I nod again, though I can’t blink past the murk.
Una’s hand drops from my ear. The digging stops. The shudders subside. My muscles slowly relax.
“Do you remember?”
I open my mouth but shut it again. That frown digs in deeper.
“Do you remember?” she presses.
I’m staring through that green window again. Binding to the color. It reminds me of summer grass. Of a shadowed forest. Of—
Overwhelming grief suddenly crashes over me, with waves too big to withstand. Grief and an undertow of panic rise up. My frantic eyes fly back to Una as I lurch forward and grip her arm. “I’m supposed to do something.” My fingers dig in. Squeezing.Desperate. “I was supposed to do something!”
When she just stares at me, I try to jump off the pallet bed, but Una’s hand stills me. “Yes. What you need to do is prove yourself. You need to serve your king.”
“But…”
Her striped eyes narrow. Making another line that digs between her eyebrows. “That’s all you have to do,” she says sternly. “Please the king.”
I frantically shake my head, my heart racing. “No, no, no. I was supposed to do something else. Someone…there’s someone…I…I can’t…”
Una slaps me.
Hard.
The strike across my cheek flushes with a throbbing sting, freezing me in place.
“Stop this fighting! Give in,” she shouts through her teeth, her gaze livid.
I stare in shock, mind reeling, confusion boiling over.
There was something…
Her palms clamp viciously over my ears, squeezing so hard I panic that she’ll crack my skull. I try to scrabble away, but she won’t let go.
There isn’t just digging that I feel this time. There’s aswarm. Things squirming, slithering, eating their way through. I go slack. Droop like a dying vine as I’m inundated.
Infested.
I don’t know when I shut them, but my eyelids peel open again when Una’s hands leave my ears to cup my face as she forces me to look at her. Her touch is cold. Like she stowed her hands in a patch of snow and rooted through the frozen grains.
I’m floating. I wonder if I can float right past the bars of her eyes. Right through the ones on the window too.
Bars? Why are there bars?
“You’re Auren Turley.”
Yes. That feels right.
That’s theonlything that feels right.
“I am Auren Turley.”
“You will serve the king.”
That must be right too.
“I will serve the king.”
