Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 147891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Still, I say nothing, and as if that irritates him, he sits forward and says, “Fine. If you don’t want to talk, I’ll make you talk.” Shoving out of his chair, he walks away from it and shifts into a person I’ve never seen before. He becomes a man with short dark hair, like the ink of a squid. His skin turns a grayish white, like dirty dish water, and that cloak of his transitions to black again. His nose isn’t round and soft, but hawkish, crooked, and flared. But nothing beats his eyes—dark irises and pupils that have no life or color and seem to go on infinitely. This is the real Decius.
He lifts both arms in the air, creating a gray cloud above us. The cloud spreads, creating a moving image, and I wince when the cold chains tighten around me.
In the clouds, I see a woman, and not just any woman. It’s my mother. She’s out of breath as she bursts into my childhood cabin. I’m just a boy, no older than seven, lying on the floor reading a book.
“Caspian, come quickly!” she shouts, already grabbing my arm and yanking me up.
“Stop this!” I demand, but Decius only looks at me with a smirk, his face as sinister as they said he was in the stories I used to read about him.
He lets out a wicked chuckle. “I knew you’d talk to me eventually.”
“Do you get some kind of sick kick out of this?” I snap. “Torturing people about their past?”
“Oh, absolutely. In fact, it gives me much more strength. That’s what makes your Tether so sweet. The duress you’re under. The pain. The hurt. The resistance of who you truly are. Why do you think I led Magnus, your cruel, cruel father, to you and your mother? If he hadn’t taken you, you never would’ve become who you are now. All that pain that festers inside you will only do me wonders.”
“Do you remember what I told you about the hidey-hole?” my mother asks, rushing me out the door of the cabin.
“STOP!” I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to look, but they’re immediately pried open again by a needle-like invisible force. I cry out as my eyes are spread open wider, forced to watch what happens next in the glowing clouds.
“Yes, Mum, I think so,” I tell her.
“Good boy. I need you to stay in there until I come for you. And no matter what you here, you must stay in there. Do you understand?”
“Why, Mum?”
She ignores my question, trudging through the forest, my small hand clutched in her clammy grasp. She walks around a tree with a large trunk, and a bed of moss and twigs. Releasing my hand, she shoves the twigs and moss aside, revealing a wooden plank. Removing the plank, she uncovers a hole in the ground—one I watched her dig months ago. Back then, I had no clue why she was digging it. “Go on then,” she says hurriedly. “In you go.”
“But I don’t want to go in there! There are spiders, Mum! I’m scared!”
“You must!” she declares, and after she does, the voices of men rise, echoing through the forest. She gasps, dropping to her knees and looking me in the eye. “This is the only way I can protect you right now, Caspian. We have no time. Please get into the hole, and I’ll come for you in a few minutes. Okay?” She forces a smile, one that doesn’t reach her eyes. If I’d known then what that smile represented, I never would have agreed.
Tears form in my eyes. My vision has blurred, but I nod and allow her to help me into the hole. Once inside, I stifle a sob as she covers it back with the wooden plank, whispering, “It’s okay, son. It’ll be okay.”
She shoves leaves and other things on top of the plank to cover it, darkening the hole by the second, and then I hear her steps scatter away. The voice of the men grow louder, booming as they call for her. “We know you’re here, Azira! Give us the boy!”
“Enough!” I shout, glaring at Decius. The sharp grip on my eyes weakens, and the vision in the cloud fades.
“Caspian, this isn’t Blackwater. You aren’t in charge here,” he says, smirking with his hands behind his back.
“I don’t care.”
“Do you not wish to relive these times? The last moments spent with your mother?”
“Fuck you.”
He sighs, moving closer. “I suppose it doesn’t make sense to torture you with things you relive daily. I know it’s all you ever think about—your mother. Her death. Your recklessness. But Willow…” A wide grin spreads across his face, and I jerk forward in my chair. The chains rattle, pressing deeper into my skin, and at this point I don’t care if they rip all of it off.