Twain shifted. He stretched on his bed and yawned, eyes shut. I’m exhausted. What happened?
Metal clanked all around him. Something cold touched his hand. Confused, he opened his eyes.
Sumptuous surroundings spread out all around him. Red velvet draped from a four-post bed. Thick curtains shut off most of the light from the dozen or so windows spaced around the massive room. A gold chandelier hung overhead, and thick carpets decorated in intricate beastfolk designs covered the floor.
Twain frowned. My rooms at the palace. How’d I get here? Wasn’t I… at the Arena…
Images flooded into his brain. Blight, swirling everywhere. Felix on Spar’s back. Spiders, blackening the Arena floor. His own hands, marred with blight.
He lifted his hands. Chains caught his arms short. Manacles bit into his wrists. Twain cocked his head and stared back.
Thick chains bound his hands to the wall. At the bottom of the bed, identical chains did the same to his ankles. Someone had stuffed padding under the steel edges, but red marks where the manacles sat indicated he’d been wearing them for some time.
Twain furrowed his brows. “Kinky.”
A second later, he rolled his eyes at himself. Spar’s wearing off on me. C’mon, Twain, focus. What happened? Why are you bound?
Blight. So much blight. Burning, twisting in his veins, spiky, sharp, hot as acid. His skin, blackening. Red blood running black.
He closed his eyes and sighed. I became a darkfoe. That’s why.
Wait. But if I became a darkfoe, why am I fine now? It’s almost impossible to come back from that. Black eyes are reversible sometimes, but I should have been too far gone once my blood ran black.
He glanced down at himself. Bedsheets curled in the corner, kicked away in his sleep. He wore a nightgown, lacy and thick, though he’d kicked it off his legs. No padding to make me Mouse, but the comforter’s fluffy. If His Majesty stopped by, I imagine we could fool him.
The door opened. Twain tipped his head to look.
Dayander shuffled into the room, carrying a tray of porridge. He smiled, eyes crinkling at the edges. “Good morning, Mouse. I hope you slept well last night.”
“Good morning, Dayander,” Twain responded.
Dayander jumped. Porridge sloshed across the tray. He caught the tray and staggered forward a step, peering at Twain. “You… you’re awake?”
“Mhm. Can you let me go?” He lifted his wrists and plopped them back down. The chains jangled.
Setting the porridge on the nightstand, Dayander pulled a ring of keys from his hip. “Hold on, hold on.”
Keys clicked in the manacles. Twain’s hands came free. He sat up and rubbed his wrists. “How long was I out?”
Dayander hurried to Twain’s ankles. “Long enough. We weren’t sure you were going to wake up. A few times…”
“A few times?” Twain prompted. He drew his legs up and massaged his ankles.
Dayander shook his head. “Don’t worry yourself over it. What matters is that you’re awake now. Porridge?”
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“Sure.” He reached out for the bowl.
Blocking his reach, Dayander took up the bowl himself. “Let me, Your Highness.”
“I can feed myself,” Twain protested.
“After a week unconscious, your reflexes and fine motor control aren’t going to be like they were. Let me do this much,” Dayander returned. He lifted up a spoonful of porridge and blew on it, then offered it to Twain.
Twain sighed. Why couldn’t it be Cel, or any other beautiful woman? In a castle full of princesses, how did I end up with this man feeding me? No one wants to be fed porridge by a wrinkly old man with long eyebrows. Somewhat reluctantly, he took a bite. “What happened while I was out? Last I remember was the Arena, with the blight and all the spiders…”
“Do you remember… what you did?”
“Yeah, I cleared the path for His Majesty.”
Dayander nodded slowly. “You became a darkfoe. Briefly.”
Twain held up his hand and peered at his wrist, at the red peeking through the gray. “My blood was black, Dayander. I thought there was no coming back.”
“And you had better never do something so stupid ever again. I thought you wanted to succeed the throne? You can’t do that if you’re dead, you simpleton!”
“I had no choice. We needed to get Felix to the center of the Arena.”
“You could have cast a spell, or—” Dayander raised a hand, cutting off his own arguments and Twain’s retort. “The past is in the past. There are plenty of problems to address in the present. What matters is that you never, ever let yourself get that blighted again.”
“I don’t want to get blighted,” Twain grumbled.
Dayander took his hand. “Promise me, Twain.”
He sighed. Looking into Dayander’s eyes, he found fear there, a deep fear he couldn’t understand. Taken aback, he found himself nodding before he knew what he was doing. “I promise, Dayander.”
For a long moment, Dayander held his gaze. Then he sighed and dropped his eyes, rubbing his brows with his forefinger and thumb. “I don’t want Her Majesty to lose another.”
“Another?” Twain’s brow furrowed, and then he sat bolt upright. “Moss, where’s Moss?”
Dayander shook his head. “We received a brief communique from her, but… unfortunately, she has yet to be found.”
“Didn’t she run off to join the army? How hard is it to locate a princess in the damn army?” Twain grumbled.
“There are dozens of border missions active at any one moment, Twain, not to mention the countless smaller patrols that roam our territories to root out pockets of blight. If Moussaesa moves around, it may prove impossible to locate her.”
Twain shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I understand. It’s just… the way you said that, I thought she…”
Dayander lowered his head. “Consider it the mistake of an exhausted old man.”
“Already forgotten. So what trouble are we in now?” He beamed at Dayander.
A dark creature turned to face him. Dayander’s face flashed across its face, only for black to fade through. Melted and broken, the creature had once been a moon elf, but its beauty had long since fled, and now, he could barely tell what it had been.
Twain scurried across the bed, startled. “W—what?”
The creature reached out to him. Dark tentacles surged across the bed. The draperies around the four-poster dissolved into cobwebs and spiders. He fell to the ground and splattered into a puddle of filth.
Where am I? What are these things? Scrambling upright, he sprinted for the door, a hideous, fleshy thing marred with ulcers. The moon elf-creature chased him, but he spun and avoided it, neatly dodging its tentacles. He yanked open the door.
Dark, cavernous hallways descended into the earth. The ceiling dripped with pus. Walls quivered, alive, coated in black flesh. In the distance, something immense thudded, one-two, one-two, a horrible heartbeat in the living hell.
A whisper in his ear. He flinched. The words tangled together, stumbling over one another into a mess, the words indecipherable. Out of the mess, three clear words rang out:
Come. Come to me.
He turned. Toward the heartbeat. Toward the core of the horrible, living castle.
A hand gripped his upper arm. He whirled and found the moon elf-creature there. Wriggling, he ripped out of the creature’s grip and sprinted down the hallway. Fabric tangled at his ankles. He reached at it, tearing a gap from his knees down, and stretched out his legs.
The moon-elf creature shouted something. Twain looked up, startled.
Before him stood a pillar of light, painfully bright and hotter than the sun. He threw up his arms and hissed, backing away from it. Hurts, it hurts.
Again, someone gripped his arm. Twain twisted, but this time he couldn’t break free so easily. The moon elf-creature grabbed his other arm. Powder pressed into his mouth and nose. He tried to hold his breath, but it was too late. The world spun and faded away.
For a brief moment, the sounds escaping the creature’s throat almost sounded like words. “She was lucid for so long, I… no, to forget to lock the door, even in my joy, I…”
“At ease, Dayander. I understand. I, too, wish…” a voice sighed from the pillar of light, warm and familiar.
Twain turned toward it, even as the last of reality twisted into darkness. Felix…?
Black.