And her name is…

“So you take energy?” Ealdian tries again.

I flash him a look that makes him want to retreat but he raises his chin. “You hear of Kheliq’s fancy parties? Maybe some miracle elixir? …” I trail off and they’re all look expectantly. “Meet the elixir,-“ I gesture grandly to myself. “Do you think all those Sioga aristocrats would get the vapours if they found out they were drinking mixed-breed blood?” I ask with my best Southern accent.

Ignacio laughs and I like him a little bit more. “Maybe.” I nod. “This changes everything.”

I still in my seat. Before I was ‘free’ here and they wanted to earn my trust. Now that they know… but I couldn’t exactly lie about everything. They clearly have a guard on the inside and that is one of the few facts well know among all my guards.

Tiago’s hand grabs mine. “Not about you,” he assures, but it doesn’t work. “You are, or were, his way of calming all the aristocrats with what’s been going on. He was able to placate them with these parties and some magical solution. With you gone, he has nothing to distract from the issues, and it will create unrest we can take advantage of.”

“If he has friends of mine I don’t care what you have going on, I’m in,” I say firmly.

“You trust us? Just like that?” Ricard asked with justified disbelief.

“Absolutely not. I said ’I’m in’, that doesn’t mean I trust you. I just want Kheliq’s head on a pike, and you’re probably the fastest way to his front door. I’ve been on the end of enough of his anger, and if he turns that on them… he will die slowly.”

I can imagine just how he would look as a dried husk of a being…Take, take.

“Theodosine!” I turn to Nyx who is scolding me and I can’t figure out why, looking over the table but I follow her gaze and there’s a crooked trail leading from my feet to a potted tree beside the window.

The tree in the pot was green when I arrived but now all the leaves are red and starting to fall away onto the floor. I get up carefully and follow the trail I unconsciously made over the hardwood and touch the tree. The branches seem sturdy and saveable, but when I grab a leaf it dusts in my hand. The smell of it is like an old house that hasn’t been cleaned and their air has turned stagnant.

“Huh,” I comment, “that’s new.”

“You couldn’t drain plants before?” Ealdian asked like he doesn’t believe me.

“Absolutely I could, but never like this…”

Not from this distance.

I see a flash of a memory.

A single day when I wasn’t in the secret cells and there was wood in the prison that I had ruined. Everything smelt of decay and blood. It had nearly been my last day in captivity when the guards had started kicking me, but my blood had soaked into the floor and fixed a lot of the damage. Someone had a mop and pushed my blood around on the floor, or maybe they were cleaning it up. Either way it was fixing some of the damages, while I laid there bleeding out with my eye sealing shut.

This memory doesn’t help me, and I clench my hand around another leaf. The smell was there in that room, in the floor and walls, but the life energy didn’t feel like this. No, this is more like the guard with the white hair. I took the energy it could spare and left the tree intact.

Someone is calling my name but I don’t look at them. “Ask your next question.”

A plate is put in my new place at the table before anyone can, so I take my seat and I admire the food for a moment. In the next moment I’m picking up what looks like a whole chicken breast covered in herbs, and soaked in butter.

I think I’m drooling. I must be drooling because when I look up everyone is staring at me. I rub my chin and thank someone’s goddess that it’s dry.

“What did they feed you?” Vera asks, the implied statement that this is a meal standard around here.

I hear several hisses for her to shut up, but this is one question I don’t mind giving her for free.

“Well a quarter of this for starters,” I begin. “Nothing for flavour, cooked on a dry pan. Sometimes they’d give me 5 to 7 pieces of raw vegetables but it was often a starch like pasta noodles.” I meet her eyes as she stares in disbelief. “And if I got fruit it had special side effects.”

“Please just eat all you want, you’re depressing the chicken,” Ealdian mutters and takes a big bite from his.

I go to grab it with my hands, then I remember that I’m not in the cells. I can actually use a utensil… Ishouldactually use a utensil. I reach toward the fork, my hand shaking slightly but I notice its silver and pause. There is no way I can touch that without telling them the rest of who I am, so I return my hands to my lap.

It’s because it might be real silver. That’s why I won’t use it.

“What is it?” Tiago asks, leaning towards me like he expects there to be a spider on my utensil.

Luckily Nyx replies before I have to. “Prisoners don’t get cutlery. In the first months when they touch the utensils they are punished, because Khaliq wants them treated like less than people.”

She isn’t wrong. The back of my hands are scarred from where the utensils were buried as they pinned my hands to the table, forcing me to eat with my face. Before I can do anything Tiago is holding my hand closest to him and looking at the back and then flipping them over to see the mirrored scars on my palms and he seethes.

He takes my cutlery and his own and tosses it down the table away from us before picking up his chicken with his bare hands. We don’t say anything but I appreciatively pick up my chicken as well. Tiago clearly has his own history with the king, and I know the information will be handy later. My heart pangs at the thought of using his past pain and shared trauma against him, but I stuff that down.

