Before She Ignites Page 3

  I could be a Drakontos mimikus. Blending in with the tougher dragons.

  Which meant I had to stop crying.

  Too late for that. If Altan and the others had seen the panic attack—

  “They didn’t see it,” I whispered to myself. “No one saw it.” Even the girl across the hall was still in the same position. She hadn’t seen it, either.

  But surely others had heard.

  They weren’t guards. It didn’t matter.

  But . . .

  “Stop.” I scrubbed tears off my face. Grit from the floor scratched my skin, and my stomach turned at the patches of oil. And . . . a small, painful bump right on the tip of my chin. Oh, Damina. I was falling apart.

  A small whimper escaped my throat. Yes, I had a pimple. Normal girls got them all the time. Once a month, Ilina complained about a blemish that grew just above her jaw. She always treated it, covered it, and no one ever noticed. It was hardly the worst thing that had happened to her, and it certainly wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me.

  With a deep and shuddering breath, I closed my eyes and listened.

  To someone sniffing down the hall.

  A cough.

  A faint, tortured groan.

  And someone crying in their sleep.

  The three stone walls around me did nothing to muffle their voices. My own sobs must have been so loud and—

  “Stop it,” I muttered. The dregs of the first attack nipped at my mind. I couldn’t let the spiral start again. I wasn’t even sure how much time I’d lost to the first one. It felt like night, because of the stillness, and it was usually night by the time my attacks faded in a medicine-filled haze of relief, but maybe it was still the first day. Or the next day. Hours could have passed and I’d never have known, because the quality of light never changed. It stayed pale and dirty, slanting through the metal grille of my cell door.

  “Do they ever cover the noorestones?” My voice was low and hoarse; it hurt to speak.

  No one answered, but a sneeze echoed through the cavernous cellblock.

  “I’m Mira—” I stopped short of adding my surname. It wasn’t wise to announce my identity. After all, I didn’t know why anyone else was in prison. Even Altan thought it was best to keep my identity secret. I’d have to be more careful in what kind of information I released.

  Trusting the wrong people was why I was here in the first place.

  Pulling myself off the floor was difficult. Though the air was warm, my muscles felt cramped and stiff. My throat scratched with thirst, and my stomach hollowed with hunger, but who knew when they fed us here. If they ever did.

  By the pale light of the hallway noorestones, I took stock of everything inside my cell.

  1. A low wooden bed that ran the length of the left wall.

  2. A thin lump on the bed that turned out to be a blanket, or something that used to call itself a blanket. Filthy, but it was all dirt from the floor and not from . . . other things that could have been smeared on it.

  3. A pillow. Most of the stuffing was gone.

  4. A rusted iron lid over a sewage hole. It was better than a bucket, but not by much. Even though the hole was dark and empty and hopefully let out into a refuse area far away, the stink was overwhelming. I couldn’t replace the lid fast enough.

  I shuddered. During the journey here, I hadn’t spent much time imagining prison; I’d been too busy being miserable about my immediate situation. But this . . . This was a hole in the ground. This was an insult. This was cruelty.

  The noorestones went dark.

  I jumped and screamed, then slammed my hands to my mouth to cut off any sound. It was just the dark. The light would come back. Surely.

  It was so dark, though. Complete blackness. No matter how wide I opened my eyes, no light touched them. I couldn’t see anything. Was this what it felt like to be blind? Complete blackness?

  Noorestones didn’t work like this. They didn’t just go dark; they needed to be covered at night. This shouldn’t be possible.

  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.

  But the cup held only water, sharp with minerals, but water nonetheless. It felt wonderful on my aching, sob-racked throat. Part of me wanted to splash it on my face and rinse the grime off my skin, but there wasn’t enough water to feel clean. And I was so, so thirsty.

  The cup was empty too soon, and only as I crawled under the bed again did I realize I should have saved some for my neighbor. “Sorry,” I whispered as I pressed the cup into the hole. “I drank it all.”

  He tapped on the floor in a quick pattern, and though a tap was just a tap, some gave the impression of length. Maybe he’d dragged his finger. One long, one short. A pause. One short, two long, one short. Then, like an afterthought, he said, “No problem.”

  “I should have saved some for you.”

  “Ceiling drips.” He drew the cup toward him, and I tried not to think too hard about having just drunk ceiling water. That couldn’t be sanitary. “Better?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.” My neighbor wasn’t much of a talker. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that thirsty in my life. I keep fantasizing about a bath, too. Even if I could just wash my face, I’d feel so much better.”

  Three quick taps sounded through the little hole. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re not the reason I ended up here.”

  Two taps: long, short. “No.”

  No, it wasn’t his fault, or no, he was disagreeing with me and he thought it was his fault? Daminan etiquette forced me to keep going—put him at ease by assuring him of his innocence.

  “It was definitely my fault.” A sigh shuddered out of me. “I just wanted to help.”

  On the other side of the wall, there was no sound but the faint rustle of fabric.

  “I’m worried about my friends. Ilina and Hristo—” I shut my runaway mouth. Mother said one of my biggest flaws was that I didn’t think about all the things people could do with information before I let it spout out of me.

  “Well, never mind. It isn’t particularly important.” Yes, it was. It was possibly the most important thing I’d ever come across in my life. It had consumed me so much that when Ilina’s mother asked me to leave Ilina out of my story, I hadn’t considered what that might mean.

