MAARIT ALLOWED HOURS to drag out before her, just to give herself sufficient time to change her mind. She let her eyes peruse the pages of the books the warlock had left her. She let her fingers sift through the fabric of the dresses hung inside the wardrobe in the corner. She let her mind race, repeating the words she would say to the king if she were to decide to make the demand. However, at some point, while cooped up in her white-walled and crimson-carpeted room, she decided that she had nothing left to lose.

       By the time she went to him, the sky had darkened to a navy blue and shown the first signs of stars.

       Though it had once seemed impossible, she had learned the way to the dining hall. Through the winding corridors—both narrow and wide, lined with paintings and sculptures and closed doors—she manoeuvred, until she reached the carpeted staircase she recognized, leading to veined marble floors.

       She wasn't sure what told her that he'd be there, but she simply knew.

       When Maarit saw him, she nearly stopped in her tracks just to stare at him from a distance without disturbing the scene before her. He was sitting in his usual seat at the dining table—for a split second, she wondered why he was always here rather than in his bedroom or study. But the fleeting thought wafted into the air and out of reach as she continued to survey him.

       She couldn't help but notice at he was not wearing robes as he always had before. He wore a white button-down shirt, frilled at the collar, along with a vest adorned with embellishments of dark blue and silver. Something at the base of his neck caught her attention: a strip of skin whiter than the rest, disappearing beneath his shirt. Resembling a scar.

       His ruby-encrusted crown was not resting atop his head, but was instead on the table, a hairsbreadth away from his hand. The distance between his fingers and the crown closed as he absently traced the outline of a ruby with his index. Then he retracted his hand once more, frowning.

       His clothing and his crown were not all she noticed about him, for there was something off about him in general. He was bent over the table, his spine curved, looking absolutely beyond exhausted.

       Ravaged.

       He was ravaged.

       There was nothing beautiful and terrible in his eyes. The man in front of her was someone entirely different from the man she had met on her first night at the castle. Gazing upon the king's countenance, Maarit felt a sudden and inexplicable pang of pity—like a dagger piercing her abdomen.

       When she cleared her throat, Theodoracius's head immediately whipped in her direction. A piece of his hair fell into his eyes, making him appear—physically—not so far beyond human perfection. He swept it away quickly and stood. The ravaged look in his eyes seemed to fall away, as though he couldn't afford to be tired.

       "Maarit, wh—"

       "I will agree to help you," she interrupted swiftly. His eyes went wide. She stepped closer to him. "I accept your terms and I will recite a prophecy for you. In exchange, since freedom is the one thing I cannot have, I need the second best thing. I need your very best soldiers to teach me how to fight."

       He blinked. "How to fight?"

       "Yes, how to fight," she snapped at him. "Don't act so surprised. Swordsmanship, archery—all of it. And I don't want to be treated like I am weak, or delicate, or incapable. I need to be taught in the same way any of the soldiers of your Royal Guard would be taught."

       Theodoracius gave her a hard stare. Fear suddenly prickled her arms—fear that he wouldn't agree to this.

       Then, he nodded slowly.

       "Very well," he said, his face taut. "I can have someone teach you how, but I must warn you of one thing."

       "What?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest.

       "If your intentions are to attempt to defeat me yourself once you've gathered enough knowledge," he drawled, meeting her eyes, "you will be very disappointed. My father taught me himself. He taught me how to use a sword, how to use a bow and arrow, how to use a spear—even how to use my own body—to defend myself. If the reason you wish to learn how to fight is so that you can kill your way to freedom, you are ridiculous to even try."

       Of course he would think that. That's exactly what he would do. But he and I are nothing alike—and though I would kill him, I wouldn't injure innocent soldiers who only act on orders from their king.

       Maarit gritted her teeth, frustrated, and ripped her gaze from his. "That's not why."

       "Then why?"

       She made sure to lace as much venom in her words as she possibly could. If there was a single sympathetic drop of blood in his veins, she wanted to set it afire. "Because I don't ever want to be raped again."

       He went silent and bowed his head, as though he longed to shrink away—she had never seen shame taint his porcelain face, but now it did.

       All words seemed to have left him, so Maarit opened her mouth to say something. She spoke succinctly, but it barely concealed the tremor in her voice.

       "Do we have an agreement?"

       The king met her gaze again. The harsh worry lines on his forehead and between his eyebrows intensified, then slowly smoothed. Maarit saw gold undertones buried somewhere beneath the brown of his irises. Her heart pounded almost painfully against her ribs.

       "Yes."

       She sighed in relief, dispelling all of her anxiety in one breath.

       "What is it that you require?" he inquired. "To proceed, to access your powers. What do you need?"

