My baby brother who was trapped in the room next door, so close but so far away.
Theo, who I was meant to save, and now I have no idea where he is in this fucking house after that bitch took him.
I heard him screaming through the bricks separating us. Screaming and screaming and then nothing. I had beaten against the wall until my voice tore and my fingers bled, but I couldn’t get to him. My magic had been bound; I can feel it like a coil on my spirit, and with no hope, there is nothing I can do except sit, and wait, and hurt at all I have lost in this dank basement room with nothing but a thick immovable door—trust me, I tried—a cot, a ragged blanket and a bucket.
Yeah,a bucket.
I have never experienced terror like I had when Caelan and I were running through that maze. That was until she caught us. Seeing Caelan, and Edith, suspended in the air, their lifeless bodies just hanging, faces frozen in pain.
“It is not them I am after… But you… You will be perfect. Once I dispose of this here,” she had taunted in that voice.
That voice that teased the base of your spine telling you to run as fast as you can. The weight of her assessment felt like a weight crushing my skull. Everything within me screamed to flee, to escape, hide. Anything but face this formless, changing monstrosity with its shining eyes that were both dead and lifeless yet somehow held the answers to the universe.
Despite my desperate need to retreat, and the fear clawing at my insides like a ravenous beast, I had been unable to move. Because even as my baser instincts screamed to get away, a deeper impulse cemented my feet to the ground. The urges had warred within me as I watched the man I love silently scream in agony.
I could feel his horror, the pain at my touch when I tried to pull him back to me. His pain broke the wavering within me. Magic had swirled in my veins, burning my insides as the glowing light surrounding Caelan and Edith grew brighter, their paralysed screams embedding in my soul.
Blue light had burst forth from my sternum, radiating from my body in waves. From my nearly whited-out vision I had seen the light wave crash against the golden brilliance of her own magic, causing them to swell and merge in a furious riptide against each other. My brain flooded with high-pitch static, screaming, my ears popped and bled, my veins electrified with the need to protect. And then with an earth-jarring rumble, they had disappeared.
Gone. Just gone.
Without the surge of power my magic had created, I was left a crumpled husk, collapsing to the grass beneath my feet. I think I sobbed; certainly when I had come to myself in my chamber here my face had been covered in snot and tears and blood. But I just felt nothing. Absolute nothingness. Even that divine golden thread connecting me to Caelan was duller, dimmer. I could no longer reach through it and find him, as though I was missing half of my whole.
Trust your magic, Edith had begged. And I had, but to what end? Theo and I were both trapped. Now he is gone. She took him yesterday, just as he’d said that she would. And now I am alone here, alone in the world. Maybe I should just let her take me.
Despite the wall between us, I had managed to talk to him. To Theo. It had been sweet torture being so close, yet so far, a small hole in the brickwork between our rooms allowing us to communicate.
I had told him about our journey here, even though my heart ached to remember. And despite him leaving the location for me to find, he had been devastated that I had come for him. That I had brought others, risking them, for him. Torturing himself with the knowledge that I was trapped now, too. At risk. I could feel the sorrow in his words as he apologised endlessly that first day. Until I had snapped, begging him to stop, and so we had remained silent.
I couldn’t bear his pain on top of my own. It was too much. I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t. Instead, I dragged my cot next to the small hole in the brickwork. Theo did the same. And we lay there, next to each other, but separate.
If I peered hard enough through the dark gap, I could see his bright brown eyes shiny with tears. I couldn’t see much of him, but he’d looked ill. Sickly and pale, the faint golden aura of sunlight that was perpetually about him extinguished. But it made my heart ache with sadness, and so instead I reached my fingers through the gap, encouraging Theo to do the same, his fingers brushing mine. Connected.
I’d tried to carry on, because my brother pleaded with me. I could never deny him anything. For those first few days, my body was numb, a hollow shell, only moving to relieve myself in a bucket of all things and retrieve the meagre stew that appeared inside of my door every morning.
The stew was a gelatinous grey mess, with unknown meat and large chunks of vegetables. Whether it tasted good or bad, I had no idea. I just choked it down to appease my brother. Unable to face him and his feelings, and with nothing but myself in the small, cold basement room, my days were filled with Caelan. His sweet bearded face, the crinkle around his eyes when he smiled, the bashful way he blushed when he was embarrassed, haunted my days as I had laid there.
At night I was taunted by the ghost of his touch, the rasp of his crinkly body hair against me, the smell of his skin and worst of all, his big strong hand reaching for me, calling my name in agony and loss. I had cried until there was nothing left. My eyes are swollen and gritty, my body aching from ill use and misery. My sobs were loud and angry, silent and morose.
Until it stopped.
I had awoken with a start, restless energy colouring the very edges of the numb hollowness, clouding my being, stinging my skin with its spark. The world when I had fallen asleep had been dim and colourless, but when I had awoken, it was almost too vivid.
The place in my chest where my connection to Caelan lies pulled deep and hard, tugging me out of my bed. I’d flung the ragged blanket off myself and jumped to my feet, suddenly unable to be still any longer, even though my weakened body protested greatly at the exertion.
“Tor?” Theo’s frantic whisper peeped from the small hole in the brickwork. I was jumping on the spot, twisting my neck side to side, waving my arms, feeling the blood surge through my veins.
“I’m here, Theo,” I’d called, pacing in circles now, unable to stop moving once it was in me to do so. “I just feel… Something is different.”
There was a faint scratching sound as he shuffled closer on the other side of the wall. “Could it be Caelan?” His voice was hopeful.
