Chapter 15: The Truth

Elara came to my room the next day, and I knew from the look on her face that she was not here to offer comfort or advice.

Her grey eyes were darker than usual, and the lines around her mouth were deeper, and she moved like someone who was carrying a weight that had been pressing on her shoulders for a very long time. She did not knock. She simply walked inside, closed the door behind her, and stood at the foot of my bed with her arms crossed over her chest.

She sat on the edge of the mattress without asking, and the old springs creaked under her weight. I pressed my back against the headboard and pulled my knees to my chest and waited.

The fire crackled in the hearth, throwing shadows across her face that made her look older than she already was, and I realized that I had never asked how old she actually was. Hundreds of years, probably. Or maybe more.

"You need to know what happened to the others," she said.

I did not ask who she meant, because I already knew. She was referring to the sacrifices who had come before me. The humans who had been sent to this castle and never seen again. Their ghosts haunted every corner of this place, every shadow, and every whispered word that floated through the walls like smoke.

"The king did not kill them," Elara said. Her voice was flat, and empty, like she was reciting facts from a book instead of telling me about lives that had been destroyed. "The court killed them slowly, and cruelly. For entertainment."

My stomach turned, as cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck, and I felt the bread and cheese I had eaten earlier rising in my throat. I swallowed hard and forced myself to keep breathing, to keep listening, and to keep my face still even though everything inside me wanted to scream.

"They were bored," she continued. "The nobles of this castle have everything they could ever want. Was it power, wealth, or immortality? They had it all. They have lived for centuries, and they have seen everything there is to see, and done everything there is to do. But boredom is a disease that even the richest cannot cure. So they found ways to amuse themselves."

I thought about Leticia, who had survived by becoming nothing, by being invisible, and by giving them no reason to notice her. She had been here for ten years, watching and waiting and making herself so small that no one remembered she existed. And that was how she had stayed alive.

"How?" I asked. My voice was small, barely loud enough to reach across the room.

Elara looked at me, and her grey eyes were sad, the kind of sad that came from watching bad things happen and being unable to stop them. "In the beginning, the king did not care. He viewed humans as lesser, and as toys to be broken and discarded. He allowed the court to do whatever they wanted with the sacrifices because he did not see them as people. He saw them as things."

I thought about the nobles who lined the courtyard when I arrived, laughing and spitting and throwing bread at my face like I was an animal in a cage. I thought about the noble who had grabbed my arm in the hallway, with his fingers digging into my skin hard enough to leave bruises, his breath hot and rotten on my face. I thought about the way they looked at me, like I was not a person but a thing, something to be used and broken and thrown away when they grew bored.

"Leandro allowed it," Elara said. "For years. For decades. He sat on his throne and watched while the court tore humans apart, and he felt nothing. He had spent so long convincing himself that humans were monsters that he had forgotten how to see them as anything else."

She paused, and I saw her hands tighten into fists in her lap. I sat there with my heart pounding, my throat dry and my stomach churning with every word she spoke.

"The court would place bets on how long each sacrifice would last. They would invent new games, new torments, and new ways to make the suffering last longer. But the king did nothing to stop them. He did not care enough to stop them." Elara said.

I thought about my mother, who had died in a bed with thin blankets and no fire, who had given me the last of her warmth, the last of her strength and the last of her hope before she slipped away into the darkness. I thought about all the years I had spent surviving, making myself small, giving them nothing so they would have nothing to use against me. I thought about the humans who had come before me, who had not been as lucky, and who had not had a king who wanted them alive or had been their mate.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked. My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated how weak I sounded, how vulnerable, and how much I was giving away.

Elara reached out and took my hand. Her fingers were cold, and her grip was firm, and she looked at me with eyes that had seen too much and hoped too hard and been disappointed too many times.

"Because you need to understand what you are facing," she said. "The court does not see you as a person. They see you as a threat to their way of life. You are the first sacrifice the king has ever tried to protect, and they do not know what to do with that. Some of them are afraid. Some of them are angry. And some of them are waiting for their chance to hurt you."

She squeezed my hand, and I felt the bones in my fingers press together, and I did not pull away because I was too scared to move.

"Ramiro is the most dangerous of them all," she continued. "He is patient, and he is clever, and he has been waiting for an opportunity like this for a very long time. He sees you as the key to everything he wants. If he can use you to break the king, then the throne is his."

I pulled my hand away. "You are not making me feel better."

"I am not trying to make you feel better," Elara said. "I am trying to make you understand. You are not safe here, Sergio. You will never be safe here. The only thing standing between you and the darkness is the king's will to protect you."

I laughed. It was a bitter, sharp and ugly sound, and it echoed off the stone walls like something breaking. "That does not make me safe."

"No," Elara agreed. "It does not. But it makes him try. And that is more than any other human who has walked through these doors has ever gotten."

She stood up and walked to the door, and her hand rested on the handle, but she did not look back at me. The firelight caught the silver in her hair, and her shadow stretched long across the floor, and I realized that she was tired. Not the kind of tired that came from a bad night's sleep, but the kind of tired that came from centuries of watching and waiting and hoping for something that never came.

"Do not waste what he is offering you," she said. "The king is trying to be different. He is trying to be good. But he has spent three hundred years learning how to be a monster, and change does not happen overnight. He will make mistakes, and he will hurt you without meaning to. But if you can be patient, if you can give him time, he might become something better than what he was."

She left before I could say anything else, and I sat there against the headboard with my back to the wall and my eyes on the door, as I thought about what she had said, about the other sacrifices, the court, and the king who had watched and done nothing.

I thought about Leticia, who had survived by becoming nothing, who had made herself so small that no one remembered she existed. I thought about the boots on my feet and the cloak on my shoulders and the honey that had been left by my door. I thought about Dario, who had broken a noble's wrist because the king had ordered him to protect me.

I thought about myself and I knew for a fact that i was not safe. I would never be safe. The court wanted me dead, and Ramiro wanted to use me to destroy the king, and the only thing standing between me and the darkness was a monster who was trying to learn how to be good.

But somewhere in the castle, Ramiro was smiling.

I could feel the weight of his patience, and the certainty of his plans. He was waiting for the king to make a mistake, waiting for me to show weakness, and waiting for his chance to strike. And I did not know if Leandro would be strong enough to stop him.

I pressed my hands together to stop them from shaking, but it did not help. They kept trembling, kept moving, and kept betraying the fear that I had been trying so hard to hide. I looked down at my fingers, at the way they twisted and twitched, and I thought about all the sacrifices who had come before me, who had knelt in this same room, and who had felt this same fear before the court tore them apart.

"You have one advantage the others did not," Elara had said. "The king wants you alive."

I did not know if that was enough, but it was all I had.

I pulled the cloak tighter around my shoulders, pressed my back against the headboard and stared at the door, as I waited for whatever came next. 

Somewhere in the darkness of the castle, the king was watching as always, and I hoped, more than I had ever hoped for anything in my life, that he would be strong enough to keep me alive.