Mira's POV
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I touch it anyway.
I know Guide is trying to pull me away. I can feel its panic _ sharp and urgent _ pressing against my Resonance like an alarm going off. Its whole body is leaning away from the marking on the wall like the rock itself might bite.
I press my fingers against it anyway.
The hatred hits me so hard my vision goes white.
Not normal hatred. Not the quiet kind my father had _ the cold, slow kind that never needed to raise its voice. This is something burning. Something that has been sitting in a chest somewhere in this dungeon, feeding itself, growing teeth. It slams through my fingers and up my arm and lands in my sternum like a fist.
Someone hates me.
Not what I represent. Not humans in general. Me. Specifically. Already. On my first night.
I yank my hand back and press it against my side. My fingers are tingling. Guide grabs my other arm _ not rough, but urgent _ and pulls me away from the wall so fast my feet stumble. It doesn't look back at the marking. Not once. Like looking at it gives it power.
We move fast through the rest of the corridor and I don't argue because my heart is hammering and my hand still feels like it's been burned from the inside.
-
The room Guide takes me to is small.
Warm glowing walls, a flat bed of thick soft moss, a bowl of clean water in the corner. That's it. No door _ just an open arch that leads back to the corridor. Guide sets me inside and then stands at the arch and makes a sound. Low, steady. Repeated three times.
I realize after a second that it's calling someone.
Two creatures appear from further down the corridor. They position themselves on either side of the arch without being told. Not looking at me. Looking outward.
Guards.
Guide looks at me once _ and the feeling coming off it now is something complicated. Not just the earlier curiosity. There's something underneath it. Something that feels almost like guilt.
Then it leaves.
I stand in the middle of the small room and breathe.
-
I sit on the moss bed and I make myself think because thinking is the only thing I have right now.
I pull my ring out of my pocket and hold it. The little silver one I found in the road when I was twelve. Cold and solid and real.
Okay. List. I need a list.
One: I am alive. That was not guaranteed when I walked through the gate and I should not take it for granted for even one second.
Two: The king told me to stay. Two words. You stay. That means something. I don't know what yet but it means something.
Three: Someone in this court already hates me enough to carve a warning into a wall on my first night.
I think about that third one the longest.
Here is the thing about warnings _ nobody warns something that doesn't scare them. My father never warned me about anything. Cole never warned me. People who think you are nothing don't bother warning you. You only warn things that have power. Things that matter. Things that could change something.
Whoever carved that marking on the wall is afraid of what I might become here.
Good.
I put the ring on my finger. My ring. My choice. The one thing in this entire dungeon that is completely mine.
You are still here. You are still standing.
-
I don't sleep for a long time.
I lie on the moss and stare at the ceiling and listen to the dungeon breathe around me _ that low constant hum, the pulse of the walls, the distant sounds of movement that never fully stop. I think about Senna saying when instead of if. I think about the king's face when I told him he was the loneliest thing I'd ever felt. The way something in his expression cracked open just slightly before he shut it down again. The way he said you stay like the words surprised even him.
I think about the wave of loneliness that came off him.
It didn't feel like a weapon. It didn't feel like a trap. It felt like a window left open in an empty house _ not on purpose, just because no one had been close enough to close it in a very long time.
I fall asleep thinking about that.
-
Something wakes me up.
Not a sound. The opposite of a sound _ a sudden silence. The hum of the dungeon walls cuts out completely, and the silence is so total and so wrong that I am sitting upright before I am fully awake.
The walls have stopped glowing.
Pitch black. I cannot see my hand in front of my face. Cannot see the arch. Cannot see anything.
I stay completely still and slow my breathing down and reach out with my Resonance the way I've been doing it all day _ carefully, like stretching a muscle I'm not sure works yet.
The two guards outside the arch.
I find them immediately. Their feelings are loud and easy to read because they are not trying to hide anything.
They are terrified.
Not on-edge terrified. Not alert terrified. The deep specific terror of people who recognize something dangerous and know they cannot stop it.
And then I feel something else.
Underneath the guards' fear, coming from further down the corridor _ moving closer _ slowly, deliberately, like it wants me to have time to understand that it is coming and that nothing is going to stop it.
The same hatred from the wall.
Same burning. Same teeth. Same focus.
Except now it is not in a carving on the stone.
It is walking toward my room.
I reach out further with my Resonance _ trying to get more, trying to understand who it is, what it wants, whether there is anything underneath the hatred I can reach _ and for one second I get something.
A name. Not a spoken name. An image, a feeling, a shape in someone's mind _ the shape of something they want so badly it has taken everything else over.
They don't just want me gone.
They want me to disappear before morning so that no one in this court _ including the king _ ever finds out exactly what my Resonance is capable of.
Because they already know.
They know more about what I can do than I do.
The footsteps outside my arch stop.
The silence stretches.
And then one of my guards makes a sound _ short and cut off, like something that was going to be a warning but didn't get the chance to finish.
And then nothing.
Nothing at all.
I press my back against the wall and grip my ring so tight the metal bites into my palm and I stare into the dark where my door used to be.
Something steps through the arch.