sink

-to go to the bottom

-to fall or drop to a lower place or level

-to soak or become absorbed

-to go downward in quality, state, or condition

Not even spiders like Corros. The barren landscape introduces a reduced abundance of them, due to the radiation that spread through the ground for so many years, from before anything linked to Norta even existed.

Inside, they are rare too. It must be because the walls are wet and rotten and because there is nothing to eat, not even for spiders. I sense a few small ones, but I can't see a web in any corner or grating ceiling as we pass.

Four rows of cells, half of them still empty. I don't see a small boy. But below me, the girl I arrested sits on the bare stone ground. She looks drained of color in the grey light. Her body shakes. Her lips are just as grey.

I step over the metal stairs, balancing over the fissure. When I look down at her, into this rift in the poisoned ground that has been built to capture and hold, my foot almost slips. I stumble a step beside my cousin and hold myself in balance, arms stretched as if I want to fly away.

The group pauses. My feet have produced too many sounds. Electric eyes from above and silver ones from around me stare at me. I have to cover my mistake. My neck and my shoulders hurt so much from grating my teeth and straightening my body.

"I recognize some of the faces," I explain. The girl in the cell doesn't move. A delicate doll in colorless rags. I feel light headed. It must be the air that hangs so stale here. "If this is the tract for the defected mutations, I assume there is one for blood traitors as well? And is tehre another room for them to be interrogated?"

The warden of the prison, Captain Iral, waits a moment, hands behind his back in an all-business stance, attending this tour of horror in the manner anyone taking their tasks professional would. His teeth are bleached white in contrast to the grey metal around us and the black starch uniforms.

"Cellblock G for silver prisoners, and it is one of the first we finished after being given order. Interrogation and other rooms for different usage exist as well, they were equipped first," he elaborates. "Do you have a personal interest, Lady Viper?"

"Yes, do you?" Maven looks at the cellblock around us, the screaming tiles, the deafening drip of water, the little light that the facility grants the prisoners. His eyes seem to reflect the little drops of life that die in shadows, a face that is as attractive as a smashed mirror to me.

I screamed about being removed. Ptolemus had to carry me back to my bed. Now he looks at me with barely muted interest. He doesn't say anything, but I know he will as soon as I speak again.

"Just curious," I lie through my teeth. "Captain, is there a chance I can inspect that tract as well? Since it is finished, and this one isn't. I don't think I will ever return, so it would be in my personal interest to see how you finished the building process with my own eyes."

Iral's pitchblack eyes wander over me, back to the slim frame with the crown and the one in silver sparks and spikes. Small nods and approving faces smooth over a ripple of tension I can sense in his strained nerves.

"That can be arranged," the Captain answers, placid again. "I will send two of the guards with you as soon as we reach the control room."

And with one more nod, I close up and the procession moves again, asking small questions, or just watching the cameras as they watch us. They don't care much for the crippled, exhausted bodies that lie and sit in the cells around us. And why would they? This is their doing as much as mine. Everyone in this prison knows their place. Be it behind the bars or in front of them.

Someone below us screams and yells when they see our feet pass. They get silenced fast, with a smash and a crack, and then there is only the sobbing of a tired, strained voice.

Cellblock G is for traitors.

This is the place that I would end up in as soon as I make one wrong step.

This is the place where I send some of the stoneskins that Samson didn't kill. This is the place where Elara sends her enemies. This is the place people that dislike Maven Calore, Blue Flame of Norta, go to starve and suffer.

Every cell in G is occupied.

I can't stop at any point as I pass the nighttime row of horror. If I stop, my legs might just stumble again. So I act as if I inspect the way the cells are built. I act as if I am interested, not scared to the point that my head feels dizzy. I don't feel myself since I started the arrests. Larentia bend me back into place for a while, but being in this prison and walking the ramps and catwalks squeezes me together all wrong.

It must be the absence of light and even the absence of insects or other animals on the perimeter.

For a moment, I slow my steps and breathe in deep. Blood has dried on some of the metal parts that the magnetron pieces together. It is grey and old, small droplets of dried anguish.

Beneath me, I see a familiar frame move at the edge of a cell.

Ara Iral moves slow. She doesn't lie or sit. She stands vigilant and disciplined if a little hunched. Even when she looks as if she has been through torture, something about her is screaming about being too stubborn to fall.

I wonder what the Captain thinks about holding the former head of his family in this prison. But if he cares, he hasn't shown that. He seems more inclined to work for the Queen mother and her son than personal meddling with his own people.

"Lower the catwalk," I tell the magnetron guard.

She looks at me. Then she looks back at the cell.

"You have no permission to talk to prisoners, Lady Viper," she informs me. "Especially not the ones with a higher-"

"Lower the catwalk. I came with Fleet Prime. What permissions do you think I have?" I hiss at her.

She takes a breath, silver hair in a tight braid shaking. Then she lowers the catwalk.

Closer up, at the bars and the wall that separate me from Ara, she looks bad. Blood is dried on her mess of silver threaded dark hair, and her skin has an unhealthy color to it.

