Chapter 3 The Gilded Cage

The door closed softly but no less tightly. As the door of a crypt cell. Seraphyne crouched on the bed, bruised in body but unbroken in heart. The Moonfire inside her moved, as gentle as breathing but bursting like imprisoned lightning. It did not boom, it waited.

She stared at the tray the silver-woman had abandoned: fruit that glimmered with dew, oils that perfumed the air with the aroma of stolen gardens, and a jug of something red and ancient. Wine, perhaps. Or something pretending to be. The woman's voice vibrated through the quiet, a strand of silk woven with steel:

"You are stronger than they know. And strength builds hunger. And both kings, Valerius and Kaelen, hunger."

And then that other enigmatic whisper, benediction or curse: "A gardener. And I see something growing where they planted desolation."

"A gardener, in this tomb of darkness, in this palace pretending to be one, was she a seed?" she thought.

The irony burning on her lips like cinder. Seraphyne's thoughts flashed through the instant of lost night, the woman's eyes veiled like evening, weighted with tears and secrets. She had asked the gardener, not crudely, but with a touch that begged power, begged will. A touch suspended, that fraction of air, on the crest of her shoulder, an unuttered word. What had the gardener perceived? What had she felt? The question tormented Seraphyne, an added enigma to the terror of having been abducted.

Seraphyne had trouble sitting up, the black silk sour against her skin, a bitter foil to the searing memory of Valerius's caress. She paced back and forth in front of the room, the soft skin of her bare feet quiet on cold marble, standing before the huge mirror. What faced her was not fragile, not broken, but some unfinished thing. Some awakening. The Elire girl was missing, reduced to ash. A new power stirred in her place, unsteadily but raw and irrefutably powerful.

In her flesh, the Moonfire burned, fine strands of silver light that pulsed like starlight in flesh. No longer a vibration, a hum, but something one could feel, a second heart beating within her. Her hand drifted upward, giving response to a hunger she could not define. Fingers fluttered inches from her mirror image, and the light gave way, not obedience, but love. It unfolded, soft and strange, as moonlight pours into the cosmos, in spite of the crushing darkness of the room.

A breathed command. A whisper of will. The room ignited, not with warmth, but with defiance. Shadows hugged and clung, holding fast in the shadows, unwilling to let go completely. The Moonfire hummed, a gentle wave of power that coursed through her, buzzing, coming back to life; it was like part of her self, an extension long gone stirring again. She sensed its power, vast and intimidating, the capacity to shatter stone or mend bone, if she focused hard enough. It was now a tempestuous, unbalanced thing, responsive to her mood, a reflection of her anguish.

"They believed they had buried me, they believed they had buried destruction." She mused to herself.

The concept caught, sharp and unrelenting, filtering through the lingering fear. She was not destroyed. She was the destruction's backswing. A flower that bloomed with blood and sorrow. A knife in flower form. These words, a litany, a soft vow were whispered into the heavy air of her captivity. She would not be a victim. She would be an untamed force.

The room's gold-plated cage could still be mapped. There are limits in any jail. There are walls that proclaim themselves. She began to stalk, naked feet on chilly marble, every step an act of claiming. The tapestries depicted hunts from the long past, rituals under moonlight, faces that shifted from man to animal, vampire to something more. Were they tales? Prophecies? Admonitions? She worked the designs, fingers pursuing depth in the fibers. One of the tapestries depicted a star's body, divided, bleeding light onto a desolate earth. Another depicted a wolf-man beast, body half-wolf, half-human, tearing across a field of stars. A third depicted a pale, queenly woman, eyes glowing like burning rubies, standing over a throng that knelt at her feet. These were stories of her abductors, maybe even of her own past.

Her fingers traced stone, probing for flaws, for secret doors, for weakness in the unbroken walls. There was none. Every surface is flawless. Every path is blocked. The high window, a slit of liberty so small, gave only a glimpse of the sky just beyond her grasp, a constant reminder of the world she had lost. The air, heavy and stale as it was, resounded with muffled, distant sounds: the murmur of voices, the clink of metal, the slow thud of concealed wings. The noises of a living, breathing, monstrous house.

Hunger clawed inside of her, a dull ache in her stomach. Thirst was a dull, slow pulse in her throat. But the facts were heavier. She went back to the tray again, her gaze on the jug. The fruit, green and sweet, offered plain nourishment. The oils, rich in perfumes of flowers from long distances, were designed to forget, to ease, to calm a captive. But the jug.

Heavy. Cold. When it was tilted, the liquid shone, but not red, black with crimson veins. The aroma, earth and iron. Pure blood. Not human. Not recent. Something much, much older. Something that had been made. It was the Nightborne's smell, concentrated, overwhelming.

"Was this a meal? A jest? A trap? - Do they want me to drink this? - To become them?" The notion was a chilling wind in her mind. To swallow the energy of her abductors, to bring their strength into her own flesh on her own terms. It was a sickening communion.

Revulsion coursed through her gut, a bile-like tide. And yet, alive and killing, curiosity accompanied it. In order to know her enemy, she had to know their world, their food, their very life. She opened the jug, the metal stench growing, filling her lungs. It wasn't blood. It was something else, powerful and ancient, a consumable that hummed with a dark, primeval power.

She drank a small amount.

It was fire and ice. Sweetness flavored with sorrow. Power condensed to taste. Her Moonfire resonated with warning, a jarring, protective shock, and then, in strange harmony. Not welcome. Recognition. A deep, almost familial memory stirred within her, feeling the ancient power, though corrupted and foul. The taste remained, a rich harmony of death and life, of old magic and wild hunger. It was heady, unsettling, but unmistakably powerful.

She laid it on the table. She would never do that again. Not yet. Not until she knew how much it was going to cost. The cost of this power, this strange food, was too great, too connected with the very people who had destroyed her life.

The darkness passed. Seraphyne paced before the window, her gaze tracing the path of the moon through the thinning strip of heaven. Her muscles were weary, but her brain grew sharper by the minute. She was a prisoner, yes, but she was a scholar as well. An instrument in the making. She would learn their tactics, their weaknesses, their hunger. She would use her own tools against them.

And somewhere in this great dark empire, there were two kings who starved for what burned deep inside her. For a light they could not grasp. For power, they thought they could control it.

They would find out.