And she was the newest thing to be swallowed by it.
Time dissolved into meaninglessness.
Had she been here minutes or hours? Her legs ached from crouching against the wall, but that could mean anything or nothing. The darkness made it impossible to track the passage of time.
She'd tried counting heartbeats at first—one, two, three—but gave up at what might have been a thousand when the numbers started losing meaning, when she couldn't remember if she'd said four hundred or four thousand.
The whispers came in waves, then receded. Sometimes singular, a lone voice mumbling syllables that might have been words in languages she didn't know. Sometimes plural, a chorus of breathing that wasn't quite breathing, of sounds that weren't quite words. They circled her with endless patience.
Her throat hurt, and she realized she'd started talking to herself just to hear something real, something human.
"My name is Briar Delarosa." Her voice came out cracked. How long since she'd had water? "I'm twenty…four? Five? I'm twenty-something. I have a sister. Allegra. She makes ugly bracelets."
The bracelet on her wrist. She fumbled for it, fingers clumsy in the dark. The plastic beads were still there, tiny anchors to reality. She counted them—twelve, thirteen, fourteen? No, that wasn’t right. She counted them again.
Twelve. There were twelve.
Something brushed her foot.
Panic shot through her as she jerked back, skull cracking against stone. Warm wetness, blood she assumed, trickled down her neck. The pain felt real and good, sharp enough to cut through the creeping fog in her mind.
"Don't touch me." She meant it to be commanding, but it came out pleading.
The something retreated, or didn't, she couldn't tell when she couldn't see; when touch was the only sense left and touch meant danger.
Her stomach cramped with what might have been hunger or fear, she'd lost the ability to distinguish between the two. Everything had become the same sensation ofwant. Want for light. Want for sound. Want for the mark to burn properly instead of this muted throb that reminded her she existed without confirming it.
She pressed her palm against the mark, trying to force connection. "I know you can feel this. I know you're there."
Nothing came back. The mark pulsed dim and distant, the connection between them severed by distance and stone, leaving her truly alone.
"I lied." The words scraped out of her raw throat. "I lied about the bracelet. It wasn't mine. Someone gave it to me. Seraphin gave it to me." Speaking her name felt like betrayal and benediction both. "She's a tree now because she was kind. Because I was selfish."
The whispers seemed to press closer, interested.
"Is that what you want to hear?" Her voice rose, echoing strange in the darkness. "That I'm sorry? That I understand? I lied to the Forest King and this is my punishment and I've learned my lesson?"
Silence fell around her.
Then, so soft she might have imagined it, "He won't come."
An actual voice this time, not just whispers, clearer and maybe human, or something that remembered being human. Was the voice real? Was she losing her mind? Was this what Eliam had wanted all along?
"He always says until it pleases him," the voice continued. "But sometimes he forgets. Sometimes pleasing him means forgetting you exist."
"You're lying." But her heart hammered faster. The idea of being abandoned in this place was one she refused to entertain.
A laugh came from the darkness, sharp and brittle. "Am I? How long have you been here? Do you even know?"
She didn't. The darkness had erased her sense of time completely. Admitting it felt like admitting defeat so Briar remained silent.
"I was like you once. Pretty thing with a sharp tongue. He put me here for... what was it? Ah. Yes. Smiling at another male." The voice moved and circled. "That was years ago? Decades? Hard to say. You lose count after the first century."
"No." Briar protested. The word came out small. "No, he wouldn't—"
"Wouldn't he? You're not special, girl. Just the newest bauble. And baubles he breaks, he discards."
Briar pressed harder against the wall, stone scraping her spine through the ruined dress. She was real, still real, still breathing, still here.
