The lock clicked. It was not a familiar sound, not like the rasp of the bolt in her uncle’s house, but it was a sound that meant the same thing. Elara huddled on the clean floor, far from the too-soft bed, her bandaged hand aching where it rested on her lap. The room was too white, too big. Too empty. But now it was not empty anymore. The door swung inward, slow and silent, like a mouth opening in the dark. It made no sound against the thick carpet. Richard stepped inside. He wore the same travel clothes he had worn when he brought her here, crumpled and smelling faintly of the road. His hair was messy, standing up at odd angles. He looked tired, but his eyes were wide and fixed on her. He did not look like he had been sleeping. He looked like he had been waiting. He did not say anything. He just closed the door behind him. The click of the lock turning was louder this time, final. The sound scraped down her spine. No one would walk in now. No one would even try. He pulled a chair from the small writing desk by the wall, scraping it softly across the floor. It was the only sound in the room for a long minute. Elara tried to make herself smaller, her knees pulling tight to her chest. She watched his face, ready for the first tightening of his jaw, the first shift of his weight that would mean his hand was coming for her. His voice was soft, softer than she had ever heard it, almost like he was talking to himself. “You are a mistake, Elara. Do you know that? A very expensive one.” He sat, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “Your being here. It nearly cost me everything. Margaret… she would have ended me.” He swallowed, his gaze darting around the pristine room, as if seeing its luxury for the first time. “She would have.” Elara kept her eyes on his. “I am sorry, Uncle,” she whispered. Her voice was raspy, unused, but the words were a habit, a reflex. She was sorry for everything. She was sorry for breathing, for eating, for being alive. It was always her fault. It had always been her fault. Her apology felt weak, a tiny mouse scuttling before a giant. His head tilted. “Sorry? For what? For costing me my future? For nearly getting me killed?” He did not sound angry. He sounded hurt, almost bewildered. “She was going to tell them. Tell them about you. The real daughter.” He shook his head. “The gold… the promise… it would all have gone. Because of you.” He paused, looking at his hands, then back at her. “I told her you were gone. That you ran away. And then you turn up here. Right when everything was perfect.” He sighed, a long, weary sound. “It always has to be you, doesn’t it?” He reached into his coat pocket. His hand came out holding a small glass bottle, dark liquid swirling inside. It caught the faint light from the window, reflecting it dull and flat. He held it up, turning it between his fingers. It was no bigger than her thumb. It could disappear in his palm. Elara pressed herself harder into the cold stone of the corner. The white walls felt like they were pressing in, not letting her breathe. The bottle was not medicine. She knew that much. She had seen too many things, too many small, quiet acts that meant big, loud pain. She watched the bottle, then his face. Her mouth was dry. A scream pushed against her throat, a tight knot of sound, but it stayed there. What was the point? Screaming had never brought anyone. It had never stopped a hand or a foot. It only made the blow harder, the anger sharper. It only made them angrier at *her*. She looked at the door. It was locked. She looked at the window. It was too high. There was nowhere to go. No one to call. She was alone. She was always alone. He moved then, pushing off the chair, the legs scraping on the carpet again. The bottle caught the light once more as he took a step towards her. --- Kael leaned back in his ornate chair, a flicker of dragonfire catching in his eyes as he finished his point. “The girl is irrelevant. The Rite is set. We move forward.” Elias nodded, stirring his goblet of dark wine. “Indeed. Lydia shows the proper reverence for the Temple. Her claim is sound. The other child was merely… a distraction.” Aeron chuckled, stretching his long legs under the heavy oak table. “A feisty distraction, though. She certainly woke up the guards.” He drained his cup, setting it down with a soft thud. Lucian remained silent, his gaze distant, fixed on the patterns in the dark wood of the table. He had said little since the formal audience. The barrier around the child’s soul had bothered him. Still did. It felt like a stone in his gut, a quiet wrongness. Orion had been speaking, describing a minor irregularity in the Temple’s eastern ward lines, a faint shimmer he had perceived. “…and while it is likely residual energy from the recent storm, the pattern suggested an unusual— ” He stopped. His voice cut off mid-word. His eyes, which had been tracking an invisible path across the ceiling, went still. They stared, unblinking, at a point beyond the stone walls, beyond the night itself. The silence in the room stretched, thick and sudden. He saw nothing, yet everything. --- Elara closed her eyes. The white room was still too white, even through her eyelids. The air felt heavy, pressing down on her. Her infected hand throbbed, a dull, insistent beat, like a drum in the distance. Her body trembled, but it was not a shiver from the cold. It was a quake deep inside her, a memory of pain and fear. He was closer now. She could smell him – the faint stale scent of sweat and fear, the same scent that always clung to him when he was truly desperate. She knew that smell. It meant something was about to break. Something inside her. Her mind felt like a blank wall. There was nothing left. No escape. No hope. No one. The words that had always been there, the prayers she had mumbled to herself in the dark, were gone. Emptiness settled inside her, cold and vast. She remembered the dull grey stone around Lydia’s neck. Her mother’s stone. The only thing she had ever owned. The only thing that was hers. The only thing that had ever felt like a part of another person. It was not here. It was three corridors away, around a neck that was not hers. With nothing left to reach for, she whispered the only word she had ever had. She whispered it to the empty air, to the stone walls, to the memory of something that was gone. She whispered it for a necklace that was three corridors away, around another girl's neck. Mama. My mama. Please.

Why Won't You Die