Page 135 of A Kingdom's Heart
The ceiling above me came in and out of focus. I blinked slowly, trying to make sense of the movement around me. Then I heard voices, rushed and urgent.
“The king wants him healed before dawn. Hurry!”
Their words cut through the haze like a dull blade. Healed before dawn. I knew what that meant. Not mercy, not kindness. Just a cruel preparation for what came next.
Hands pressed against me, cold and firm. The faint sting of
liquid on my skin made me flinch. Someone tore away the moss Iris had placed, and the brief comfort of her touch vanished with it. My breath hitched, a hoarse sound escaping my throat.
Everything burned. My shoulder, my back, my chest. The pain was so deep it felt carved into my bones. I tried to move, to speak, but my limbs wouldn’t listen.
More voices shouted. The words blurred together, growing
distant, like they were sinking beneath the sea. My vision swam again. Faces hovered above me, their mouths moving, but I couldn’t hear them anymore.
Then, slowly, everything went quiet.
The light dimmed, the pain dulled, and the world slipped away into black.
—
When I opened my eyes again, the world was dim and silent. For a moment, I didn’t know if I was still alive. My body felt heavy, my head pounding, and the air around me was thick with dampness and the faint scent of stone and rust.
I forced myself to sit up. My muscles protested, but they worked. The sharp pain that had once burned through my back was gone, replaced by a deep, dull ache. I looked down and saw that I was bare from the waist up, only my trousers left. My skin was clean, though faint red marks dotted my shoulders where the arrows had been.
The healers had done their work. They had saved me.
But not for mercy. Not for life. Only so I could face what waited next.
I looked around. Bars rose high in front of me, cold and black, their edges wet with condensation. The light came from a single torch fixed outside the cell, flickering weakly against the walls. The floor beneath me was rough stone, uneven and cold.
There was a small slab of rock against the wall, some sort of makeshift bed and a rusted chain looped through the iron ring around my wrists. In the corner sat a dented chamber pot. The stench of it mixed with the damp air.
I was in the dungeons.
My pulse quickened as the realization sank in. The silence here was different. Heavy. Final. This was where they kept men who had already been sentenced. Men waiting for death.
I leaned back against the wall, the chill of the stone biting through my skin. The faint sound of footsteps echoed somewhere in the distance, fading as quickly as they came. I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing slow and shallow.
Then I turned my head slightly and saw a crack in the far wall. A thin line of light spilled in. It was faint, weak, but enough to tell me what I didn’t want to know. Morning.
The night was gone.
The faint hum of voices carried from somewhere above, guards
changing posts, the low clatter of armor echoing through the halls. The world outside was waking, but down here, time felt still. Cold. Unforgiving.
I turned my head toward that small crack again. The light shifted slightly, spreading across the floor in a slow, golden streak. Dawn. The start of a new day for everyone else. The end of mine.
My hands trembled in the chains. I flexed them slowly, testing
the strength of the iron. It didn’t matter. There was no escaping this.
A quiet breath left me. I closed my eyes, letting the light brush against my skin one last time. The warmth was faint, but I could almost imagine it was her. Iris. The way she felt in my arms, the way her voice sounded when she said my name.
The light grew stronger, spilling further into the cell.
It was the next day.
