Chapter 13 | Part 2

When the wagons stopped for the night, the prisoner in the far cage waited for the nearest guard to pass before speaking.

“You’re not afraid.”

Two guards were awake. The others lay near the fire, where wet wood hissed.

Drusniel turned toward the voice.

“Should I be?”

“Everyone else is.”

The prisoner’s head tilted farther than a neck should comfortably allow.

“The guards. The others. They smell different when they look at me.”

“I’m not everyone else.”

“No.”

The strange eyes narrowed.

“You crossed the Nightmare Sea.”

Drusniel went still.

“How do you know that?”

The prisoner pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.

“That’s the problem.”

“What problem?”

“It comes back like something I did. Except I wasn’t there.”

Drusniel said nothing.

“You were in a boat. Something underneath it.” He swallowed hard. “Then you couldn’t breathe. I keep feeling that part.”

The debt beneath Drusniel’s ribs pulsed once.

“Whose memory?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you choose what comes?”

“No.”

“Can you call one back?”

“Sometimes. Usually not.”

“Does touching something bring them back? Or looking at it?”

“Sometimes. I touched an empty bowl once and remembered blood in it. Wouldn’t eat for a day.”

“Could they show you a way out?”

The prisoner gave him a flat look.

“They show me dying in places I’ve never been. I wouldn’t follow them far.”

Drusniel glanced at the guards, then lowered his voice.

“Name?”

“Elion.”

The answer came immediately.

“That’s mine.”

“Everything else?”

Elion looked down at his own hands.

“I remember cages. Running. Faces I don’t know. Bodies that feel familiar until I think about them.”

He flexed his long fingers, then gripped the bars until the shaking stopped.

“But the name is mine.”

“Drusniel.”

Elion repeated it.

“Old name.”

“Old tongue.”

“Meaning?”

“Shadow’s edge.”

Elion considered that.

“Better than mine. I don’t know what mine means.”

The guards shifted near the fire.

Drusniel waited until they settled again.

“Why are you here?” Drusniel asked.

“I got careless.”

“Doing what?”

“Being free.”

“How long?”

“Three years.”

Elion looked at the cage door.

“Before that, cages.”

Different masters, he explained. Different places. Memory beginning and ending behind bars.

“I stopped watching for cages.”

“What would you do if this one opened?”

Elion looked at him.

For the first time, the expression became easy to read.

“Walk free.”

End of Chapter 13.2 —> 13.3: The One Who Walks Free: The Choice