NOVEL SIMPLE 54. Interlude (Adeline)
Adeline Cirix stared through the wrought-iron bars of her dungeon cell. The sight of the bars had become a constant companion as she let her thoughts wander to places faraway. To places outside of her prison, and outside of Ashglen. Her mind pored through every adventure, through every trial, each one laid bare in excruciating detail. In the end, she came to a simple conclusion. In all of her years, she had never been in a situation quite as precarious as this one -- save for that time.
Of course, the one who had miraculously saved her then was gone now -- the woman she had fallen for, slain by her own aunt. Why hadn't she just ran away? Adeline was the only one who needed to die. Whether or not she could've escaped Adeline's aunt was something she ran over in her mind over and over and over again. But, regardless.
She didn't even try to escape.
Standing up against the guards, facing off against a minotaur alone, confronting her fear of violence and destroying the legs of that thing in the mines... Not to mention her performance against the Hunters of all people. Sybil was brimming with bravery, but Adeline feared that it almost bordered on foolishness.
She missed her.
It had been a week or so, she was fairly sure. The last she had seen of Sybil was the resignation setting into her expression. It made her grit her teeth, to think of her being forced to confront death so readily. She accepted it with open arms, simply because there was no alternative.
In that way, she was braver than Adeline.
She released a gruff exhale as she heard the sound of familiar footsteps approaching her, someone she had only had the displeasure of meeting within the confines of her cell. Her gaze shifted to the right, where she knew a figure would soon appear.
She heard what few guards lingered the halls of this place clear out, as was routine for her little visits. And before long, a figure did appear. White, silken robes trimmed with golden fabric draped down to cover everything above her ankles. Her hair was curly and blonde, bordering on radiant white, running down just past her cheeks. The color acting in contrast to her sun-kissed skin. Cold, piercing, calculating eyes stared through the bars towards Adeline.
The silence of this place without the guards was always unsettling and offputting. It was enough to permeate into your ears until you could hear the sound of your heart beating between breaths. It made Adeline suspect that there weren't very many prisoners being kept here along with her. A small honor, that.
"Good day, Adeline." The woman smiled pleasantly, but Adeline's instincts screamed at her. She was good at assessing the danger of a situation, of people and monsters both. That's why she was certain that this woman was a threat -- worse even than her aunt.
"Mmh." Everybody addressed her as 'Madam Selene', with a silent respect embedded in their tones. Most of the guards seemed to be afraid of upsetting her, from what Adeline could tell. "Good day, Selene." But she would die regardless of those facts, so why would she bother tip-toeing around her?
A small, polite laugh escaped her lips in a way that Adeline could only register as controlled. She continued to watch as the woman pulled aside a chair, sitting down in a dignified way -- looking down at her without literally looking down. Adeline had never heard of this woman in her life, but she was certain that she was of noble birth, or at very least trained in the ways of nobility. Everything about the identity and portrayal of 'Madam Selene' seemed deliberate in a way that made Adeline deeply uneasy.
"Have you considered my offer? I've asked extraordinarily little of you, you know." Her smile was placid, painted on like a porcelain doll's. Adeline held back a shiver of discomfort just from the look of it.
Upon her first meeting with Madam Selene, the woman seemed interest in aught else but one person -- Sybil. She had asked Adeline for any details she could spare about how the two of them met, and what they had done together in their travels. In return, the woman dangled the promise of commuting her sentence.
That promise in itself contained frightening implications.
Adeline hadn't considered Selene's offer for a moment, though -- no, that wasn't fair to say. She had considered it in excruciating detail. How much information would she have to hand over? Would any of it be strictly a bad thing? After all, Sybil was already...
What had put her off the most was the tenacity this woman had in securing this information, even after being sent away several times. Adeline could swear that the slightest crack in that facade of hers formed when she asked of Sybil. This information was important to her, for some reason or another.
But Adeline refused to give it up -- just as Sybil had done for her.
"My answer remains the same, I have no interest in it. A lady doesn't kiss and tell, you see."
Selene's smile grew by just a hair, setting off every alarm in Adeline's head. Shit. Without meaning to, her smarmy remark had given away a piece. She took that knowledge for granted, and hadn't considered that that in itself was something for Selene to take.
"The two of you were together, then?"
Adeline went to raise her hand to the bridge of her nose, but stopped herself before she could begin to move -- it would just be embarrassing with her hands clasped in shackles. Instead, she gave a smug grin to the woman, retorting with "Who could say, truly?"
Selene glanced to the side for a moment, and then back to Adeline. With a deep breath, she kept going, unwavering in her attempts to get whatever she could, "Did you hear from anybody that the girl performed rather well against your aunt? One of her spells grazed Josephine's jugular vein -- just a hairsbreadth deeper and she may have very well been in danger."
Adeline huffed, that wouldn't have been enough to kill her. Josephine Cirix was a monster. Sybil managing that much would be a feat, to say the least. Had she truly done it? Or was this yet another ploy to distract her from staying silent? It didn't matter, Adeline needed to keep on the offensive, as she always had.
"Why are you so insistent on this back and forth, Madam Selene? Are you beyond torturing the information out of me?" She let the venom seep into her words, the tarnished scraps of her nobility aiding with each word.
Selene blinked, and then slowly put one of her hands over the other in her lap, "I've no use for barbarism, Adeline. Many a time I've seen those tactics put to use, and all too often the one put to the blade will confess to whatever it is that they believe the one holding it wishes to hear." She raised a hand, turning it to face her palms skyward as her fingers curled, "No, I wish to hear the words from your mouth untainted from the stain of such things."
It was a frightening proclamation, as far as Adeline was concerned. But that wasn't enough to rattle her. If she thought that words alone would be enough, she would have another thing coming. "Then I'm afraid that you'll have quite the hard time getting it out of me, Selene. I've no qualms with taking it to the grave."
"Must you, though? As I've said many times now, the girl has already died. If it truly concerns you, I can promise you that her family will face no judgement for her actions."
Adeline felt her eye twitch -- she was beginning to get annoyed. Why did Selene refuse to speak her name? And why did the act of Sybil being framed as a simple 'girl' put a fire in her chest that almost drove her to scream and lash out. "Sybil -- her name is Sybil. As I recall, I was rather clear on that one piece of information."
"Ah, forgive me. Her name was Sybil, yes."
Was.
Adeline was going to kill her, one way or another.
