Chapter 8

Then Things Changed

The snake sends a wave of venom crashing through me, and it sears through my veins. I cough as I choke and sputter, but I still grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut as I flex my toes and pull as hard as I can on the snake’s chains.

“Jabez!” Astra cries.

“Stay here, please,” Brook says. “The Amethyst Throne is very dangerous.”

“We need to help,” Alex says.

I adjust my grip and curl my lips as I resist the snake and snarl. The sound changes nothing, but it feels good. It feels right. Another snarl rumbles in my throat.

But when the snake doesn’t budge, and all that happens is the pain grows and grows and grows until it’s screaming from every bit of my body and it’s all I can hear, all I can feel, all I can think, the temptation to just stop grows too.

A sob catches in my throat. I want so badly to lose myself in the icy waves of unconsciousness, drifting so far from reality that maybe I won’t have to feel it all. I know I can’t. I know I have to keep trying, but I still want to and I hate that I do. Astra needs me. Maybe I could’ve helped her by staying with the King, but I know all it takes is one little time where he gets upset. I can’t help my daughter when I’m trapped and chained to the Amethyst Throne.

xxxx

I yank on the snake’s body again, and it responds with more venom.

Saliva froths on my lips, and blood runs freely from my mouth and neck. Tears pour down my cheeks, and I lose touch with reality. I don’t know how long has passed. I can barely feel the ground beneath my paws. I feel like I’m floating, detached from my body.

I feel a paw against my hip, and I flinch, kicking out with a hind leg as a broken growl cracks in my chest.

The snake spasms and writhes, twisting around my left foreleg until I lose all sensation and my paw goes limp.

I hear a whimper behind me that’s followed by the snake’s body going taut. I groan as the snake’s fangs tug on raw flesh, hypersensitive from the venom and all the broken nerves. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to slow my fluttering heartbeat. I want to scream, release all of the everything from within me, and let it all go, escape everything until I’m somehow free and don’t have to deal with it all. I want to scream out all of the everything until maybe I can just be left alone and I can be with my daughter and we can figure out some semblance of a normal with the gaping hole Freedom’s death has left in my heart.

Maybe I can rebuild with Astra, maybe I can someday find some way to escape the King, but I cannot escape what he’s done. My body will never recover. It can’t.

I feel the paw brush against my hip again. I shift away the slightest bit, as far as I can go with the snake’s chains still tight against my foreleg.

“Who’s that?” Phoenix mutters.

“I don’t know,” Ky replies. “I’d imagine another victim of the cream puff. I don’t think you could get your mouth bound like that without the cream puff.”

“Who are you?” Phoenix spits.

“They ain’t gonna respond,” Alex shoots back. “Their mouth is bound.”

“Outis,” the King drawls. “Oh, Outis. What are you doing here? You know you cannot do anything. You’ve proven that time and time again. Wander the halls of my castle. You know that’s all you can do.”

I squint against the light when I open my eyes. Outis sits on his hind legs and holds part of the snake’s body in his forepaws. He stares at Astra and the others with open distrust.

Alex kneels beside me, telling me softly that she’s behind me and setting her hand on my back. The touch makes me shake. The sensation of my fur moving over my skin sets off my nerves, each one hypersensitive and overloaded from what the snake has done. I shiver.

She apologizes and grips onto the snake’s body.

“Outis,” Alex says, “are you here because you know how to free Jabez?”

Outis draws his ears back and shrinks away. He studies Alex for a while before he ducks his head, nodding a hesitant yes.

“Don’t listen to him,” the King protests. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Alex ignores the King.

“Are you helping Jabez right now?”

I keep a bit of tension on the snake’s chain body as I watch the interaction between Alex and Outis, but I take the time to catch my breath.

Outis shrugs up his shoulders and drops his gaze to the ground.

“He’s not even gonna tell us, is he?” Phoenix spits.

“He cannot,” Grey replies. “The King took his voice from him. Perhaps he holds the ability of speaking vocally, but the King has made that impossible.”

“He can’t even tell us anything.”

“Outis has communicated.”

Phoenix harrumphed in reply.

“Jabez, why don’t you just stop for a little bit, hm?” I hear the King’s voice, and it stirs something within me. Something shifts within the dark, icy depths of my consciousness, far beneath the waves, and awakens from stillness.

