Page 95 of The Prince's Mage

Her survival for so long, the agony she’d been through on that table, all the work she, Gavril, and Aimilia had put in to prove all this bloodshed was pointless… what was it for?

Marcella cried until she knew nothing else, crashing into unconsciousness.

She woke up slowly, painfully, the first time she’d woken up in a long time cold and alone. Well, actually, not alone.

She turned her head to see a shock of gold hair and familiar green eyes on the other side of the bars. Gavril sat in front her cell, his left wrist in his lap as he watched her rise. His expression was cold and blank and unreadable.

The illusionist in him, she imagined.

Whatever he was thinking and feeling, he hid it well.

If he was furious with her… she didn’t know. She was still a little furious with him. But mostly she missed him.

Although, if she was weighing what they’d done, she had to admit, she found more fault in her deception than his.

“Gavril,” she whispered.

His fingers twitched, but his expression gave nothing away.

“Marcella.”

At least he still said her name the same, even if he didn’t linger on it like she adored.

“What… What are you doing here?” she asked in her language. She pushed herself up, getting to her feet and managing a few steps before she was sinking to the floor on the other side of the bars from him. Just out of arm’s reach.

“I… I don’t know,” Gavril whispered. “I guess… Asentai help me, if you have an explanation, I will hear it.”

That was more than she could ask for.

“I… What did Nikias say?”

“I don’t care about what Nikias said. I care about what you do.” Gavril leaned forward, the marble cracking just enough for her to see into it. “Tell me your story.”

This was the only chance she was going to get. So she had to make it count.

“It was clear early on as a child the only noteworthy thing about me is how much I look like Hypatia. But looking like someone strong, skilled, and special doesn’t make you any of those things.”

He didn’t interrupt her as she went through the highlights of her past, things she’d already shared with him in the quiet following their nightmares, but she needed to share them again to make sure he understood why. Why she had ended up in that chariot as a sacrifice, how it had all led her to where she was right then, sitting in the cell in front of him.

When they got to the ambush and the capture, she needed him to understand how she knew no one was coming for her so being Hypatia was the only thing keeping her alive until she could escape. How she didn’t understand anything going on around her, but she didn’t trust him. How terrified she was they were going to kill her or put her on one of their tables when he’d revealed he knew she wasn’t Hypatia. How there had been a wonderful minute where she had believed he’d actually let her go, but then been captured again and he was an Inimicus illusionist and she was the fool.

And after that first time on the table… how could living be worth it if she lived under that threat?

She could see the marble in his face crack further. How much that failure to keep her off it agonized him.

She stuttered and slowed, biting her lip and looking away for a moment as it all came rushing back. How desperate she’d been for the mercy of death, how hopeless and dark it all was. How all she’d wanted was for someone to feel as much agony as she did, wretched creature she was.

Eventually, she got to the first raven.

“The first raven flew into this cell… I lied before. Black ravens are a bad omen. Silver-backed ravens were Asentai’s messengers and now the temple’s and ours. It flew into this cell with a message from Hypatia. It gave me hope. Hope that maybe I could be a fraction of what Hypatia is. That I could escape and be safe from ending back up on that table again.”

“And… that was…” Gavril whispered.

“That was why I started responding to you. I needed to win your trust so I could take you hostage and escape with the relic, the Heart of Asentai, or kill you.”

And the second she owned up to that terrible truth she almost heard the crack and felt the fracture in him. His façade fell and all that was left was for her to see something in him break at the discovery that his efforts to give her a reason to live hadn’t worked. The truth was that it had been Hypatia all along.

Marcella could have lied and told him the messages came later, but she would not.

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