       Maarit thought of her candlelit cottage in Fribois and of the nights during which she had recited prophecies. "A black bowl filled with water. At least three lit wax candles. Some powdered nutmeg. Some parchment, ink, and a quill. And, besides the candlelight," she continued, drawing Theodoracius's attention back to her, "complete and utter darkness."

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       IT FELT LIKE forever since Maarit had experienced this sensation. She could almost taste the clairvoyance on her tongue: wind, spices, ink—all dancing fallaciously on her taste buds, drawing nostalgia like blood from her veins.

       She had moved a chair by the window and sat facing it, looking out at the night sky. The black, water-filled bowl and three lit candles were perched upon the windowsill. The dim glow of stars and of three flames reflected on the water's still surface until Maarit sprinkled powdered nutmeg over it.

       Theodoracius and Alexander stood at her side, watching her movements with careful consideration—she had insisted that they be the only ones in the room.

       Her chest felt oddly constricted as she turned to them.

       "I've never done this in front of anyone before, so I'm not exactly certain what I look like while doing it," she explained, clasping her hands together and placing them over her lap. "What I do know is that my eyes will turn completely black. But that's normal. No cause for alarm, understand?" At their nods, she responded, "Good. Under no circumstances am I to be interrupted."

       She looked back at the bowl in front of her, focusing all of her attention on it. Her hands came to rest just above the water; once they had, everything around her disappeared. The figures of the two men beside her melted away. All she saw was the water's surface as ripples formed, creating swirling images. Her breath caught and she gripped the edges of the bowl.

       Maarit focused on the thought of Theodoracius—only him, for the future that she saw had to be his.

       She gasped and began to see.

       The first vision was of a lovely little brown-haired boy. His bottom lip quivered and his deep eyes flooded with tears, as if from torturous fear. She didn't understand why until a crowned man came into view, brandishing a whip as if it was the most sacred object in the world. His slim fingers caressed the weapon and a nefarious grin spread across his lips. Then he raised it and brought it down on the cowering child. Over and over again, until there was more blood leaving his wounds than tears leaving his eyes.

       The vision changed, and suddenly, the beautiful boy and the crowned man were gone. They were replaced with the dead body of a woman. Her features were indecipherable, but her body lay crumpled on the floor.

       Scenes began flashing more quickly in Maarit's mind's eye. She saw a room filled with weapons, a scarred body and more death. The phantasmagorias changed so rapidly that Maarit could no longer decipher each individual one, but she didn't need to see them. She sensed the palpable depravity that each image brought with it.

       The last thing she caught a glimpse of was a dagger buried in Theodoracius's side, drawing red liquid from his stomach.

       As her vision went black for a moment, she heard a bloodcurdling scream.

       Then she realized it had been her own.

       Her eyes flew open. She was retching, sputtering, choking, a viscous liquid filling her throat and lungs. All she could taste was the metallic tang of blood, which ran down her nose and mouth. It stained her lips with the memory of something evil: something that resided in this very castle.

       Her stomach and the muscles in her throat convulsed as she gagged, vomiting more black blood onto her lap. She clutched her stomach, feeling distinctly as though the very dagger that she'd seen buried in Theodoracius's side had embedded itself in her. It was being twisted, disemboweling her.

       She screwed her eyelids shut in agony.

       Someone was shouting her name, but she barely heard it—it was as though the sound disappeared into a void, dashing off into oblivion.

       All she could hear was the rushing noise that filled her ears.

       The warlock's hands brought her back. They were placed on either side of Maarit's face and he was muttering enchantments under his breath—rapidly, fervently. She felt like she was on the very edge of delirium, but he pulled her out of it. Once he had finished, she took another gasping breath and opened her eyes again.

       There was no knife protruding from her abdomen and no river rushing in her ears.

       Someone was on their knees in front of her chair, dabbing blood from her mouth with a soaked handkerchief. To her surprise, it was the king. There was a frantic look in his eyes that Maarit had never seen before.

       She understood why.

       She felt the same fright tenfold.

       "This—has n-never—happened before," she spluttered, choking on blood between words. "There's—so much evil—in this—castle. Can't—see anything. Saw only the p-past—instead of the f-f-future, but—"

       Her vision was rimmed with a growing shadow of black. Through heavy-lidded eyes, she glanced down at the piece of parchment she had been given earlier. On it was something scrawled in her handwriting in red—her own blood. It was a single phrase that seemed to carry with it a skin-crawling death sentence: one that she could not recall having written.

       The deleterious effects of the dagger of trust shall both cleanse the Infernal King of and damn him for his transgressions.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thoughts? Theories?