Tempting Fate

Two: Darkness Does Not Lie

Today it was the shadows. Arietta sat curled up on her side, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. They'd injected her with something this morning, holding her down until fingers dug into the skin on her arms. No matter how much she thrashed, bit, grabbed, she couldn't fight them. Even as they jabbed a needle in her arm. As the injection flowed like lava through her veins.

Then her mind started with the tricks again. Yesterday there was blood and bugs. Today she was all alone in the darkness.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. Something whispered behind her. Whimpering, she curled in tighter.

It's in your head. It's in your head. But the darkness never left. Instead, the shadows swallowed her up, chilling her skin even as the injection blazed in her blood.

How long would she be trapped here in this darkness?

She curled into herself, even as the whispers grew and grew and grew. Until they buzzed and swarmed around her, praying on her fears, highlighting her mistakes.

No one is looking for you.

You'll die here, having done nothing.

No one cares about you.

You got your mother killed.

You brought death and violence to the shifter's doorstep.

You're nothing.

Arietta slammed her palms over her ears. "No, no, no, no." The whispers blurred, until they turned into her mother's voice. You didn't save me.

"I'm sorry," she told her mother, "I'm sorry!"

She shuttered there in the dark, until finally, something broke through the cacophony of whispered mistakes.

Footsteps.

Arietta looked blindly through the shadows towards the sound. Would it be demons this time? Or maybe ghosts? She missed the bugs. She missed the blood.

"Get her up," a stern female voice ordered. "Reison wants to talk to her."

Buried deep beneath the shadows, her body flinched, reacting instinctively to that name. Icy hands wrapped around her elbows, hefting her upward. "No!" She shouted now for a different reason. Her brain couldn't tell her why, but her body knew enough: she did not want to talk to Reison.

And right now, with her mind playing tricks on her, her gut instincts and bodily reactions were the only things she could trust.

She kicked out blindly. A low curse. "Grab her!"

Another icy hand gripped her ankle firmly, then she was sitting up. Something hard and plastic settled beneath her. A chair.

"Stop!" She urged. "Stop!"

Straps buckled her into the chair before the hands left her.

But they didn't take the whispers with them. You've gotten the shifters killed. I told you not to tell anyone.

"I'm sorry, Mama," Arietta's head fell forward until her chin rested on her chest. "I'm sorry."

The grating squeak and groan of a door behind her opening was her only sign anything in the room changed. And then, from the darkness, a low, soft chuckle had white hot fear mixing with the lava already pouring through her veins.

She knew that chuckle. Even in her current state, her body and mind recognized danger.

Reison.

***