October 27th, Year 21, 10th Era
Nightwall Keep, Skalor
Aura prods the meager meal of mush served in a wooden bowl. The tower guards deliver the unappetizing excuse for food to her cell in the tower twice a day.
“Back!” She hears them bark the order from the room above hers.
Once the slam and lock of the door shudder her curved walls, the thumping of the guards’ boots down the stone staircase signals that they are alone once more.
Aura slips into the corner of the tower room, which appears to have been used for storage due to its low ceilings. A gaping hole in the floor above her reveals her partner in this prison.
“I’m here, Mum,” Aura reassures Avina as her wavering shadow reappears through the crack.
“You should not see me like this.” Her mother’s teeth chatter, and not from the chill of the frigid air howling outside.
Since arriving in Nightwall Keep a few days ago, their days have been unstructured and chaotic, leaving little time for mother and daughter to reconnect.
Something Aura suspects is intentional from the Queen of Skalor.
They have discovered that they earn a reprieve from Lavinia and her handmaidens during mealtimes. The questioning of Aura and the torture of Avina over the past few days have left both of them shaken.
Not that the Queen of Treland is not already reliving the trauma of her previous imprisonment at the hands of her ex-husband Rendel. Despite the years that have passed, Aura can still hear her mother sobbing as the wind slips through the cracks in their dilapidated stone tower.
Hopelessness seeps into their very bones.
Lavinia has made it clear that the sole reason for Aura’s imprisonment is to coerce Calder into agreeing to become a vessel for Makt. Avina’s presence has had the desired effect of preventing Aura from tapping into herseidrand freeing them or murdering the Queen of Skalor.
Aura believes in Calder, Edmund, Argnier, and their allies, who she knows will attack Nightwall Keep and free them.
Then, she can use her powers to dismantle every single block of this godsforsaken castle.
She presses her fingertips to the nautilus around her neck. How easy would it be to call Briny and have her godly grandparents rescue them?
No, I can’t trust the gods after the collaring and their abandonment of Calder. Besides, if we are not fast enough, Lavinia will kill Mum.
“You were saying about the Azure?” Aura nudges her mother back into their previous conversation as she settles into the rickety chair in the corner beneath the hole in the ceiling.
From above, she can hear Avina grumble before she relays the plan with Bjorn to keep their father under sedation. She is stunned into silence at the stones on her mother. To think she has sought to protect their mission from the beginning.
She senses the added pain in her mother’s tone when speaking of Sigvid.
Dammit, Father.
“Please know Calder is not working with Lavinia.” She leans her head against the cold stone of the circular cell.
“I know, Aurie. Your father, on the other hand.” Her mother’s voice wavers with worry.
“Mum,” Aura fidgets with her fingers, “I love Calder. And he loves me. He will not hurt Father.”
She recounts their entire adventure in gory detail to Avina, omitting only the intimate moments she shared with the Iss Dregnr.
“All I have ever wanted for you is to gain the confidence to become a strong woman. It is an added gift that you found a deep connection with someone who loves you fiercely enough that they would be willing to do anything to protect you.” Avina’s words ring eerily similar, if not identical, to those her father spoke in Blackwood as he instructed her to stay away from Drengr.
Aura clambers onto the chair beneath the crack in the ceiling. “Mum, here.” She extends her hand, clutching the Treland Sacred Stone toward Avina’s watchful gaze.
“Oh, Aura. I cannot. You need that to escape.”
“I am uncollared.” She admits with a level of confidence she can hardly recognize in herself.
