Shadowbound

Shadowbound: Episode 2

I have not forgotten our time spent last night,

Vivianne.

It kept me awake in my cell, thinking of the risk you took just to see me.

It felt like no time had passed before the guards came for me at first light. They sent four men to subdue me. One to unbolt my shackles from the floor, one to secure each wrist, and the fourth to observe and give careful instructions. They glance among each other like children playing with fire, all at once intrigued by the heat yet terrified of being burned. It almost makes me smile, but before I feel my lips begin to quirk, I am struck by a sharp sear across my cheek.

A stroke of inspiration, emboldened to smite me into feigned submission.

The bolts draw back one after another all along the passage, and I count each one as we pass through, one step closer to the light. The sheer brilliance of it is surreal. It travels down the stairwell white and total, and it is not a mercy. It is a blade drawn slow and aching across my flesh. I climb into it half-blind, chains dragging, and the world returns in broken fragments.

The damp cold of the yard, slick on my skin.

The stamp and snort of impatient horses.

The cautious silence of men who have been told what I am and believe it.

And then, you.

They throw me down at your feet and I don't raise my gaze to you, despite everything. But I can feel yours upon me. Watching, expectant.

Demanding.

Vivianne: On your feet. Now.

I had forgotten what first light does to a man.

Vivianne: Walk.

Damion: Must I still be shackled?

Vivianne: Yes. Now save your breath for the road.

I let my eyes move over you properly, now that they are adjusted to the sunlight. The grey wash beneath your eyes. The chapped place on your lower lip where you have been biting it through the night. Altogether, it betrays the particular brittleness of a woman who is holding herself upright on will alone.

Damion: You did not sleep.

Vivianne: I beg your pardon?

Damion: You heard me.

Your jaw tightens.

A flinch so small I would miss it, if I were not already watching for it.

It is answer enough.

Vivianne: Move.

You command, with a jerk of the chain that tethers us to one another.

And I do, whether by choice or not.

We set out under a sky the colour of old pewter, and the kingdom's walls sink away behind us stone by stone. The wind comes off the open country carrying a smell I had forgotten I knew. I fill my lungs with it and hold it until my ribs ache.

It should feel like freedom, a deep breath of relief finally exhaled. But it just feels like a longer chain.

Exactly as I told you it would.

Vivianne: Three paces. You keep them and you do not speak to me unless I have spoken to you first.

Damion: Three paces, no speaking. You have already gone through this.

Vivianne: Good. Then there will be no confusion.

Damion: None at all.

I fall silent, my jaw tightly wound.

Damion: It must be tiring, holding a leash this tight for a thousand miles.

Vivianne: Less so than the alternative.

Damion: Which is?

Vivianne: You, loose. Or you, dead in a ditch.

Damion: Ah, so it is my wellbeing that keeps you awake at night. I am touched, Seer.

You do not rise to my provocation. You ride with your reins in one hand and the other pressed flat over your opposite wrist. Guarding it. Hiding it. I doubt you know you are doing it at all.

Damion: You keep touching your wrist. I've counted at least a dozen times since we left the gates.

Vivianne: You should learn to mind your own.

Damion: It has crept past the glove since morning. I can see the edge of it. It is moving faster than you have told them, is it not?

Vivianne: You know nothing about it.

I could laugh but I do not.

Instead, I continue lowly, watching it do its work.

Damion: I know more about what is happening to you than every priest waiting at the end of this road.

It lands, somewhere. Then, silence. Truly the loudest response you have granted me.

You last the better part of the morning before the question wins.

Vivianne: How did you know my name?

Damion: What?

Vivianne: In the cell, you knew it. No guard gave it to you. So, how?

Damion: Does it matter?

Vivianne: Answer me.

Damion: Clearly, you have turned this over a great many times.

Vivianne: I wish to hear this truth you speak of.

This is the part that will make the road unbearable. I want to tell you. I want to put every piece of it into your hands and watch your face as it comes home to you.

But I know exactly what it would cost you to hear it.

Damion: Some things do not help you to know. This is one of them. Leave it be.

Vivianne: You do not get to decide what helps me.

Damion: No? Is that not the point of this excursion? I escort you, Seer, towards a pointless cure deemed to help you.

Vivianne: You are insufferable.

Damion: Likewise.

By midday, the quiet between us has grown sharp enough to cut, and it is I who reaches for it now, because I have never learned to leave a wound alone.

Damion: You wish to know what I am. Ask yourself first, what you are. I know precisely whose sight put me in that cell.

Vivianne: And you think I will apologise for it? If so, you are sorely mistaken.

You jeer, your eyes scornful on my back.

Vivianne: I foresaw the place you were hiding, and I gave it to the crown.

Vivianne: Then, I stood in the yard while they hauled you into the dungeon, and I did not look away once.

Damion: I know. I saw you.

Vivianne: I fulfilled my duty.

Damion: Two years, Seer. Two years in a hole built only to drink a man's soul dry, because you shut your eyes one afternoon and did not care for what you saw.

A laugh.

Vivianne: You think yourself capable of having a soul?

Damion: Don't we all?