Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(8)

The absence of light was disorienting. Oppressive. Desperately, I squeezed my eyes shut until tiny stars burst behind my eyelids. It was something. Almost like I was in control. If I refused to acknowledge the darkness—

What if the warriors had done this to release some sort of slimy creature into the cells? The idea of a venomous snake slithering around my feet sent a spark of panic through me.

No. Not again. I wouldn’t let the panic win again so soon.

I opened my eyes, desperate to see, but that just deepened the sensation of isolation. Like I was the only person alive. The only thing. This darkness was tangible—another medium to exist in, like water—and I just wanted to step out.

This was ridiculous. There was no creature loose. The darkness wasn’t a force.

I breathed through the surging adrenaline, counting each exhale. One, two, three . . . Everything was fine.

Down the hall, someone else started to scream. A little relief trickled in, because I wasn’t the only one who was terrified.

But his voice echoed off the walls, as strong as the blackness. And he wouldn’t stop.

I tried to ignore the shrieks, but it was hard to keep track of how many breaths I was taking when his voice was overpowering. There was nothing to see. Not much to smell or taste or touch. Which left hearing as the sense I should have been able to count on, and it was like the darkness all over again. Instead of counting my own breaths, my mind switched to counting the number of seconds he screamed. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen . . . How long could he possibly go on?

With my fingers stuffed in my ears, I imagined running to my door and shouting for him to stop. Begging. But I’d never been confrontational, and demanding someone to stop screaming when he was terrified—I couldn’t. So I toed my way toward the bed, and when my knees bumped the edge, I shuffled around to sit. All I had to do was wait him out.

“You can wait, Mira.” Not that I could hear myself.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Silence.

My ears rang, but the noise was gone. At last. Someone down the hall groaned in relief.

It was premature. Before I could relax, the screaming started again.

I whimpered and dropped my head between my knees, pressing on my ears so hard that my head ached. Someone else shouted, urging the screamer to be quiet, but the noise went on and on.

A small groan climbed up my throat as I grabbed for the pillow and blanket, and scrambled underneath the bed. Like that could protect me from his voice.

I wrapped the blanket around my head to muffle the noise, then squeezed as close as I could to the wall.

There, in the darkness, in the noise, I waited it out.





CHAPTER THREE




“MIRA.”

I gasped awake.

For a moment, I imagined I was at home, and the thirteen days since confronting the Luminary Council were a dream. But then the voice came again—“Mira”—and my mind finally registered that this was a stranger’s voice. The way it emphasized the syllables of my name was off. Meer-AH instead of MEER-ah.

The voice drew me into wakefulness, and at once, I remembered where I was.

In the Pit.

I startled and jumped, banging my head on the bottom of the bed. But before I scrambled out of the way, I remembered the darkness and the screaming. The latter had stopped, but the former was just as oppressive as before. I smothered a whimper and pressed myself deeper under the bed.

“Mira.” Wood scraped the floor near my head.

I held my breath. There was someone under the bed with me.

Fear sparked deep in my stomach. A stranger so close. A dark and unfamiliar place. The complete lack of protection.

But that spark died as I registered three facts.

1. The space under my bed was too narrow for anyone to have joined me.

2. The only heat came from the floor, not a body next to mine.

3. If that whisper had awakened me, the screech of my cell door sliding open surely would have jolted me conscious.

No one else was under the bed.

“Where are you?” Even my whisper trembled.

“Wall.”

In the wall? No, on the other side.

“Finish and give back.” The voice was soft. So soft it almost seemed like it could have come from my own thoughts, but my thoughts were never that enunciated. That careful.

A slight pressure change near my face alerted me to the object placed there. “What’s this?” I let my fingers crawl over the floor, cautious. I didn’t want to knock it over by moving too swiftly.

“Cup.” The voice was masculine, coming from close by. Coming from . . .

My fingers closed around the wooden cup. The weight indicated it was full, but I didn’t drink from it yet. Instead, I marked its place in my mind, and walked my fingers toward the wall.

There was a hole in the crumbling stone.

It was the size of my hand, fingers splayed out. Just big enough to pass a small cup through. I could have reached into the adjoining cell, but a faint current of air brushed my knuckles as I mapped the shape of the opening. His breath. He was close.

I pulled away, back to the cup. “What’s in it?”

“Water.”

Such an unexpected kindness. Maybe he was from Damina.

I scooted out from under the bed, into the vast darkness of my cell. The blanket slipped off my head and crumpled to the floor as I tipped the cup toward my lips—and suddenly thought better of it. He could have been a murderer. He could have poisoned someone to end up in the Pit.