"So." Flynn dragged a wooden stool across the flagstones and sat down in front of her. "When did you start having a mind of your own?"
A single torch guttered on the wall behind him, and the shadows of the bent cell bars lay across the floor like stripes. She sat where she'd fallen, knees drawn up, white hair hanging over her face like a curtain. The tremor in her shoulders hadn't quite stopped. But she was ready to talk.
"I don't remember how old I was." Her voice was small against the silence. "There was a war inside the organization. They fought over who would keep me. One side won. Maybe out of spite, I don't know, someone from the losing side tried to destroy me with a spell."
"What kind of spell?"
"I don't know." Her breath caught. "It opened my back, from the shoulders to the base of my skull. I wasn't born. I was made, so maybe that's why I didn't die. I lay on the floor and felt the air on parts of me that were never meant to feel air."
Flynn said nothing. His jaw had gone tight.
"They executed the mage on the spot. Then the masters put me back together. My body was repaired well enough to work." She stopped for a moment. "Something in me didn't get repaired. That's when I started thinking."
"And you planned to escape."
"No." The flat, mechanical rhythm crept back into her voice. "I never knew where the base was, or how the outside world worked. An escape would only be possible during a transport or a high-priority mission. And I'm too weak against the masters. They never stopped watching me."
"Is there any way for me to verify this?"
She didn't answer. She rose on unsteady legs, turned her back to him, and lifted the mass of white hair in both hands. With her free fingers she drew the neck of her rags down off one shoulder, just far enough.
Flynn had seen battlefields. He had seen men opened by siege engines and dragon fire.
He had never seen this.
The skin ran from the base of her skull down her spine in a long, jagged seam, a different shade from the rest of her, as though someone had patched a child together out of mismatched clay. The seam disappeared under the cloth. It didn't need to go further. He understood how far it went.
"It's one of the reasons they made me grow my hair so long," she said to the wall.
'A child lived through that. Someone did that on purpose, and then fixed her like a tool.'
"Also," she added, "I've been brought back from the point of death several times now. During combat conditioning."...."I'm like a roach, they said.
"That's enough." Flynn pinched the bridge of his nose. His voice came out rougher than he meant. "You can cover up."
She pulled the rags back into place and sat down again, hands in her lap, waiting for the verdict.
"So," Flynn said. "What do you want to do now?"
Something crossed her face. It was brief and small, but it was the first real thing he had seen there.
"I don't understand. Aren't you the one who decides?"
"No. I'm asking you." He kept his tone gentle, but there was iron under it. "What do you want? "Knowing what they did to you, I can't exactly kill you out of spite. You're just a tool carrying out its purpose. But I won't defile the memory of who you could have been by treating you like a monster."
She edged back toward the shadows, knees trembling. "W-Will I be killed?"
"That depends on you." Flynn shrugged and rested his hands on his knees. "So are you going to tell me what you want, or do we sit here all night?"
Her small hands curled into fists.
'It's stupid. It makes no sense.' Her chest heaved. 'What do I even want? Nobody ever asked.'
Then, from somewhere deep, a bright voice cut through the fog:
"You ate my chocolate. That makes us legally friends."
'You have really pretty hair. I didn't know people could be born with white hair.'
The taste of chocolate came back with it, sweet and impossible. The warmth of a head on her knees. A boy who hadn't been afraid of her.
She stepped out of the shadow of the cell. Her purple eyes met Flynn's, and a tiny spark had lit in them.
"I-I think….. I want to..."
–---
"Yo, Arthur! Look what I found!"
The mahogany door flew open, and Lizzy swept in, waving a polished brass trumpet over her head like a trophy.
She stopped mid-stride.
Arthur was lowering Dan onto the leather sofa in the afternoon sun, the boy limp and slack-jawed.
"He's sleeping?" She crept across the rug, brow furrowing. "He never sleeps during the day. He was too excited about the castle to just—"
Her crimson eyes snapped up to Arthur.
"What did you do to him?" she hissed.
The trumpet came down on his shoulder with a *THWACK.*
"Ow! Hey! That actually hurt!" Arthur rubbed his arm. "It's a mild sleeping spell! He'll wake in a few minutes!"
"You put our son to sleep with magic?'" *Thwack.* "Why?!"
"It was necessary! We were dealing with a—"
"Mom?"
A thin voice came from the sofa. Dan's amber eyes cracked open.
The trumpet hit the desk. Lizzy was on her knees in an instant, gathering him into her arms. "I'm here, sweetie. Are you okay? What's wrong?"
"I stink," Dan mumbled, wrinkling his nose.
"Oh, crap. I forgot!" Her face went red as the morning's disaster came back to her. She shoved the trumpet into Arthur's hands and marched for the door, and stopped dead as Flynn filled it.
"You recovered fast," Flynn said dryly, stepping aside.
"Of course I did. I'm Lizzy." She puffed up.
Then she caught a flicker of movement behind him.
A girl stood pressed flat against the stone of the corridor. Snow-white hair spilled down past her knees. She still wore the heavy cuffs on her wrists, their glow dim now, with the broken chain hanging off one of them. Her whole body shook. Her purple eyes were wide, fixed on Lizzy with pure animal terror.
'What IS that?'Her heart slammed against her ribs. 'Not human. And she's holding Dan! What is this aura? It's suffocating.'
"WAIT! I didn't know you had a daughter, Flynn!" Lizzy boomed.
The sound hit the girl like a slap. Instinct took over, and she spun and bolted down the corridor.
Flynn blurred past her, caught her by the collar, and steered her back into the light as gently as lifting a kitten out of a tree.
'She's reacting that hard to Lizzy?' His eyes narrowed. 'Her senses must read raw power differently than most.'
"She's not my daughter, Liz." He sighed. "She's—"
Words rolled over the girl and slid off. Her ears rang. 'Every directive I have is screaming. Is anyone allowed to be this strong?'
She took one small step back.
Lizzy was suddenly in front of her.
She had been five paces away. Now her face hovered inches from the girl's nose, crouched to eye level, grinning, red hair burning in the light from the corridor windows.
'It isn't only her.'The girl's eyes flicked from Lizzy to Flynn to the King in the office doorway. 'All of them. Everyone in this place is impossible.'
"Hey there! I'm Lizzy," the woman said, flashing her sharp teeth. "But you can call me the Supreme Demon Lord!"
Flynn rubbed his forehead. "Lizzy."
"Flynn told me you're Dan's new friend, right?"
'I hadn't,' Flynn thought, 'but fine.'
The girl couldn't nod. She couldn't speak. Her throat was locked. Every friendly word felt like a command from something far above her.
Then the floor was gone.
Lizzy had scooped her up under one arm, easy as a sack of wheat, with Dan already settled on her other shoulder.
"Since you're both filthy," Lizzy said brightly, "I've got my work cut out for me! Bath time!"
She marched off down the hall toward the royal baths.
The girl dangled, staring at Lizzy's smiling profile. Then, slowly, her eyes drifted to Dan. He had fallen asleep again, cheek against his mother's neck, one hand still curled in her hair.
She had been afraid of everything. And this boy had slept beside her without a thought.
"You keep staring," Lizzy said, laughing, her voice ringing through the high archways. "I didn't know I was that pretty."