The cell smelled of damp stone and a wisp of old metallic scent of blood. I sat on the floor with my back against the furthest corner and my knees pulled to my chest ad I stared at the iron bars.
The touch on the wall outside the cell was the only thing that lit the dark environment and o fixated my eyes on it, in order to avoid looking at the dark spaces.
My gown was dirty at the hem now. My eyes kept sweeping back to it. Dora had spent weeks on this gown. I and my friends and I put in efforts to gather the stone and hand stitched it to make an intricate, intentional pattern.
My eyes burned with tears but i refused to let it out from the threshold of my lashes. Crying would make everything seems real…I'm not ready for that yet.
I don't know how long I sat there, staring at the light. But when I heard the footstep that suddenly filled the space, my hopes flared.
I recognised them before I saw him. I had always been able to recognise Aric's walk, the particular weight and rhythm of it, something I had absorbed so deeply over twenty-two years that my body registered it before my mind did.
He appeared on the other side of the bars and crouched down so we were level and looked at me with an expression that was trying very hard to be reassuring. Maybe it was because of the events tonight but I saw what I've never noticed in his before.
"Lyra."
I kept silent.
"I know how this looks," he said. "But I need you to trust me."
Still I couldn't find it in my heart to say anything. It wasn't intentional but I was just trying to understand which version of him I was looking at .
"What happened tonight was—" He stopped. Then started again. "The elders overreacted. You know how they are when something falls outside what they understand and tonight was—" He exhaled. "It scared them. All of it. The stone, Maren. But I'm going to fix it. I'm going to speak to them tonight and sort through this properly and it'll be resolved by morning."
I looked at him.
"By morning," I repeated.
"Yes."
"And I stay here until morning."
Something shifted in his face, brief and quickly but I caught on to it. Annoyance "It's the safest place right now. Until things settle. If I take you out now it'll look like I'm going against the elders and the pack and I need them on my side to get this reversed. You understand that, right? I need to handle this carefully."
I thought about the way Elder Conal had ordered and how Aric did not even attempt to subdue it "He told you to do it," I said. "Reject me. And you did."
"It was temporary. A formality, for the crowd—"
"Aric."
He stopped.
"Was it a formality."
He held my gaze. There was one thing about Aric— he had never been able to lie to me directly, face to face. It was the reason I had always trusted him so completely.
"I'm going to fix this," he said. Which wasn't an answer.
I nodded slowly.
And because I wanted it to be true, because I had loved this man my whole life and I needed something to hold onto in that cold dark cell, I let myself believe him.
"Okay," I said quietly.
The tension in his shoulders loosened just slightly. He reached through the bars and covered my hand with his, warm the way he always was, and I turned my hand and held on.
"Get some sleep if you can," he said. "I'll have this sorted before you wake up."
He left.
I listened to his footsteps fade up the corridor and then I was alone again with the torch and the damp smell and the ruined hem of my gown.
I didn't sleep. I sat in the corner and I counted the stones in the opposite wall and I told myself it would be morning soon. It'll be resolved soon.
Even though the conscious part of my mind begged to differ.
————
Time was stagnant. At least, I felt like it was stagnant.
Without any window, without any way to track the sky, I had only the torch to measure by and the torch didn't change. I watched the door. I listened for footsteps. Every time I heard something move in the corridor above I sat up straighter, certain it was Aric coming back to tell me it was done, it was resolved.
But it was never Aric.
At some point, I started counting. That was how deprecate I was to know tge passing time. I was on the three thousand and ninth count when I heard a soft metallic sound from somewhere down the corridor.
I was on my feet before I'd decided to stand.
But the figure that appeared at the bars was not Aric.
It took me a moment in the bad light. Then the torchlight caught her face and something in my chest broke open and then immediately tried to close again.
Petra.
She started working on the locks before I could reach her
" Petra?" My voice was barely a sound. "What are you—"
"Quiet." The lock clicked and the gate swung open. "We don't have time."
"Aric said he was going to fix it—"
"Lyra." She stepped inside and gripped both my arms and looked at me in a way that forced me to look back at her. "Listen to me. The elders met an hour ago with Alpha Aric. They're not planning on letting go. That bastard is going by their decision". Her eyes showed how livid and panicked she was
I stared at her, tears finally pouring down my eyes
"Morning " she said. "They set your execution for morning ."
The word didn't make sense at first. I turned it over in my head, looked at it from different angles, tried to find the interpretation that didn't mean what it clearly meant.
"Petra—"
"Snap out of it, Lyra. He was not and will not stop it!!" Although her voice was low, it was strong enough to shake me out of my daze .
She pressed something into my hand "The northern fence. Third post from the oak tree, there's a gap. I found it two years ago and never reported it." His eyes were bright in a way I hadn't seen since we were children. "Go north first, then cut east once you're through. The river will cover your scent. Don't stop, don't look back, and don't come back."
I looked at her with fresh tears in my eyes
"What about you," I said
"I'll be fine."
"Petra–
"I'll be fine." She said it harder the second time. Then something in her face shifted and in that moment, I saw the pure, unfiltered fear in her eyes. And it was fear for me, not of me. She pulled me into a hug. Brief and fierce and the kind that tried to put everything it couldn't say into the pressure of it.
"Go," she whispered , into my hair. "Now."