“You can stay here, Jabez. Things can be just how they were, just how they have always been. You can stay with me, here, and we can be together,” the King continues, voice soft. The same tone he used when he spoke to me when I was Ice. Then, it was so soft and kind, but now it just sounds condescending.

I jerk out my forelegs and cry out with anger and the sharp dagger of pain that slices through my neck when the snake’s fangs yank on the flesh of my neck. This time, however, I do scream. Rage and fury pour from within me, and once I start, I cannot stop. Tears stream down my cheeks and I can barely breathe and black spots crowd in my vision, but I keep going. The agony of the King's betrayal falls from my mouth and I twist and contort on the ground from the pain. Eventually, the scream turns into sobs that shake my sides, and those soon give way to all that’s left: a pounding, splitting headache and icicles on my face from frozen tears.

Stolen story; please report.

I stop moving but keep my claws hooked through the snake’s chain. Behind me, Alex does the same, fingers curled around the chain links. I think Outis hasn’t let go either, but I don’t know for certain.

“Things aren’t how they’ve always been,” I grit out, voice rough like the gravel used to pave some of the walkways around the King’s castle that I avoid since they cut up my paws. “Things can’t stay the same. You can’t take back some of the things you have done. Stop talking to me like that. Don’t you realize nothing can ever be the same? I remember you as Ice, but now I don’t know how to take those memories and compare them to who you are now.” My voice cracks and a new wave of tears drips down my face. “You were my friend when I was Ice. You were my best friend. But now I don’t know who you are. No friend would do the things you have done.”

The King’s face darkens.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Phoenix snarls. “You call on the Amethyst Throne, and we will be on you before you or your purple friend can even think to say sorry. We are leaving with Jabez, and we will not leave without him. But don’t turn that into some shitty pointless threat of ‘oh, well, then I guess you ain’t leavin’ at all’ because we both know that we can just walk on out of here. So don’t even bother speaking. It’s so painful to hear. I think my ears might be bleeding. Ky, can you check?”

“Yup,” Ky confirms. “Your voice conclusively does make Phoenix’s ears bleed. Don’t talk, cream puff.”

“You fucking-.”

“Ope,” Ky says, lighthearted, before his voice takes on a dangerous tone, the sharp angle of a blade, a threat woven through every syllable. “Please don’t speak. We don’t want you to cause more bodily harm, do we?”

xxxx

After I catch my breath, I ready myself to pull the snake from my neck, once and for all. I crane my neck, twisting it to the point of pain, and adjust my grip on the chain. I ignore the nauseating feel of bone against metal. Instead, I tug and pull, even as blood pours down my neck and drips from my nose and down my jaw. Saliva froths in my mouth as I pant. The snake’s venom burns and sears through every bit of me, and I grit my teeth, nostrils flaring, as I pull as hard as I can.

Alex and Outis do the same as Grey and Brook keep Astra at bay and Phoenix is Phoenix against the King and Ky tags along. The black cat keeps the King’s attention off of me, and Ky lends a hand.

Fear curls in my gut and I stand, unwilling to be lying down with the snake shifting across my back. It doesn’t feel safe, especially with the King so close and the Dragon breathing down my neck. I can feel its heavy gaze piercing straight through me. It won’t leave the Amethyst Throne without a direct order, but it still holds a great deal of power. I can feel its looming shadow stretch over me and I shrink into myself as I try to break myself free from the snake.

Blood splatters on the ground, making the marble slippery. I try to brace myself on my hind legs, but they keep sliding out from beneath me. I glare at the Dragon and the side of the King’s head as he says something to Phoenix, who goads him into another exchange. Purple and red flare in the Dragon’s eyes as it lowers its head and creeps a step down the side of the Amethyst Throne.

Behind me, Alex and Outis tug on the snake’s chain. Nausea roils within me, beating in time with the pain.

I dig my claws into the marble, but it’s not enough. A hind leg slips out from beneath me, and with my forelegs caught up in trying to pry the snake off of me, there’s nothing to catch myself. I twist as I fall, and my jaw glances off the ground. The shock bursts through me. I feel bone grate across bone and muscles and ligaments strain, pulled to their limit, until the force surpasses the breaking point and my jaw shifts to the side, snapping out of place.

