“Knix.” Silvestr’s voice is smooth as velvet. He’s standing there, at the edge of my cage with his short little stature and expensive clothes.
He’s a kid, with his chest puffed up with pride. Naive little thing, thinking he’s in control when there is always something bigger at play.
“They said if you confess you’ll be released.”
Of course they did. I serve no threat now, not with my mind blinded as it is. I was only a threat because of my sight and as soon as they dipped me in poison all threat was gone.
Max sits somewhere in the back of the cage. I can see his quivering body in the corner furthest away from the intruder.
It should say something, about a rat fearing a mortal but not myself.
“I have nothing to confess.”
He’s disappointed, I can tell. I had watched the boy grow up, so of course I could tell. He’s got the minute slouch in his shoulders, his eyes drifting to the floor.
He always looked like that whenever I told him no before.
“You have everything to confess.” The words are snapped out, a scowl taking over his features and wrinkles marring his brow.
Max still quivers in his corner. I’m tempted to join him simply to escape the gaze of my jailor.
“What do I have left to say that I haven’t already said?”
I couldn’t even speak after Illarian’s wings were clipped. The words I had spoken left my throat raw and bloody.
It probably took weeks to heal, but by then I was already locked up and hidden away like some dirty secret.
“Just say you were under his spell.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Say you were!” If there was something to throw, Silvestr would have thrown it and watched it break. Instead the boy settles for banging on the bars of my prison.
“I never lie.”
“You do. You lie all the time. All you do is lie.” Max shakes like a leaf caught in shifting winds. The entire prison trembles with that small body and I’m left in a world where nothing is still.
“I withheld the truth. I never lied.”
“It’s the same thing!”
“And you are still a mere child who does not understand anything.”
Silvestr staggers back, eyes wide as he takes in a shaking inhale. It’s like a wound, I’m sure. Me reminding him of what he is. Of who he is.
“I understand enough to know that you were in the wrong.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Nothing is ever truly black and white.”
“It is when you try to kill thousands of people.”
Silvestr is puffing up his chest again, finding ground to stand on that he never even dreamed of. I’m tempted to make it crumble under his feet.
Max still sits in that corner; his thin rat tail wrapping around himself as if it could protect him from the outside world. Max is smart, so maybe he does have that power.
I wish I had that power.
“Why won’t you look at me.”
“I’m blind, how can I look at something I can’t see?”
“You aren’t blind. Stop- Stop lying.”
But I am. I used to see everything. Every possibility, every impossibility. I used to dream of the future. I used to be able to see people.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Silvestr blinded me.
The little monster that destroyed everything, but was still revered as a hero. Figures, the underworld would do something like that.
That’s a lie.
The underworld had simply bought the story sold by the best salesman. I hadn’t tried to sell up my story and Silvestr had an obvious sell from the very beginning.
My fault for not seeing a possibility that existed.
One should expect the unexpected after all.
It seems I never learned from my mistakes.
“You know that if you don’t they’ll just keep you locked away, don’t you?”
“I don’t know that. I can’t see. They could be planning my execution right now for all I know.”
Max isn’t shaking anymore. It seems he found comfort in his tail after all. The prison still trembles, but it’s small tremors compared to the previous quakes.
“They aren’t going to kill you.”
“Like they weren’t going to kill Illarian.” The words taste like the poison he dipped me into. Bitter and strong. It tastes like suffocation.
“They didn’t.”
“They might as well have.”
Silvestr is frozen, scowl turning into a fierce frown and his eyebrows drawn in tight. He knows as well as I do that it is an argument he will never win.
Just as he will never be correct in saying that I am not blind.
Max peeks out behind his makeshift shield. Silvestr is turning away, a defeated slump to his shoulders.
I lean back, pressing the back of my head against the cold steel bars and I let the fog consume me.
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“They don’t understand.”
“But you do.”
“I understand everything. I might not see like you but I have seen it. I’ve felt it in my very bones.”
“You should be dead.”
“We all should be dead.”
“I saw you die.”
“You saw what you wanted to see to ease your concerns on what you also saw.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Neither does taking in a human child.”
“What-“
“You thought I didn’t notice. I did. That’s one of the reasons why we need to stop everything. Why we need to close the underworld off from the other realms.”
“But no one understands.”
“You do.”
“I only understand what I see.”
“And you’ve seen our destruction.”
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“Max.”
The rat looks up, his beady black eyes staring straight into my soul.
“You’re smart. What should I do now?”
Max creeps closer, his tail dragging along the frozen metal of my prison.
I stretch out an arm, fingers resting lazily against the floor.
“I wish I could see.”
Life would be easier.
I’d know everything again.
“I wish-“
Max stares up at me through the gaps of my fingers.
I curl my fingers and Max vanishes from view.
It’s wrong; not being able to see Max. Something horribly wrong. Like the dipping in poison and the clipping of wings.
Max is my prison just as anything else and not seeing him is…
Wrong.
“I wish everyone died.”