With the sun beaming in through the small barred window, she saw that the wounds on his back were healing with the fabric of his tunic stuck to it. Ceres wanted to do something – anything – to relieve his pain, but she had already asked to help him several times and there had been no response, not even a flicker in his pale blue eyes.
Ceres stood and tucked herself into the corner, eyes swollen from crying, mouth and throat parched from thirst. She shouldn’t have hit a royal across the face, she knew that, but when she had done it, she had only reacted.
Would Thanos come for her? she wondered. Or were his promises just as rotten as all the other royals’?
The pregnant woman sitting opposite her rubbed her swollen belly, moaning softly, and Ceres wondered if she had gone into labor. Perhaps the woman would have to give birth in this wretched hole. She looked down at the little boy again and her heart ached when she considered it wasn’t many years since Sartes was that size, and remembered how she used to sing lullabies to him until he fell asleep.
She tensed up when she noticed the silhouettes of two prisoners approaching before her.
“Who is that boy to you?” a gruff voice asked.
Ceres looked up. One of the men had a dirty, bearded face with angry blue eyes, the other was a bald man, muscular as a combatlord, the skin below his eyes covered in swirling black tattoos. The robust one smashed his knuckles together and they cracked, and the chain around his ankle clattered as he moved.
“No one,” she said, looking away.
The bearded man leaned hands against the wall behind her on either side, confining her, his raunchy breath wafting into her face.
“You’re lying,” he said. “I saw the way you looked at him.”
“I’m not lying,” Ceres said. “But if I were, it wouldn’t make one bit of difference to you or anyone else in here. We’d still be stuck in this prison, awaiting our punishments.”
“When we ask you a question, we expect an honest answer,” the tattooed man said, stepping forward, his chain rattling again. “Or are you too good for us?”
Ceres knew that playing nice or trying to avoid the bullies wasn’t going to make them leave her alone.
As quickly as she could, she ducked, and darted past the thugs so she could go to the other side of the room where their chains wouldn’t reach. But she didn’t get far.
The tattooed man lifted his leg and the chain with it, catching Ceres’s legs, causing her to trip and fall on her face. The bearded man stepped on the boy’s back, and the little one shrieked in pain.
Ceres tried to rise to her feet, but the tattooed man wound his chain around her neck and pulled.
“Let the boy…go,” she croaked, barely able to speak.
The boy’s cries pierced straight to her heart, and she tugged on the chain, trying to free herself.
The tattooed man tugged even harder, until she couldn’t breathe.
“You do care, don’t you? Now, because you lied, the boy will bleed to death,” the bearded man hissed.
He gave the boy a swift kick in the back, the child’s cry filling the crammed cell, the other prisoners turning their heads away, some weeping quietly.
Ceres felt her body come alive, a surge of power overcoming her like a storm. Without even knowing what she was doing, she found herself strengthening her grip around the chain and snapping it in two.
The bearded man stared back at her, stunned, as if he had seen a ghost rise from the dead.
Free from the chain, Ceres stood, took hold of the chain, and whipped the bearded man, again and again, until he cowered in the corner, begging for mercy.
With her insides alight, she spun around and faced the tattooed man, the force within still feeding her body the strength she needed to stop the aggressors.
“If you touch him, or me, or any of the people in here one more time, I will kill you with my bare hands, you hear?” she said, pointing at him.
But this one growled and threw himself at her. She raised her palms, feeling the heat burning within, and without her touching him he went flying into the wall across the room with a thud and collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.
A tense silence fell, as Ceres felt all the eyes in the room on her.
“What force is that?” the pregnant woman asked.
Ceres glanced over at her, then looked at the others; everyone in the cell was dumbfounded.
The little boy sat up and winced, and Ceres kneeled by his side.
“You need rest,” she said.
Now that the fabric had torn from the boy’s back, she could also see puss between the blood. If his wounds weren’t cleaned, he would die of the infection, she knew.
“How did you do that?” the boy asked.
Everyone’s eyes were still on Ceres, wanting to know the answer to that question.
It was an answer she wanted to know herself.
“I…don’t know,” she said. “It just…overcame me when I saw what he was doing to you.”
The boy paused and as he lay back down, with weary eyes, he said, “Thank you.”
“Ceres,” came a sudden whisper in the darkness. “Ceres!”
Ceres turned and looked through the bars of the cell and saw the form of a person wearing a hooded cape, the torches in the hallway illuminating the black material. Was it a servant boy sent by Thanos? she wondered.
Careful not to step on fingers and toes, Ceres made her way over to the stranger. He removed the hood, and to her astonishment and joy, she saw that it was Sartes.
“How did you find me? What are you doing here?” she asked, her hands gripping the bars, her chest brimming with joy – and trepidation.
“The blacksmith told me you were here, and I had to see you,” he whispered, tears in his eyes. “I’ve been so worried for you.”
She reached a hand through the bars and pressed a palm to his cheek.
“Sweet Sartes, I am doing well.”
“This is not well,” he said, his face etched with graveness.
“It is well enough. At least they haven’t said anything about…”
She stopped herself from speaking the unspeakable, not wanting to worry Sartes.
“If they kill you, Ceres, I will…I will…”
“Shush, now. They will do no such thing.” She lowered her voice several notches before whispering, “How is the rebellion?”
“There was a battle in northern Delos yesterday, a huge one. We won.”
She smiled.
“So it has begun,” she said.
“Nesos is fighting as we speak. He was injured yesterday, but not enough to keep him in bed.”
Ceres smiled a little.
“Always the tough one. And Rexus?” she asked.
“He is well, too. He misses you.”
Hearing Sartes say that nearly brought Ceres to tears. Oh, how she missed Rexus, too.
Sartes leaned closer, his cape covering his arm, and then she peered down when she felt a sharp, cold object against her hand – a dagger. Without a word, only the silent understanding between them, she took the dagger and stuffed it down the front of her pants and then covered it with her shirt.
“I have to go before someone sees me,” Sartes said.
She nodded, and reached tender arms through the bars.
“I love you, Sartes. Remember that.”
“I love you, too. Be well.”
Just as he vanished down the hallway, passing him, she saw the warden approach. She huddled back in the corner next to the boy, her hand stroking his hair, and the warden unlocked the door and stepped into the prison.
“Listen up, criminals. Here are the names of those who will be executed on the day after the morrow at sunrise: Apollo.”
The boy let out a gasp, and Ceres felt him start to tremble beneath her hands.
“…Trinity…” the warden continued.
The pregnant woman cringed and swooped her arms around her swollen belly.
“…Ceres…”
Ceres felt a sudden sense of panic overtake her.
“…and Ichabod.”
A man chained to the far end of the cell buried his face in his hands and sobbed quietly.