Thorns between us

Two: The Voice in the Chains

The cell smelled like rust and old prayers.

Water dripped somewhere in the dark. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Rats moved in the walls, soft and patient, like they had time.

I had time too. Not much.

Dawn, the guard had said. Execution at dawn. King’s orders.

The iron burned my wrists.

Not from heat. From _me_.

Witches and iron don’t get along. It was supposed to leech magic, make us weak.

But this felt different. This felt like it was feeding something.

“Hello again, killer.”

The voice was back. Inside my skull.

I squeezed my eyes shut until stars burst behind them. “Shut up.”

“You’re the one who’s been shutting up for seventeen years,” it purred back, using my mouth without my permission. “Let me talk now.”

It didn’t sound monstrous. That was the worst part.

It sounded like me. Tired. Bitter. Done being careful.

The wicked part of my magic. The part my mother told me to drown in river water when I was six. The part I’d locked in a box and sat on.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I whispered. My voice cracked.

The stone was cold through my dress.

“Didn’t you?”

The voice slid closer, like a second shadow behind my eyes. I could feel it breathing with me.

“All those years. Cups falling. Boys breaking. Neighbors dying. And you just kept smiling and saying ‘I’m sorry, it’s not me.’

Then he danced with you. Three times. Looked at you like you weren’t cursed.

And of course you broke. Of course we did.”

Tears hit the stone floor. Hot. Useless.

“That wasn’t me.”

“It was,” it said, soft as a lullaby. “It was us. And we’re hungry.”

I pulled against the chains. They rattled and the iron bit deeper. Blood welled, black in the dark.

“Get out.”

“Can’t. You called me the second his heart stopped. You wanted it, even if you didn’t know the word for it.”

Outside the door, boots. Heavy.

“Quiet in there,” a guard barked. “Save your screaming for the block.”

Dawn. A few hours.

My mother’s face flashed in my head. The way she’d held my hands over the river. “Promise me you’ll never let it out.”

I had promised.

Or,”the voice whispered, honey-sweet now, coaxing,“we don’t go to the execution.

Give me the reins for five minutes. Just five.

I’ll get us out of these chains. I’ll get us out of this castle.

No more pretending. No more bad luck. Just power. Our power.”

Five minutes.

That’s all it would take to die, or to live.

I stared at the dark. My heart was hammering so loud I was sure the guards could hear.

“What do you want in return?” I asked.

“Nothing you haven’t already given me,”it laughed. “A body. A name. A little chaos.”

The memory hit me then, uninvited.

I was eight. A boy in the market had called me cursed. Thrown a rock.

I’d gone home crying. That night his house caught fire.

No one died. But I knew.

I’d known even then.

“You’ve always known,”the voice said, reading me. “You just liked pretending you didn’t.”

I shook my head. “The prince he didn’t deserve that.”

“No,”the voice agreed. Too easily. “He didn’t. But he’s dead anyway. And you’re next unless you choose.”

Choose.

Die tomorrow as the girl who killed a prince.

Or live tonight as the thing that did it.

My hands were shaking. The iron was cold and my blood was warm.

“Why five minutes?” I whispered.

“Because after five, you won’t want to give it back,”it said honestly. “And I like you better when you’re honest too.”

A laugh bubbled up in my throat. Hysterical. Wrong.

I sounded like it.

Footsteps again. Closer this time.

A key scraped in the lock.

“On your feet,” the guard said. A young one. Couldn’t have been older than me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“King wants to see you before dawn. Last rites or some such.”

He unlocked the outer cell but not my chains. Smart.

I stood. My legs felt like water.

“This is your moment,”the voice whispered. “One word. Say my name and I’ll do the rest.”

I didn’t have a name for it. It was just me. The worst me.

We walked down the corridor. Torches on the walls made shadows jump.

Other cells. Other sounds. Someone praying. Someone else sobbing.

The castle felt different at night. Like it was holding its breath.

The throne room was empty except for the king.

He looked smaller without his son. Older.

The gold cloth was gone from the body. The prince was on a slab now, covered to the chin. Like he was sleeping.

I stopped breathing.

The king didn’t look at me. “Do you have anything to say before dawn?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

What was there to say? Sorry I killed your son with the thing I tried to bury?

“Say yes,”the voice urged. “Say yes and watch what happens.”

The king finally looked at me. His eyes were red.

“My son liked you,” he said. “For one night, he liked you.”

I nodded. Couldn’t speak.

“Tell him it was an accident,”the voice said. “Cry. Be the girl. Then when they turn around”

“No,” I whispered.

Both the king and the voice went still.

“No,” I said again, louder. “It wasn’t an accident. But it wasn’t me either. Not all of me.”

The king’s face hardened. “Guards. Take her back.”

As they dragged me away, _it_ screamed in my head. Not words. Rage.

“You stupid girl. You stupid, self-righteous”

“Shut up,” I hissed back, under my breath.

“You’ll die,”_it spat. “And I’ll be trapped in here with your corpse. Is that what you want?”

Back in the cell. Back in the dark.

The voice was quiet now. Sulking. Waiting.

I sat down and pressed my forehead to my knees. I was going to die at dawn.But I was going to die as me. Not as _it_.

“We’ll see,”the voice whispered, last thing before it went silent.“Dawn’s still coming, killer.”

And somewhere in my head, it settled in to wait.