But though Kelsea scrabbled on the floor, she could not find the rock, only her matches and the remnants of her last meal. She forced herself to be still. Down the hallway, she heard one footstep, and then another. Soft, as though someone were barefoot—or walking on tiptoe. If they had been carrying a torch, Kelsea would have seen the light by now; whoever it was traveled in the dark. A cold hand seemed to rest on the back of her neck, making her think of Brenna, Thorne’s creature, who could lower the room temperature by her very presence. But Brenna was locked safely away in the Keep. The footsteps moved directly in front of her cell and Kelsea held still, not even breathing, caught in the momentary hope that if she didn’t move, no one could find her. The bars thrummed gently as fingers ran lightly across the front of her cell. Her nerve broke.
“Who’s there?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t. There was something terrible about asking questions of the faceless dark. She thought of Katie, calling into the night, and closed her eyes.
“They thought they could keep pretty from me.”
Kelsea froze.
“They thought I wouldn’t have my own key.”
Kelsea backed up against the wall. She had forgotten about the jailor, and that was a bad misstep. She heard the jingle of a ring of keys, felt the thrum of her pulse racing.
“Stay away from me.”
“As though pretty could belong to anyone except me.”
At the words, Kelsea’s fear suddenly morphed into anger, beautiful and welcome anger. Vague memories tugged at her, echoes of the day she had ripped Arlen Thorne to pieces. She had promised never to do that again, but now she was ready to jump.
The jailor slid his key into the lock, and with the sound of the tumblers falling, Kelsea felt the last of her fear disappear. Fury swelled inside her, bright and shining, until her chest felt twice its actual size. Oh, how she had missed her rage in these past weeks, missed it in a way she would not have imagined possible, and now she felt as though she were reuniting with herself, becoming whole.
“Where is she?” the jailor mused. This was a game to him, one he had played before. How many prisoners had been forced to endure this? As he moved into the cell, Kelsea suddenly realized that she could see him, a vague figure cast in dim blue light. It was the rock, Katie’s rock, Katie’s sapphire, lying in the corner of the cell, glowing a thin blue. But Kelsea had no time to reflect upon it, for the jailor was moving closer.
“There she is,” he murmured. His gaze flicked to the corner, marked the glowing piece of sapphire, then seemed to dismiss it.
“You do not want to come near me,” Kelsea said, speaking slowly. She had meant the words as a bluff, but she also felt a certain truth in them. Something enormous was gathering force inside her, a boulder careening down a hill, picking up speed and power. The jailor pulled a dagger from his waist, and somehow this angered Kelsea most of all. He had at least fifty pounds on her, but still, he didn’t want even the semblance of a fair fight. She considered various parts of his body and settled on the eyes, visible in the thin blue light. What a pleasure it would be, to claw them from his head.
No sooner had she thought this than the jailor stumbled, clapping his hand to his eyes. The dagger clattered to the floor and Kelsea snatched it up. The jailor sank to his knees, howling, and Kelsea darted forward and knocked him over, using her full weight to drive him off his knees and onto the floor. His head clanged against the bars, but Kelsea barely noticed. Whatever had incapacitated him could end at any time, and the urgency of that thought allowed her to straddle him—though she hated to touch him at all—take a good grip on the knife, and bury it in his throat. The jailor groaned and gagged, while Kelsea held tight to the dagger’s hilt, driving it downward.
“No one owns me,” she whispered.
It went on for a long time, somewhere between five minutes and forever, but finally, the jailor’s struggles ceased. Feeling the muscle beneath her go slack, Kelsea relaxed.
The glow from the rock, if it had even been there at all, had vanished, and Kelsea felt as though her anger had drained away with it. Groping around under the edge of her mattress, she found her matches. The candle took longer, for the struggle had knocked it all the way into the far corner of her cell. When Kelsea finally got it lit, she stood over the man on the floor, staring down at him. She felt very little, only a mild disappointment that she remembered from killing Thorne, and now she heard Andalie’s voice, echoing from a dark corner of her memory.
This, I think, is the crux of evil in this world, Majesty: those who feel entitled to anything they want, anything they can grab.
There was the disappointment. Kelsea longed to eradicate true evil, but she could not. All she could do was kill men like the jailor, like Thorne, men who represented evil’s weak and worthless implements. True change danced beyond her grasp.
“How do I fix it?” she whispered to the corpse. “How do we get to the better world?”
She remained silent, hoping against hope that someone would hear her and answer. William Tear himself, perhaps, possessed of so much power that his voice might echo across the great twin voids of time and death. But after a moment’s thought, she realized that Tear had already answered her, long ago. There was no quick and easy eradication of evil. There was only the passage of time, of generations, of people raising children who would hold all other lives just as valuable as their own. Tear had known that was the answer, but even his best efforts had failed.