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SUCH SWEET SORROW

T his time, when I woke to clanging and slamming doors, I didn’t mistake my surroundings for anything other than my cell. We’d begged the guard to tell us if it was day or night, but he ignored us. We only knew that Ciro had promised Griffon would lose his wings in the morning, but how far we were from morning we couldn’t guess.

I’d finally fallen asleep, and in the strained silence, I’d slept for a long while.

Now, I moved to the door and pressed my ear against the crack just in time to hear Griffon bellow, “Lennon!”

“I’m here, Griffon! I’m here!” They’d both remained silent and stoic until then.

“Listen to me!” More scuffling. “Lennon, listen! We didn’t need forever to find perfection, do you hear me?”

“I hear you!”

Men’s shouts were followed by a scream of pain. The whooshing of wings came nearer and nearer. “Lennon, remember, I love you.”

“I love you too. Can you get away? Do whatever it takes. Just go! Go to the palace. Bring help!”

“If I can get past the dome ? —”

A jumble of footsteps was followed by hissing, then the heavy thumps of a large body falling to the ground.

“Don’t you dare touch him!” Lennon screamed, followed by some unmistakable profanities in any language. The hissing repeated, and a second thump against wood, then nothing.

I beat on my door. “You’ve killed them!”

“ Just asleep,” a man grumbled. “They won’t be any more trouble.”

Asleep. Asleep was good. If Griffon was doomed to lose his wings, hopefully he would stay unconscious through the worst.

Hopefully, he would wake up from it…

* * *

Long, tortured hours passed before Minkin and I could get a response from Lennon. Her answers were low and slow. Either she was groggy or she’d been weeping in silence. But she completely fell to pieces when the moaning began from somewhere above us, and my heart broke for them both.

Tears dripped steadily down my face. I found myself breathing along with Griffon and could feel each howl as my breath left my body. It went on for half an hour before it suddenly stopped. And I realized the silence was much worse. It left my imagination to run wild.

The way Lennon cursed and beat against her door made it clear that Ciro and his minions would be foolish to ever, ever open that door again. And I was infinitely grateful that Tearloch didn’t have anything Ciro envied—something akin to Griffon’s wings.

It was impossible to keep track of time in the dark. I was still saving my glow stone for an emergency. And the only time light was allowed into my cell was when the door opened and I was given food and a bucket. That had only happened once.

Lennon's emotional state came and went. She'd been quiet for a long time. I hoped she was sleeping.

We hadn't heard anymore from Griffon either. There was little chance that the moaning—that pitiful, pleading moaning—had come from anyone but him. Sound was too muffled to make out any words, but I don't think he'd said anything. Just a wretched, wordless complaint that he would never have made had he been fully conscious.

A muffled exchange of voices brought me to the door. It sounded like two men speaking softly. I strained to hear every word, but they’d stopped. A faint series of footsteps moved away and I concluded they had just changed the guard, and one had gone up the stairs.

Was Ciro really foolish enough to leave a single man to guard all eleven of us? Ten without Griffon.

I heard the now familiar scrape of a chair. Whoever was out there chose to linger at our end of the corridor, and that gave me hope. It meant the men were a little freer to speak and plan and plot.

I prayed they had better ideas than I had.

The chair scraped again. Slow footsteps came to my door. The small window opened, and a pair of blue eyes scowled at me. "It's getting cold. If I leave this open, you might get a little heat. But I don't want any trouble.”

"We haven't been fed today," I said.

"No. And you won't be. I'm sorry. Maybe tomorrow."

"At least tell me if it’s day or night."

"I'm to tell you nothing. But like I said, it is getting cold..."

"So, it's nighttime. Thank you for that."

He disappeared but the window remained open. I heard him do the same for Lennon, offer to leave her window open for a little warmth. To my surprise, she thanked him, though I knew she could keep herself warm just fine. I thought she'd still be looking for blood.

The guard moved across to Minkin. He spoke quietly, gently. I wondered if, in the dark, he thought she was a child. He asked if she was cold and offered her something through the window to eat. And I realized it was only Lennon and I who were being deprived.

Of course. We had rejected Ciro. We had to be punished for it. Or maybe he just wanted us to be good and weak before he came down to negotiate again.

I would eat my key before I weakened enough to ask for his mercy.

At least I hoped that was true as I stretched out on my cot again and tried to imagine the moon rising in the sky. Imagined the snow glowing in the darkness—anything to convince my body it was night, time to sleep.

Voices again. More of them. Thanks to my open window, I could hear them moving down the stairs. Mumbling. Vague encouragement. A few stuttered steps.

