Chapter 8
1226 Words
Inside, it’s worse.
The air is thick with damp and soot, the scent of sweat and despair laced with the distant tang of metal. Lanterns flicker along the walls like dying stars. People move around me, heads down, backs bent, eyes dull.
Criminals. Slaves. The desperate.
And me.
A princess, but now just another wolf-less nothing with dirt under her nails.
"Get your sorry ass moving," barks a guard behind me. I don't look at him. I move. The deeper I go, the more I feel the walls close in around me, like they know I don’t belong here—but also like they think I do.
The guards in the beginning got off the high of ordering a member of the royal family at first but now it got old for them.
“Here’s your gear.” A bag is shoved into my hands. Inside is a pair of worn gloves, a pickaxe, and a threadbare scarf.
I glance up to see the person in charge—a squat, wiry man with a nose like it’s been broken more than once and eyes that scream don’t test me. He doesn’t give me a second look. I’m just another body. Another shovel.
The others already know who I am. They don’t look at me kindly. A few mutter under their breath. One spits. I hear the words.
“Wolfless.”
“Doom-bringer.”
“Moon-cursed.”
My cheeks burn, but I say nothing.
It’s safer not to.
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The hours drag like chained corpses.
The air is stifling. The pickaxe bites into my palm even with the gloves, and I can feel blisters already blooming. I cough, then keep coughing. Someone laughs.
I force myself upright.
The sound of another pickaxe rings beside me, rhythmic, practiced.
“How's Prince Elio? Has he woken up yet?”
The voice is dry, cracked like sandstone and smooth as mischief.
I glance sideways.
It was the girl who laughed. The girl next to me is tall and wiry, her head shaved smooth with a few old scars running across her scalp like forgotten stories. Her eyes are sharp and silver, her expression lazy but curious.
She looks like she’s never been scared of anything in her life.
“Why?” I mutter. “You planning on nursing him?”
She grins, not missing a beat. “Depends on how you plan on getting me out of here and into the hospital.”
I scoff and go back to chipping at the wall, A small smile already sprouting. I push it down. Hardly. “I was attacked too, you know.”
“Well, you’re right next to me, aren’t you?” she replies, glancing at me. “Means you’re alive, well. And still irritating.”
I almost smile. Okay, I full on smile.
Her name is Larka.
When we first met she didn’t ask me for mine. Everyone already knew it. She never did say my name though.
She swings her pickaxe with easy efficiency, like someone who’s been breaking stone her whole life and made peace with it.
“Word is,” she says, after a lull in our conversation, “barrier is going to break completely soon. The new Fae general is wickedly talented and relentless in claiming the outer cities. The magic are weakening. You can feel it in the air. Everything’s off.”
I nod. I feel it too. I really can't tell anyone what I know. It's classified. The commoners don't know to what extent we're losing ground and faith in the barrier. It would just cause unnecessary panic and maybe an uprising.
“There’s a ship leaving on Friday,” she tells me.
"What are you on about?" My brows furrow.
“One of the smugglers," She sniffs. "Takes anyone with coin or guts. Crosses the sea. Heads for the Outer Realms.”
I stop swinging.
She notices. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not joking. I’m getting the hell out of this graveyard.”
"You’d leave?" I ask, and I hate how soft my voice sounds. The grass wasn't always greener on the other side. She was a werewolf. The prejudice against our kind was high. She might not fare well.
She shrugs. “Wouldn’t you? Place like this… it’s already dead. Just hasn’t stopped breathing yet.”
I swallow the ache rising in my throat.
She’s really serious. Leaving. The only person who’s ever spoken to me without stigma.
I want to ask her to take me with her. I want to say, please—please don’t leave me alone here.
But it's fleeting. She has it worse than I do. I understood. I was at least a princess in name, she was an orphan sold by her uncle for a few morsels.
I was here once in a while while she was here everyday.
Nowhere to go, none to go home to.
Instead, I mutter, “I hope you make it. To wherever you're going.”
She glances at me with a bright smile. “I will.”
And she goes back to mining.
I turn my head so she won’t see the tears gathering.
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Hours pass and I'm a good distance away from others.
I lose count of how many rocks I’ve split. My arms ache. My skin is coated in grime and sweat. Every swing of the pickaxe feels like a scream.
And then I think I go crazy because I start hearing sounds.
Whispers.
It sounded Old. Faint.
At first, I can’t make out any words. It’s just noise—chaotic and distant, like voices behind a wall.
But then one comes through, clear as a bell.
“Take me.”
Holy s**t.
I freeze and blink, too stunned to do anything else.
What…?
For a second, it’s like the world slips sideways. My body’s still here, but my mind… it feels like I’ve stepped outside myself. Like I’m watching everything from a few feet away.
And then the stone in front of me cracks.
No—crumbles.
Something is inside. Smaller. Darker. A yellowish gem, pulsing like it’s alive. Faint light glows from within it, steady and slow—like a heartbeat.
And then—a roar.
“I... AM... AWAKE!!”
The words weren’t spoken, they were thundered into my soul. My legs give out, and I fall to my knees.
My hand reaches out on its own. I don’t even feel like I’m the one moving. It's trembling.
It's distinctly scary how I can't think of anything else.
I touch the stone. It’s warm. Too warm.
And before I know what I’m doing… like I'm possessed by something, I bring it to my lips.
And I swallow it.
It’s smooth. Hot. It glides down my throat like liquid fire.
And that’s when everything tilts.
My vision blurs. The ground shifts beneath me an I can’t stand—I’m swaying like a puppet with its strings cut.
Someone’s shouting. Voices all around me—but they feel far away. Like I’m underwater.
I try to focus, but my eyes won’t obey. The ceiling above me, filled with glowy stones too spins once, twice—
"So shiny."
And then the world cuts out.
Everything goes black.
Just like that, the darkness takes me.
- Writer
