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I was trying very desperately to keep the hope out of my heart. Hope was dangerous.
“I honestly do not know. Tell me everything you know again. Maybe now we can think of something.”
On our first days together, Theo had talked at length about what he knew about our situation, but I’d been too deep in my pain to take it in. I had quickly returned to my place on the cot, so he didn’t have to yell and give us away. There was a ragged breath on the other side of the wall.
“Okay, so the first bit, you know. I was studying fae legends and lore and the Before Times. I was at the University, doing research for a paper on the historical myth of immortality. There was a book amongst the others. I have no idea howit got in there. It was old but simple. It seemed more like a journal than anything else.” He sighed heavily. “I very, very stupidly read the book without taking any precautions. It contained a spell. Because I didn’t check, I hadn’t noticed it until I got here. The energy… It’s the same. The spell linked me to the fae. Her name is Marieth, by the way.”
I had snorted incredulously. “Marieth?”
“Yeah, I know. Weird that she has such a normal name, but anyway. She wrote to me. I didn’t think it was odd at the time, again, stupid. I am blaming the spell.”
I’d shifted so I could lean against the wall, resting my head against it. Theo was the very definition of book smart, not street smart. This was all very on brand for him.
“She told me that she had a vast array of knowledge of the concepts I was researching. We had been writing for a while.”
“Theo, how were your letters getting here in the middle of the Woods?”
There was a pause. “I just assumed it was the staff taking them to post and delivering my mail. I didn’t…” There was another pause. “Gods. It was the spell again. It rotted my brain.” I could hear a thunk on the wall between us like he was hitting his head against it.
“Never mind now. What happened? I know she contacted you to visit her. I told you not to go.”
“Ugh, look, I know. But it just pissed me off that you were treating me like a child. I am a legitimate genius, Tor. I am smart. I thought I could figure it out on my own.” My tongue hurt where I had to physically bite it to stop from making a comment. “I thought I could trust them. I wanted to prove that I could do this. That I wasn’t…” Another heaving sigh whispered through the bricks.
I wished I could wrap my arms around him. I know what he wanted to prove. That he was more than the smart little weirdo who was too soft and sensitive and who couldn’t handle the real world. He wanted to prove that he was an adult. He was capable. I got it.
“It’s okay, Theo. I understand.” My words were gentle, and my heart had cracked slightly at the sniff I knew was to pull back his tears of frustration.
“Anyway. I agreed to come, but there was a niggle in the back of my head. Before the man came to collect me, I made you the map, just in case. Something told me I should. But the man… he wasn’t a man. Everything is kind of hazy about meeting him at the door. It was like he wasn’t real. It was insane, really. Like, I could see him, but it was like looking at a shadow. But he whispered something and blew some powder in my face and we were here.”
I groaned loudly. “It was a Servitor.”
Theo sucked his teeth. I could see his rueful smile in my mind’s eye. “Yup. It was a Servitor.”
Servitors are incorporeal beings created by fae and witches to do their bidding, an extension of their magic. They can usually only complete one task, and use an incredible amount of magic. It is rare to find a being with enough power to actually raise one.
“I woke up here, in this stupid room. She came to talk to me. Tor, I was terrified. You saw her, right? The way she shifts? And that voice? That smell? Like flowery death.” I could hear him shudder. He was right though; there was something horribly, viscerally wrong with her. “She came to begin the ritual, Tor.” I could hear the defeat in his voice as terror swept through me.
“What fucking ritual, Theo?”
There was a hiccuped sob on the other side of the brick wall. “It began on the last new moon. I have until the next, when the ritual completes. It is how she keeps her power. Tor, she wasn’t lying when she said she had knowledge from the Before Times. She’s from long before then. She is wrong because she is ancient. I cannot even begin to comprehend how old she actually is. But it takes a lot of power to live this long. And it’s power she doesn’t have anymore. Hers is not enough. So she has to take it. She preys on fae, takes them and steals their power. I am not the first. You won’t be the last.”
His gut-wrenching sobs had overtaken him then. All I could do was make gentle noises on the other side of the fucking wall. We were trapped, my brother was set to die, while I waited my turn so Marieth could what? Garden for fuckingeternity?
Rage roiled in my guts as I had gotten up to pace the confines of the small room, hefting myself up to peek out the small window, shoving at the glass until that evil cat had come to prowl the space, hissing murderous warnings at me. I moved onto the door, running and slamming my shoulder into it until I heard a sharp crack and felt the blinding pain radiate down my arm. The door hadn’t even flexed. Fury and fear battled within me and when my food magically appeared on the doorstep, I had thrown the wooden bowl at the wall, screaming my wrath, watching the disgusting slop smear and streak down the walls.
But it was all for naught. After my tantrum, I had settled, a nasty purple bruise blooming big and ugly over my tender shoulder. Theo and I spent the following days coming up with impossible, futile escape plans and sharing sorrowful memories of the past.
I told him about Caelan, and Seff and Edith. I didn’t say that I wish he could’ve met them. He knew. There were so many words that we couldn’t say, that sat between us heavy and loud in their silence. We cried silently.
Until yesterday.
When she took him, and it was over.
And so I have lain here listening to the relentless drip, drip, drip somewhere in this damned room, unable to move. Breathe. Empty except for the endless echoes of Theo’s screams as she dragged him from his room, the way she laughed. The fizzling ripples of her magic still singed the edges of my consciousness. Morning must’ve come, the gruel and bucket have been replaced, but without Theo, I cannot move. There is nothing. No reason. No hope.
No escape.
A spider makes its way through the small hole between mine and Theo’s rooms. It tickles my skin as it crawls over my hand to make its way out of the wall and up to the window with its watery light. My breath rasps in and out of my chest, shuddering with each silent sob. I wonder how long until our parents notice we are gone? Will they care? What will they think happened to us?