I groan, wishing that the icy darkness of my consciousness would wash me away into the churning waves. But that thing inside me shifts again, rumbling. The water trembles with the sound waves. It won’t let me rest. It forces me to stay conscious, no matter how much I don’t want to feel the pain, the dizziness, the anger, the blood soaking through my fur, the snake’s fangs still lodged in my neck, the venom setting every nerve alight.

There’s another sound I hear, though, and it’s not from me. It’s not from anyone else in the group either, nor the King or the Dragon. It’s a chittering sound, high and rhythmic, that makes my fur stand on end.

It’s the snake, and its metal teeth are beginning to groan as it chirrups. Something’s starting to move.

That sound and that sensation give me a little more energy, a boost that I so desperately need. My vision blurs until it goes completely dark and I cannot see. My hearing falls entirely into a loud buzzing ringing noise. Blood and saliva stream from my mouth and nose, and tears mixed with scarlet blood freeze on my cheeks and jaws. I flick my tail, and the shards of ice rubbing against the thin fur on my legs keeps me from getting lost in my mind.

I take a deep breath, steel myself, and then pull as hard as I can. Alex and Outis lend their assistance as well. My claws scream from how far they’re bent, and the howls of pain become all I can feel, the loudest sound in my body, the only thing my brain can repeat over and over. Except, I manage to hold my daughter in my mind’s eye. How she’d suffer if I didn’t do everything I could to try to find some way to give some measure of a promise of her safety because that was my duty as her father. How the King had betrayed me once and gone after her all those years ago, and I cannot say that he’d never do it again. How I knew who the King could be, even though he’d been so kind when I was Ice, but then things changed.

I can play nice. I did play nice for decades. I can pretend like nothing is wrong. I can take it. But Astra can’t. I can take what the King can do, but I don’t want anyone else to have to. The King cannot go after Astra or Brook or anyone else. Staying with the King, chained to the Amethyst Throne by the snake, is a temporary measure. With every second that passes by, the King might grow unsatisfied.

I have to escape.

Panting and wheezing with every breath, I curl in on myself to try to gain more leverage.

The snake’s fangs begin to slip. It thrashes in my grip, coils snapping shut on fur. My skin yanks painfully as clumps of fur are ripped out, and I cry out, the sound high and shrill in the back of my throat.

I keep trying, though. I keep pulling as hard as I can, even as a claw snaps from the force and blood spills down my wrist

When I finally manage to rip the snake’s teeth from the back of my neck, its fangs snap. Blood flowing freely down my neck and chest, I throw the snake as far away from me as possible, then stumble to my paws and try to scrabble away. I only make it a handful of steps before I slip and crash into the ground, landing heavy on my shoulder.

I cough and sputter on blood and spit. I can barely see through the haze of exhaustion and fear and pain and venom and how much everything still runs through my body. Panic takes hold in my heart, and I try to stand; laying down still feels far too vulnerable. The snake could return at any time and—

“Jabez, please,” Alex says. I feel her hand on my side, and I flinch.

More hands catch me before I can fall again, and they help me to the ground. When I try to turn my head to see who’s there, pain seizes in my neck, and my limbs lock up in unison and I shudder, muscles spasming as I jerk. I can only turn my spine so far.

“Jabez!”

I manage to focus my eyes enough to see Astra. I smile despite it all. She’s ok. She’s here. Astra is here.

“Astra,” I ground out, before drawing in a breath that ends in more coughing.

“We’re gonna get you help, ok?” Alex says. “Just stay with us, Jabez. I know someone who can help. They’re very skilled, and they’ll be able to patch you right up. Just stay with us, and we’ll take care of everything.”

Someone —I think Grey, but I can’t see— moves to pick me up.

“No, stop it.” I choke on the words. “Get out of… here. All… of you. A-Astra can’t stay. No one-no one-one can.”

“No one is staying behind, Jabez. No one is staying behind,” Grey murmurs.

My head spins as I’m lifted. I sink into the hold, body limp. I’m drained beyond anything I’ve ever felt before. I can barely keep my eyes open.

“Please, Jabez,” I hear someone plead. The voice is high and shatters over the words. The voice sounds like my daughter.

I try to push through the fog and stay afloat in the icy sea crashing through my mind, but I’m too tired, too exhausted, and I sink beneath the waves. I paddle my paws and try to resist, but unconsciousness pulls me straight to the cold darkness in the depths of my mind.

I hear Astra say something, I feel whoever’s holding me start to move, and I’m out.