I will only use it if I need to.

Everything is cooked to perfection and I’ve been living off berries and dandelions for two days so I’m starving. I lean carefully over my plate, keeping the juices from running down my arms, and popping in a vegetable whenever I can. I know I’ll pay for cleaning my plate later, but for right now I am satiated. I push my plate away and wrap my arms around my full stomach.

Nyx is smiling at me and I feel my face heat. “Thank you.. for the food,” I say hastily and she waves a hand dismissively.

“You don’t need to thank us for food,” Nyx assures verbally as well.

“Though I’m a little surprised you ate it with no fuss that it could be poisoned,” Ealdian adds, finishing his own bite.

“I know the smell and taste of every poisonous or otherwise tainted food in this realm,” I smirk. “No one is slipping me something without me knowing.”

“How is that even possible?” Vera asks. “I excel with plants and herbs, and even I don’t know all of them.”

“Six years is a long time,” I return, and I’m starting to feel sorry for the girl that doesn’t seem to understand what a bad question is. “So how is this going to work?”

“That’s your question?” Ignacio asks, leaning back in his own chair. “Are you going to stay?”

They all look calmer now and I wonder if it’s because they’ve eaten, or because I have. They look around at each other but I continue looking at Ignacio. When he returns to looking at me he notices that my eyes never looked away.

“So we’re taking in strays now?” Ealdian gripes and this time I don’t bother looking his way.

“If I recall, which I do, I didn’t ask to be brought here. Nor do I have any idea who your informant is because I had no help with my escape.” I turn to Ignacio and pin him with a look. “Are you going to tell me?”

“A man called Noryth, he has family that was conscripted to Kheliq’s court at birth due to some deal between the kingdoms. Noryth is the go between. I’ve only met the brother twice.” Ignacio sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose, “I never got his name, but Noryth checks in every month.”

“I know all my guard’s names, and Noryth isn’t among them,” I return, glad to know this little detail now.

“It’s his brother that works for the guard, just as it’s my brother that knows King Kheliq more directly. My brother Helion is the King of our court, and he keeps up the civil relations with him while the rest of us…” Ignacio trails off.

“Hate his guts?” Tiago offers.

Ignacio sighs. “I was looking for something with a little more tact, but given present company that is the most accurate.”

“And are you putting up with him, or trying to replace him?” He looks at me and I narrow my gaze. “I don’t care if you want the throne. I don’t give a shit about your stupid politics. As long asheisn’t on it you could follow a, what did you call them? Gumberoo? It could be one of those for all I care.”

“Then yes, it was our hope that I could unite the courts against the real threat, the blight that seems to be spreading.” He looks stressed as he talks about it, and I feel like the problem is greater than my guards had understood.

I won’t tell him my blood can fix it. Their inside man might know, but I’m starting to wonder if he was one of my eighteen guards at all. The last thing I need is to bleed for someone else, but I’m down to eliminate Kheliq for them.

“You seem oddly eager to get back somewhere you just escaped,” Ealdian rturns while stacking the plates for the girl who’s come to collect them.

“If any of my friends are alive I want them back,” I assert. “The longer I wait the higher the chance of him killing or hurting them to get back at me.”

Ignacio considers this. “My brother will be coming to check in with us in about a week. He might be able to arrange a way for you to get in with him, but on short notice there would be no support for you. Once you’re in, you’d be on your own.”

“Fine,” I return easily.

“Wait wait, hold up a minute,” Nyx interjects. “You’re not even healed yet, and you’ve had one proper meal in years. You go back in like this and I doubt you’ll come back out.”

I nod shortly. “Agreed.”

She startles at me. “You’re okay with that?”

I level with her and sigh. “Everything I had to live for is gone. All I need to do is get to their main prison to see if they have my friends. As long as he doesn’t recognize me, that’s as easy as not calling him by his title, which I won’t do anyway.”

“Don’t be so eager to die for revenge,” Tiago begs, and his eyes are full of sympathy. “We can plan better than that with some time.”

I yawn, not meaning to and not sure why I’m tired when I’ve been out nearly half the day. “I’ll die when I’m good and ready.”

Nyx chuckles but smacks my arm. “That better not be for a long while. I think we could be good friends. Tomorrow after breakfast I’d like to show you around. You never deserved what you were put through, but let me show you that our world isn’t so bad.”

I nod, not knowing what else to do, but then yawn again and forget for a moment to cover my mouth. I’ve not cared for so long about manners, or pretending I care what people think, and now everyone is looking at me. My cheeks burn and I press the backs of my cold fingers to them.

“Don’t worry so much,” Nyx assures, “you’re tired, it’s natural. Let me show you to a spare room where you can get some sleep.”

I look around the table, but no one objects so I get up and give a quick ‘night all’ before rushing after her.