The Prince's Shadow

Chapter 6: The madness in her mind

Chapter Six: The Madness in Her Mind

The wind rattled the shutters of Sheila Ren's East End rented room. Rain lashed outside in narrow ribbons, slicing the night like glass. The fire had gone out. The air inside cooler. The candle on the little table flickered, its flame curling inward with every breath of air sneaking under the door. There were no other sounds besides the soft dripping of water due to a leak in the ceiling and the creaking of the wood under aged, strained beams every now and then.

She had retreated into the corner, knees wrapped against her chest, her fingernails penetrating her arms through her sleeves. The broadcast she had listened to earlier still lingered in her mind.

"If you betray Caelwyn, I will find you."

The words were spoken with the gentleness of a lover's vow, but she knew a threat when she heard one. No, not a threat. A vow.

She hadn't slept.

She hadn't actually slept since she'd looked upon that face. Since her brain had tried and failed to convince her it was not him. Since she began questioning every breath, every shadow, every look over her shoulder.

She blinked at the quivering flame, watching it writhe in bent shapes. Her window face was ashen, eyes hollow, hair unkempt. Her skin, once rich and golden-brown, was gray in the dingy light.

Did this look what madness looked like?

Did this taste what madness tasted like?

She did not know.

The door creaked open slowly.

"Sheila?" Lysa's voice was uncertain, tinged with anxiety.

Sheila did not move her head.

Lysa stepped in, balancing a tray with bread, a bowl of soup, and a cup of lukewarm tea. “You haven’t eaten since morning,” she said gently, setting it down. “You need something.”

“I’m not hungry,” Sheila muttered.

“You need to eat,” Lysa insisted, settling beside her. “You’ve barely touched food in two days.”

Silence.

Lysa looked at her friend’s face. “You think you’re going crazy.”

“I might be.” Sheila’s voice was quiet, but steady.

"No. You're not."

"I saw a dead man."

"You saw someone with his face."

Sheila finally looked up. Her eyes, dark and ringed with exhaustion, shone with the weight of ten years' worth of hurt. "What if it is the same thing?"

Lysa placed her hand on hers, laid a gentle hand upon her skin. "Then we figure it out. Together."

Sheila pulled away her hand and strode. She paced, arms folded tight across her chest.

“I should leave,” she said. “Disappear again. Head for the southern ports. Take a different name. Burn everything behind me.”

“You’d never forgive yourself,” Lysa said, rising.

“No,” Sheila admitted. “But I’d be alive.”

Lysa stepped in front of her. “You think he’ll come for you?”

“I don’t think,” Sheila replied. “I know.”

She shut her eyes, tried to slow her breathing. "The nightmares are intensifying. I wake up and I feel his hands around my throat. I see the blood. I hear him whispering, as he did when I was bleeding on the tiles of that accursed hall."

"Maybe it's just fear," Lysa suggested. "You've been through a great deal. Trauma doesn't just go away."

"It wasn't fear that fixed his gaze on that screen."

Lysa hesitated. "What if you're wrong?"

"Then I'll be the fool who gambled her life on a lie. But if I'm right, and I do nothing."

She paused, pushing the palm of her hand against her temple.

"I've spent ten years trying to become invisible. And now he sees me again."

Night turned darker. Wind howled. Rain intensified.

Eventually, Sheila appeared alone, cloak folded tightly around her shoulders, boots squelching in puddles. Her footsteps echoed off rain-slicked cobblestones as she walked through the streets, past shuttered shops and deserted alleys. Her heart pounded with every turn, her eyes raking the darkness over and over.

Along the way, her feet brought her to the doorway of the ruined lower quarter, the place where her nightmare had begun. She stood before the rusty entrance arch that was once the door to the servants' training hall. What remained of it now was broken half-collapsed walls, weeds growing from crevices between the stones.

"I know you're not him," she whispered into the rain. "And I know you remember me."

She was being silly, talking aloud. But a part of her needed to hear the words spoken aloud. To make it real.

A footstep behind her.

She spun about, dagger half-drawn.

"Easy," Tate Wyvern said, stepping out of the darkness.

She breathed hard, easing her blade.

"You're stalking me now?" she demanded.

"I figured you'd show up here."

His coat damp. His hair plastered to his forehead.

"You're not being subtle, you know."

"I wasn't trying to be."

Tate stepped in closer, voice softening. "You're not going crazy, Sheila. You're seeing something nobody else wants to see."

"I want to be wrong," she conceded. "I want to be invisible once more. Not know. Not remember."

"But you do remember."

She nodded. "And I see his eyes when I close mine. When I breathe. It's like he's still in the air."

Tate hesitated. "Then let's get proof. Let's wring the truth from the palace. If you're going crazy, then so am I. But I'd rather go crazy knowing we tried."

She regarded him. "You'd do that?"

“You already cost me my career,” he said with a crooked smile. “Might as well cost me my peace of mind.”

She chuckled bitterly.

Then, softer, “You’re a fool.”

“So are you.”

They stood under the archway as the rain softened.

“I’m not running anymore,” she said quietly. “If he wants to come for me, he’ll have to look me in the eyes again.”

Tate nodded. "Then we begin tomorrow. We track his trail. We search through the files they covered up. There's someone out there who knows what really occurred ten years ago."

"And if they've already been silenced?"

"Then we track down the ones still alive."

In her bedroom once more, Sheila dried her hair, changed into fresh clothes, and stood before the cracked mirror hanging above the basin. Her eyes reflected on the thin scar along her side the one he had given her. The one that never disappeared.

"I remember you," she whispered.

Her fingers touched it tenderly.

"I remember everything."

And she recognized, as sure as she was of her own identity, that the prince on the balcony was not the boy in the fairy tales. That he was something else. Something worse.

Something that never rested. Something that crowned itself like a mask.

Something that had waited ten years to finish what he had started.

But she would not be the girl who fled.

Not this time.

Not ever again.