Within the Walls [NEW VERSION]

Chapter 21

My vision blurs as the Tranqs shove me back into my room in the palace. The king's cackles and chortles bore into my ears as he stomps away down the hall, clutching his precious jar of Shadowteeth blood. What does he even want with it anyway?

The room spins. A strange sensation comes over me, like I've both ingested poison and swallowed an entire cup of vodka. Sweat pools on my forehead, and drips down my face as I pace back and forth around the room. Strange shapes morph around me. The bed posts stretch and bend. The windows shatter and I scream, ducking and covering my head in instinct. But when I look back, the glass is still intact.

A rage, unlike anything I have ever felt, explodes into my veins and billows through my body like a rolling storm, rushing and surging and the room is on fire. I am on fire. I want to pull my skin off my bones.

A scream. Mine. It cuts through the booming, rattling percussive sound in my ears and jerks me to my knees.

What is happening to me? I want to shout. But my mouth is sewn shut. I stumble to the bed and collapse.

Finally, the noise, the pain, and the nausea vanish. The fury is all that remains. It's deadly. Thirsts for blood, and heads on spits. A feeling I've never known.

It drains every bit of my strength as I lay in bed, sweating and trembling, and I, at last, tumble into merciful sleep.

---

"Elle." A voice stumbles into the recesses of my consciousness.

A groan tumbles from someone... from me.

"Elle!"

My skull throbs as the blade of a sword has been wedged between the bones, deep in the mushy flesh. But my eyes cannot open, will not open. There is nothing but oblivion awaiting me and it is just calling for me.

"Elle! Someone jolts me and my eyes fly open. A figure swims and blurs before me. Him.

"Ruben," I mumble.

"Gods! Elle, wake up... please." A tear slips down his face and those reddened eyes search me with a desperate frenzy. "I just spoke to Aston. It's – it's your sister."

I sit bolt upright. My heart lurches into my throat. "Is she –" I rasp.

He opens and closes his mouth like the fish the Convex fishermen haul out of the river, and I have my answer. The room spins and sways as I fling myself out of the damp bed, and stagger to the door.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Ruben says with a snap.

I realise my clothes stick to me like tar. There's a strange violet stain on my forearm mixed with the crusty layer of blood. My hair sticks up in all directions like the mane of an enraged lion. I smooth it down. "I'm okay. Now take me to my sister."

He grasps my hand and tugs me out of the room. We run. Through the hallways and around corners, leaping down staircases until we fly out the foyer doors into the awaiting carriage. Ruben orders the horseman to make haste and the reigns crack before the horses yank us to speed. Before I know it, my stomach rises and sinks as the carriage ascends the slope of the bridges, and then canters down, and into the rickety streets of the Convex Sector. The stench of death seeps into the closed windows of the carriage. Ruben gags and covers his mouth and nose with his sleeve. My knee bounces up and down and a scream festers and churns deep within me.

Not my sister. Not Lyra.

I throw the carriage door open before it even comes to a halt outside my apartment building. Ruben calls after me as I launch myself into the familiar shadows of the tight-knit street, and stumble into the grimy apartment building that smells of mildew and rotten wood.