  That turned out to be the only blessing in the whole mess. By the time I’d realized the Luminary Council wouldn’t help, I’d known better than to say anything about my friends. If the council punished me for discovering their secrets, Ilina and Hristo would be in even worse trouble. Maybe killed.

  I resisted the urge to touch the twists in my hair, no matter how close it made me feel to Ilina; too much fussing would ruin her work. “I trusted the wrong people.”

  He didn’t respond, or acknowledge the invitation to tell me what he’d done.

  Like I hadn’t said anything at all.

  Suddenly, I wondered if he wasn’t real. Maybe he—and the drink of water—was just a sliver of my imagination and soon I wouldn’t care that I was in prison because I’d start to hallucinate my way out. What if—

  No. That wasn’t what was happening. My neighbor was just very, very quiet.

  Determined not to let the panic overtake me again, I reached into the darkness to pull my blanket under the bed with me.

  “Do you have anything to cut with?” I hoped he was real, this person on the other side of the wall. Otherwise, everyone down the cellblock would hear me talking to myself.

  “No.” Two taps: one long, and one short.

  Oh, right. Of course he didn’t. Assuming he was real, he was a prisoner. Like me. No weapons. “It’s just, I always wrap my hair at night. I thought I could cut off a piece of my dress.”

  Even as the words came out, I realized he didn’t care. Everyone here had it just as bad as me, and my hair was definitely not a concern. Neither was my name or face or status. We were all trying to survive.

  But everything was out of my control, and if I could just do something normal, I might feel human again.

  “Sorry,” he said. Another three fast taps. There was definitely a pattern, but I couldn’t figure it out.

  “How long will it stay dark like this?”

  No reply.

  “How do you think they got the noorestones to go out? I’ve never heard of that happening before.” At home, we pulled curtains over wall-mounted noorestones and had thick cloths to place over the others. Well, the servants did it. Mother wouldn’t allow Zara or me to perform what she described as a “menial task” except in the privacy of our own bedrooms when we were preparing for sleep.

  These noorestones hadn’t been covered, though. No one had come by; the light had just gone out.

  What an alarming thought.

  “Do you think they have some kind of device?” I asked. “Or special noorestones? I heard there are scholars who think—”

  I bit off my words. I didn’t want to start a discussion about noorestones.

  Most people liked talking about themselves. They loved to brag, especially if they could make it sound like they weren’t bragging. I had tons of practice encouraging these kinds of conversations. It kept people from noticing my shortcomings.

  I started with something basic. “What’s your name?”

  Silence.

  “Are you a real person?” Did those words really come out of my mouth? “I—Sorry. I just meant I didn’t see you when I walked through.” Which probably gave credit to the imaginary-person theory.

  I sounded like a dolt, but if I was talking, I wasn’t panicking.

  “Real.” There, that sounded like faint annoyance. “Hidden.”

  He was real, but he’d been hiding when I’d walked by his cell? That sounded like something a hallucination would say. “You’re awfully quiet.” Which meant he probably wasn’t from Damina.

  He grunted.

  At least he agreed.

  Well, I’d have to take his word that he was real. I was still thirsty, but I did feel like I’d had a drink of water. And I’d felt his breath on my knuckles when I’d inspected the hole in the wall. Those two things would have to be proof enough.

  “What did you do to get here?” Ilina might have laughed at this one-sided conversation, but Mother would have died of mortification.

  He sighed.

  That was probably rude to ask. I was doing such a wonderful job of making a fool of myself.

  This was getting uncomfortable, like a pressure building in the ho
llow of darkness between us. And yet, the questions kept falling out of my mouth. “How long have you been here? When do they feed us? Do we really just sit here for the rest of our lives and wait to die?”

  That was a terrible thing to ask, probably, but I needed the distraction. From the panic. From the fear.

  My heart thudded. Five times. Ten times. Twenty. I shifted around, trying to ease the tightness in my chest. Nothing helped. And I hated that he wasn’t talking to me. The Book of Love told us to seek friends everywhere we went. It said we should form bonds, and that those bonds would strengthen us in our time of need.

  I didn’t want to be this stranger’s friend, exactly, but I did want to learn about my neighbors. I wanted to be a Drakontos mimikus.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, one more time.

  A loud smack hit the wall. I jumped and scrambled to all fours as the pounding shifted to the floor on his side. Longs. Shorts. But even as my shock subsided and I counted the beats, I couldn’t make sense of the pattern.

  I faced the hole in the wall, gripping the crumbling stone between us. “What does that mean?” A harsh note of fury edged the question. It was too much. I knew. I wanted to yank back the tone and smother it, but it was too late.

  The words seemed to rip from him, louder than I’d expected. “Don’t know. About dark. About food. About doing anything.” He released a wordless cry, then dropped his voice and hissed, “You talk too much. Please stop.”

  I jerked back from the hole between our cells. “Sorry.” Shock hit first, followed by shame. Mother always said I didn’t talk enough. I wasn’t charming enough. I wasn’t Daminan enough.

  “It’s lucky you’re so pretty,” she always said. Not that my beauty helped me here. My neighbor couldn’t see me. And didn’t that just prove that my face was all I had? “It’s almost enough to make up for your interest in that dragon.”

  I missed LaLa, too. My golden dragon flower. I couldn’t shake Ilina’s words to me—that LaLa and Crystal were gone. Had they flown away? Had they been taken? If Ilina had known, she’d have said.