I pressed my face to the opening and tried to see the other end of the corridor, but I failed. All I could do was listen and guess. And what I guessed was that they had returned Griffon to our dungeon.

Lennon had judged the same and called out to him. "Griffon! Griffon, I'm here!"

A door slammed shut. Men shuffled back up the stairs and left us in silence.

"He's here, Lennon," Tearloch called, his voice muffled behind his own door. "He's weak, but he's all right. He says he is healing. Not to worry." I waited for him to call my name, to prove everything I remembered wasn’t just a dream. But he didn’t.

The guard, sitting on a chair beside Minkin’s door, practiced making knots with a short rope. He didn’t seem to mind the yelling.

After a few minutes of hearing nothing but the shushing of rope sliding against rope, Lennon whispered, “Asper, listen to me.”

“I’m here.”

The guard never looked up.

“He’s trying not to show his feelings to whomever might be listening, so they won’t be able to use you as leverage against each other. Do you understand?”

She meant Tearloch. “I understand.” Just the same, I couldn’t seem to move away from the door, couldn’t give up hope that Tearloch might call out again.

“I’d kill for a handful of eminems .” She didn’t bother whispering now.

“Is that food?”

She laughed. “It depends on who you ask, but yes.” Then she described a nut covered in chocolate, then covered in a colorful and sweet coating.”

“What is chocolate?”

She gasped. “You mean you don’t have chocolate?” What she described next sounded delicious.

“We have something similar. Farcláid. They say they make delicious things with it in the king’s palace, but I’ve never tried it.” Then I explained where I’d lived all my life, with my master, and that no one had ever been willing to barter for any farcláid they might have been carrying. “Too precious.”

“Sounds like chocolate to me.”

I asked about her life back on Earth. Sleep didn’t matter. And it gave me an excuse to stay on my feet and fidget, to warm up my body with movement. Lennon, as it happened, had led a fairly lonely life that wasn’t dissimilar to my own, but that all changed when she fell in with a band of witches, which led her to Griffon. Before discovering her dragon, it sounded as if they had an exciting time unraveling the mysteries of the Hestians there, whom they called Fae.

It had all culminated in a flight through the stars to deliver their passenger to the palace and then finding themselves prisoners of the very people she expected to see her as family. “I hope that when the people at the palace find out where the blue dragon has been taken, that they’ll come find us.” After a sigh, she added, “I can’t help wondering if, deep down, I’m like these DeNoy. Or maybe I might have been if I hadn’t met Griffon.”

“Impossible,” I told her. “My entire life has turned upside down since Demius was killed, and I’m the same person I was before I left the canyon. I take that back. I’m a lot colder.”

We both laughed but stopped abruptly when the guard jumped to his feet. His chair fell back and hit the floor, his rope fell to the ground, forgotten. As he rushed toward my door, his eyes were wild, his mouth slack. I quickly backed away, grateful for the barricade between us—which he could open if he wanted to.

“You said Demius!” he accused, then repeated it in a whisper.

I didn’t dare admit anything.

He disappeared for a few seconds and came back with a torch held up to light the inside of my cell. Far enough back so he could see me, look me up and down. “You know Demius.”

“I knew a Demius. He was killed…days ago.”

“Days ago! Where?”

He had to know someone else by that name, and I said as much. “We lived in Redstone Canyon, in the south.”

“We…lived… You knew Demius.” His whisper was almost…reverent.

“We are talking about two different men. The Demius I knew never left the canyon?—"

He grabbed a window bar and shook it, his eyes even wilder than before. “The key! Do you have the key?”

For the second time since being imprisoned, I forced myself not to reach for the heavy weight resting below my breasts. I pinched my brows together and pretended ignorance. “What key?”

“He took it. They know he took it…when he took everything else.” He shook the door again, with excitement now, not menace. “Tell me, quickly, how I find this canyon—” A loud ruckus caught his attention, and he turned frantic again. “You should know…they will force you to fight tomorrow, in the arena. All of you.” Reluctantly, he released the door and stepped away. To Lennon he said, “no one at the palace will know you are here. Every guard, every dragon, down to the smallest skylith, was slaughtered. No one knows Ciro took you.”

I had to know. “Who are you?”

He pressed a finger to his lips, warning me to stay quiet. “I am Zelan.”

Lennon whispered, “Can you help us, Zelan?”

The staircase filled with footsteps and the murmur of many voices, and Zelan backed away. “We are trying,” he said.

“We?”

He smiled. “There are more Ard Draoi here than Ciro knows.” Then he was gone.