of need. But I listened to that voice entirely too much in the beginning of this whole horrible situation, and I just don’t trust the bitch anymore.
I’ve been so wrong about what’s real and not, that I can’t just dismiss this encounter as a delusion. But whether it’s authentic or a legitimate schizophrenic break, this voice needs to kick rocks and mind its own damn business.
“Go sell your cocky crap to someone who’s buying. I’m all stocked up on unnecessary bullshit, but thanks.”
“I’m not a figment of your imagination,” he says, addressing thoughts he shouldn’t even be able to hear. “Like I said before, your anger called to me, so I’m here, but if you think I’m caught, you have another thing coming,” he warns. “Didn’t your sire and matron teach you anything?” he adds superiorly.
Thoughts and doubts swirl through me, but since arriving in this place, I’ve had to face some hard truths. Truths that shouldn’t be true at all. I wanted to pretend that none of this was real, to argue that it was just hallucinations or nightmares, but logic cut that safety net right up, and now I’m freefalling in a reality that I don’t understand.
Frustration seeps through me as Ophidian throws something big against a wall, and it clangs loudly to the ground. “If anyone is caught, it’s me, and I promise you I’m no happier about it than it sounds like you would be,” I growl at him as something ricochets off the wall and hits the table. “I’d love nothing more than to get away, but I don’t know anything about any of this...”
My voice breaks with emotion, and I try to shove away the helplessness that I’m feeling and fill the gaps with rage instead. Anger is easier to navigate right now than the pain is. I need to stay angry so I don’t succumb to the cloying devastation that wants to smother me.
“Mmmm, that’s more like it,” the gravelly voice hums appreciatively. “But I’m not answering until you prove you’re worthy of me. If you want Wrath, then you need to become wrath,” he declares arrogantly.
“You can shove worthy wrath right up your—”
A loud slam pulls my attention away, and I pause, listening to see what it was. The large room is suddenly silent, and all I can hear is the fire as it burns down the torches on the walls and an occasional sniffle from the girl in the cage next to mine.
I don’t hear Ophidian anymore, and I try to release a relieved sigh. He must’ve left without tossing me back in my cell. I’m still in the clutches of my darkness, so I have no choice but to just lie there, the sound of flames licking at my eardrums, the voice in my head suddenly mute.
I try to think through where it went, but my thoughts are interrupted.
“Sable?” a silvery voice asks me, and surprise rockets through me at the stranger’s use of my name.
My heart trips inside my chest. I don’t recognize the voice, but I listen carefully, wishing I could pause my pulse to make sure I’m hearing correctly. But she isn’t in my head like the man was. I hear her clear as day with my ears, her voice echoing slightly in the damp dungeon as she calls to me.
The sound of someone shuffling over the stone floor reaches me. “Sable, can you hear me?” she asks, her voice wobbly with emotion and her words infused with a Southern twang that I find oddly comforting.
“She won’t answer you,” and I recognize that voice and know it belongs to the green-skinned monster that resides in the cell on the other side of mine.
A trickle of irritation moves through me. He hasn’t said a word to me after my first day here, and now on this girl’s first day, he’s speaking to her? Maybe it’s a new fish in the pond kind of thing?
I mean, I was quiet in the beginning, but I thought I was hallucinating for longer than I want to admit. But even then, he didn’t really try to spark up a conversation. It’s as though he gave up, and that thought suddenly makes me sad. Maybe if I had realized that all of this was real sooner, I might not have been so alone in all of it like I have been so far.
“You have to wait for her to start moving again. Then she’ll be able to talk,” the green-skinned monster tells her.