"Surprise," I greet. I keep my back to the cameras. Just in case that Maven, Ptolemus, or anyone of interest is watching. "You're still alive. I should have known you would be here. It's the safest place to secure someone as valuable and as dangerous as you, the famous panther. Did they try to get your secrets already? There ought to be so many in a spy."

Her expression isn't angry. She looks me up and down silently with her sharp gaze, the wrinkles around her eyes move as she narrows them a little. They are black bolts of energy, and whatever they see in me, they take it in. Being caught in silent stone dims her improved body, it hasn't taken her smarts away.

"Finally made it to the top, if you are here as a guest and not as a prisoner," she deduces.

"You can say that," I agree.

"Still you look like one of your dogs vomited over a carpet, Viper," she offers. No sympathy in her voice. It is broken to a gruff and strident crack, but still dangerous. This old woman is captured in silent stone and she still has more authority and stride than most people. This is laughable. I shouldn't be intimidated by her. A small part of me is though. "And not one of your handy little pets today. You're not here to interrogate me, or spy on me."

"The scars come from fighting rebels," I tell her, unwilling to deny or admit anything.

"Good for you." Her eyes sweep away to my guards on the perimeter, a few feet away. "Have you brought them in today? The lightning girl? The rebels? Is that why you are here? After a failed execution, I hear. After they smashed the legion in the ruins. After they disappeared too."

Scars won't get you the respect you want. Not if you earn them by defeat.

I frown and grit my teeth. She makes a discordant, mocking sound. "Oh, don't think guards don't talk."

I feel so dizzy by now, I might just faint. "The plans have changed a little. Not that I need to tell you anything."

She doesn't have an answer for that. Almost like she has lost interest in me.

"I was the one that planted the evidence," I tell her. "I was the one that distracted and hurt you every time you got too close. Maybe I am not a young girl like all the others in the end."

"You're a seed, a puppet, and not half as clever as you always wanted to be," Ara answers and turns away. From her backside, she is just a normal, older woman in dirty clothes. Her discolored, dark skinned limbs, are sucked off any strength in the silence of the blood infused stone. "As soon as they are done with you, you'll get the cell next to me. You're playing the game of slippery slopes, Viper, and you're not going to be balancing any longer."

Her words are mocking, and they are not lies. I have to control my jerking body and the angry impulse to smash myself against the bars of her cell. "We'll see," I sneer. "If you're still alive by then."

No answer. Ara Iral just slowly sits down on the naked ground of her ice-cold cell and closes her eyes.

I return to the control center in time to find the fluttering flock moving on. With a few words, I excuse myself. The same magnetron guards that brought me to Ara's cell escort me outside. First, the doors slide open. Then, the front opens in the flicker of a metal bender, shards expanding and shrinking like an iris hit by the daylight.

A small blowing wind ruffles my hair, as always a few strands have escaped at this point. My hands are sweaty as I lean them on my knees and take a deep, deep breath.

I don't know how long I stand on the landing platform, swimming concrete in my tunnel vision. I lose any concept of time for a while.

"Daliah," a voice shrieks through the bubble of my immovable state.

The wind has become louder. The fence beside the building shakes. A few clouds hang in front of the sun, with small spots of blue squeezing through.

"Daliah," the voice repeats. Then a hand grips my arm. I snap up and take a step back.

The hand lets go immediately. I stare up into Ptolemus face. We are the only two people on the landing site. The air-jet is already humming in powered up engine sounds.

"Did you say something? I must've-" And I don't even know what I must have.

His voice is just a low, frustrated growl. "What is going on with you? What did you say to Ara Iral?"

"Nothing. And I don't know. I was just thinking about everything."

The growl turns into a lower-pitched mumble under the wind. "You're still scared to be replaced."

I could tell him that I don't have parents influential enough to protect me. I should tell him that Maven tried to murder him.

Instead, I stand as tall as I can, which is tiny in comparison to him.

"We are going to win every fight," I tell myself, just as I tell him. My hands are barely healed from the marks I inflicted on them. My nails are clean but ripped at one edge of my index finger. His skin is warm and soft, smooth underneath them. I hold his face loosely. "You are doing so well. Look where you are. Look where we stand. We are not in those cells. We never will be. You are everything your family could hope for."

My words are like my mother's violin. They borrow tunes from other artists and transform them into a cascade of pleasantry. The strings I play are serenading. I am not as beautiful or as strong or as powerful as Larentia, but I can act like I am. I have done a poor job of trying so most of my life. Now it is not different.

"I know you'll do perfectly fine, Tolly." I try to sound softer than I feel. My exhaustion and the mocking pain of Ara's truth throw layers into it. It sounds low, bitter, and my small smile doesn't change that. " I never have to worry about you. And you don't have to worry about me. I will never leave you. I promise. A Viper for a Samos, just as our- as your- as Larentia taught me."

"Sometimes, when you move, it's like I see her," he mutters.

"Thank you." I give his cheek a pat like I would do with the dogs. He looks half irritated, and half makes one exasperated sound, too much to take it seriously. "Now, let's return to the others. I suspect Maven doesn't like dawdling around. Neither do I."

(Btw no one asked but this is my official Ptolemus& Daliah song in my playlist and Idk why but heyy I always listen to it writing them: )

Also totally not just me being basic, 'Everything I wanted' is a Daliah song.