The Gemini Age: Book One

[11-2] Ensnared - Part Two

    Fifteen. The stone struck the wall below the dim lightbulb and careened to the ground, and on its rebound, she pulled it towards her with a twist of wind. Casting one-handed, she seamlessly switched the direction of the wind to launch the stone back towards the wall. It knocked against the same point as it had every other time. Sixteen.

    "Your command of magic is impressive," her prisoner noted from behind his cell door. Wilfred had been silent in the darkness of his cell for so long that Skye had forgotten he was there, his presence forcing her to remain here until the next guard bothered to show up. "When I was your age, I was still getting to grips with maintaining my magic. Quickly switching forces was far beyond my skill. I must confess, however, I was...a distractible young man."

    Skye sent the stone back to the wall. Seventeen. "That explains why you're stuck inside the cell, and I'm out here. I make my own path and I stick to it." Eighteen. The lights flickered as her stone chipped at the surface again, though they dispelled too little darkness for their temperamental nature to concern her.

    Wilfred shifted in his spot, his shoulders rotating as much as his binding allowed, but remained sat cross-legged on the cold floor. "I went my own way too, and yet here we are." He shut his eyes and bowed his head low, a position he had spent much of the past few hours in. A tattered blanket lay along one edge of the room, yet despite casting his eye over it several times since Skye arrived, he never appear interested in using it. "Regardless of our intentions, our paths met and intertwined."

    Strike nineteen never came. Skye swatted the pebble from her sight and turned to the slats in the door, the wall lights haloing around her hair and shoulders. "Don't get used to it. You'll be somebody else's problem soon enough. As for me, I'll be out of this hole for good once my father notices how valuable I am to his mission." Sharp snippets of Sam's travels replayed in her mind, each one sharing a backdrop of derelict buildings and dive bars coloured every shade of dirt through rough use and neglect. The family's network extended to the coasts of their island nation and beyond, yet it was also confined to squalid rooms in secret pockets of wasteland. The disused facility suited the Farron family's business, and Skye's heart shuddered at the thought. "This is not what Father wanted," she said out loud to herself.

    A pair of striding feet echoed through a distant corridor, the first trace of sound from the rest of the facility that reached the cell for a long while. Wilfred took a deep breath and straightened his posture. "I'm sure your father knows what he wants," he sighed, the grey circles around his eyes widening as he exhaled. "Have you stopped to consider what you want?"

    His quiet words faded beyond his cell, yet they ran like bristles over the back of Skye's neck. She squared up to the door of the cell, balanced on the tips of her toes. "Stop rambling! My life is nothing to do with you, old fool. You don't know a thing about me."

    Wilfred shrugged. "Perhaps not." Straightening his back again, he inhaled through his nose, held it, and exhaled through his mouth. Through the slats in his door, Skye watched as the passage of his breath cooled her own heated temper. "But I've overheard enough about Byron Farron lately to know that his own interests come before anything else. Even before his own children, it seems, judging by how poor his bond is with Samuel."

    "I said stop!" Skye's fist hammered into the cell wall, scorching the stone with a glowing imprint of her knuckles. Her eyes stung. "Don't say his name. Don't give your opinions. Don't lecture me. Just stop."

    She gasped for breath. Her arm trembled as she pulled it back, and the ground rocked beneath her as her cries echoed around the walls of the chamber. A wipe of her mouth left a trail of saliva glistening on the back of her glove that resisted her efforts to clear it away. Sliding her back down the cell wall, Skye drew her knees to her chest, head tilted to the shadowy ceiling looming overhead. Underground, the facility's lifelessness became more acute, and without maintaining contact with some hard surface around her, Skye struggled to remember she was in a building at all. She searched for some movement to break up the darkness. The shadows looked back at her with disinterest.