His Divine Queen

The Labyrinth

She didn’t know where she was. Her eyesight provided her nothing but a blank darkness all around, and her ears caught the quiet drop, drop of water hitting a surface on her left. Everything felt muffled, like she was trapped underwater, made worse by the pulsing headache that had begun to tighten its grip around her senses.

She struggled to push herself up, hands clutching around a soft material beneath her. It felt like a blanket, something she was not expecting to feel in such a dark and dingy place. A moment of fear stabbed at her heart, but she pushed it away just as quickly. Wherever she was, and whatever she was about to experience, she knew that she could handle it. She was the Queen of Epineio, and she would survive this.

“El?” She hissed into the dark after a moment of hesitation.

She waited but received no response. The silence stretched out around her, taunting her with the strange feeling of complete isolation, something that she had not felt in months. However strange it felt, it was also welcoming – like she was greeting an old friend. She could stay in this room, hide away from all her responsibilities and people for as long as possible. She could finally relax and rest. But, however much she wished for it, that just wasn’t her. She had to leave, she had to find Lorcan, and she had to return to her people to save them from the nightmare that had brought her here in the first place. She would not allow herself to cower away in the dark.  

The ground was uneven and cold as she stumbled to her feet. Raising a hand to the wall, Arabella took her time feeling along its surface, cautiously mapping out the room in her head. Tuning into her wolf, it did not take long for her to come to the conclusion that she was underground. The periodic drip drop reminded her of the prisons, and the stale air clung to her skin like it did underneath the Palace grounds. But she wasn’t underneath the Palace, just couldn’t be, if her memory served her correctly. It had been night-time in the desert, she had been on first watch as Lorcan had slept beside her. And then in the span of moments it had all changed: strange winds engulfed them, shrouding him from her, that piercing pain, and then… Nothing. She couldn’t remember anything between then and now. And now, she was alone in an underground room, bruised and battered, but still alive.

Her searching came to an end when she felt her way back round to the thin blanket that she had awoken on. The room was small, barely 5 x 5 metres with a stiffness that reminded her of a prison cell. It seemed to Arabella like she was a captive here.

As her situation became apparent, she felt her wolf surge forward in distress. It took all her power to stop the shift, to coax her wolf back into its passive state so that she could keep a level head on her shoulders. Her wolf did not like this, and it huffed a growl of frustration inside her mind.

Arabella ignored it.

Instead, she focused her thoughts onto where she was, and who had brought her here. There were two groups that could have done this, yet the circumstances to which she was captured pointed to only one of them. The sudden arrival of the harsh winds and the way her body was held unnaturally against the large tree could mean only one thing. It must have been the Witches that had captured them, and now she was held in their underground labyrinth trapped in a room that, she suspected, could be opened only by an Earth Witch. She truly was a prisoner here until they decided to come for her.

“Do you have any reason to hold me here like this? I have not come here to harm you, I only need to talk to your leader,” she announced to the empty room.

The sound of her voice echoed back to her, solidifying her suspicions that the room was an unnatural creation, but easing her doubts that she was completely alone. She did not know much about the Witches, but the little she had managed to read about them through the years had taught her that they could not use their gifts long-range. The Witch that created this room had to be nearby, meaning that they must be able to hear her.

“I have come with a proposition for you,” she continued, “if you let me out of this room, I will explain it to you. We are not here to cause any trouble; I just want to talk.”

Silence. Again. Nothing but the darkness that mocked Arabella’s straining eyesight.

She had begun to resign herself to her isolation when a sudden movement on the opposite wall drew her attention. A deep rumbling grew louder and louder as she watched on, and finally, a small shard of light broke through the darkness. It grew larger as she watched, the crack in the wall opening further as Arabella lifted her hand to block the piercing light. She squinted into the sudden whiteness, making out the forms of two figures that stood blocking any escape she could have made.

The Witch nearest Arabella stood with her arms crossed, an intense stare plastered across her face that reminded Arabella of Kylia’s own signature look. Her shiny, dark hair was cut into a short bob, complimenting her sharp jaw and caramel skin. Arabella’s eyes then fell to the figure stood off to the side, the Earth Witch responsible for her captivity, she concluded from the raised hands and focused eyes.

Arabella decided to break the quiet first. “Where is the male that I arrived with?”

“He is safe for now,” the unknown Witch declared menacingly. “He’ll stay that way if you come with me.”

Arabella raised her brow, staring the tall Witch down as she slowly pushed herself to her feet. She did not break the eye contact, did not want to seem weak in the face of the age-old enemy of her kind. Although she had come here to promote a truce with the Witches, something told her that she couldn’t completely trust this one.

Once she was on her feet, Arabella watched as the taller Witch turned to whisper something incomprehensible to the smaller Earth one, who stepped away out of sight. Once it was just the two of them, Arabella cautiously stepped closer to the newly-formed door, and out into the labyrinth of the Witches’ coven.

It was brighter than Arabella had imagined, airier and more homely than she thought possible. The corridors that they walked were empty, yet they passed countless openings that Arabella’s wolf could sense the buzz of living people in.

They walked for maybe only five minutes, but Arabella began to get a sense of the place that she was being held captive in. The Witches had sought to make the best of what they had, building a life and a society hidden away from the harsh world above. It was incredible, really, what they had been able to achieve down here. Yet, this knowledge also filled her with a sense of trepidation: she could only hope that their leader would at least take the time to consider her proposal.

The tall Witch led her into a cosy room that housed a threadbare plush chair, a rickety stool, and a fireplace that held a meagre echo of the flames that had once burnt within it. To Arabella’s surprise, they were alone. She turned, ready to ask the intense Witch why she had been brought here, but was met with nothing but empty space.

She was alone again.

Arabella turned back around, focusing her wolf’s attention to her surroundings as her heart sped up in anxiousness. The air had an odd feeling to it, a quiet foreboding that washed over Arabella and lifted the hairs on her arm in preparation for something. She wished that Lorcan was beside her to offer his comforting presence, yet she was reminded in the cold silence of the room that she must face whatever was to happen next as her journey had first started: completely alone.  

She concentrated her thoughts on the room, hoping it would provide an answer to why she had been brought here, but there was little to note except the old furniture and an odd burnt smell in the air.

Then, she heard it echo in the room from behind her. A voice that she never expected to hear again, one that had haunted her nightmares and chased into her daytime thoughts every day for the past few months. Speaking a nickname that she had never hoped to hear fall from his lips again.

“Wait… Bella?”