Previously On Contractually Bound:
Kal leaned his head against the high back of his chair. His entire body felt numb and heavy. All of his energy had bled out of his body the second he read the ransom note. The demands were ridiculous; Kal was well aware of that. And yet, he would gladly pay any price to ensure that the others were safe. He'd give his own life if he had to. But, in this situation, he had the nagging gut instinct that this was a trap. Something told him that the abductors did not mean to follow through with their end of the bargain.
Kal closed his eyes in thought, the lids feeling too weighty to keep open. And though he did not mean to, for a short time, he dozed. He dreamed a little, a series of nightmarish flashes that seared through his fear-drenched brain like jagged bolts of lightning.
He was back at the tournament. Jak handing his drei to him. Lord Nor standing opposite him, battle-ready and hungry for Kal's blood. Dreis clashing in midair. Explosions of pain as Kal's body suffered blows at Nor's skilled hand. Fighting back and gaining the upper hand. Nor laid out on his back in the short green grass. Kicking Nor's drei away. The Master of the Tournament declaring Kal the victor. Kal reaching down to help Nor to his feet. The murderous look of hatred held within Nor's eyes. No. More than just hatred. Vengefulness.
Kal's eyes snapped open, the tattered remnants of his nightmare clinging to the edges of his mind. He gulped in a large lungful of air, calming his racing heart. But he knew. His dreams had not been just dreams. His subconscious mind had been showing him what he had missed so many months prior.
In an instant, Kal knew, without a shred of doubt, who had plotted against his family.
***
Dungeons and Dramas
Lois gradually came to consciousness, though patches of fuzzy blackness still clung to the edges of her mind and vision. As her mind slowly became capable of focusing, she became aware of various truths. The first thing that she knew with absolute certainty was the pain in her head. A deep, throbbing ache had settled in behind her eyes; a concert in her brain that was comprised entirely of drums. It made her a little nauseous. She had to take slow, deep, and controlled breaths in order not to vomit.
The next thing that she knew was that she was staring into the face of an ugly, greasy man. She felt like she ought to know who it was. She knew that she'd seen him before. But where? She analyzed every part of him, trying to place him. The shoulder-length blonde hair. The deep set, malevolent eyes. The sinister twist to his mouth. But her head was too fuzzy to think straight. She thought that Kal would know the man instantly, even if his head was ringing the way hers was.
Kal.
In a flash, she could see the scene in her mind. Kal was on the tournament field, facing the final opponent of the games.
Lord Nor.
That was who she was facing now.
She groaned, partly in pain. But the greater part of the groan was born from the knowledge that she was staring into the face of such a cruel, sadistic man. An involuntary shudder ran through her body as she tried to shrink away from the man's stinking breath.
"She's awake," he said, speaking over his shoulder to someone Lois couldn't quite see. He sounded oddly relieved.
"You're lucky that she survived," another voice growled, coldly neutral. "That was a risky amount of tranquilizer."
"I couldn't take any chances," a third voice said, sighing heavily, as though he had explained it all before. "She got the same dose that the others did. It can't be helped that she didn't react to it in quite the same way."
More of Lois' vision cleared as the three men talked. She was conscious now of where she was, but she almost wished she could have remained blissfully unaware. She was in a dank stone room that was only just above freezing. She was propped up against one rough gray wall. The cold seemed to seep right through her coat and into her very bones. She tried to move away, and panicked when she realized that her entire body was paralyzed. Only her head and neck seemed capable of movement.
"I knew I shouldn't have trusted you with this mission," the second man complained. "You really screwed this up, Thark."
"Begging your pardon, my lord, but how did I screw it up? She's alive."
"Barely," a new voice said. "Another outburst like that, however, and I will cut out your tongue and feed it to the dogs."
Lord Nor stood up and put his back to Lois. He swiftly stepped away from her, widening her field of vision. She could see now that she was in a cell. Heavy metal bars imprisoned her in her own separate cage. Next to her, on her left, was Zara. And across the room, directly before her and Zara, were Ching and Jai respectively.
Nor stepped out of the cell and swung the door shut. The metal protested with a slight groan, the hinges in dire need of oil, though the metal was shiny and new-looking. In the next moment, the door clanged tightly shut. Lois heard the lock click as the key turned within it.
"Tell me again," Nor said, his voice dangerously calm, "why there are only four here? Where is Kal-El?" The words hissed from his mouth as though he were a poisonous snake.
Lois watched as the young man, Thark, blanched. He was no older than her sister. Lois almost felt sorry for the kid. Almost. Perhaps she would have felt bad if she didn't know that he had something to do with her abduction. But hope flared in her heart. If Nor was asking about Kal, it meant that he hadn't been taken. He was still free. And she knew if that were true, he would find a way to rescue her and the others.
Thark wrung his hands together, clearly distressed. "My lord, I'm sorry. The other prince. He wasn't there when we made our move."
"Where was he?" Nor demanded.
Thark shook his head in a desperate plea. "Begging your pardon, my lord, but I don't know. All I know is that we followed our orders. We waited for the music to begin. Then we made our move. He just...simply wasn't there when we attacked."
"Useless excuses!" Nor growled. "You had orders to bring me all of Jor-El's children!"
"What do we do about that?" one of the other men asked Nor.
Lois could now see the two other men who were in the room with them. Nor's brothers, Ran and Drull. She hadn't yet had the displeasure of meeting the two, but she had seen their handiwork in the tournament, months before. They had struck her as less intelligent than their older brother, Nor, but just as brutal. It was Ran who had spoken.
Nor sighed heavily and waved dismissively at his brothers. "Kill them all."
"B...b...but, my lord!" Thark stuttered. "It wasn't our fault!"
Nor rolled his eyes. In the next second, he produced a knife, from where, Lois couldn't tell. The steel flashed coldly in the overheard lights; a bright, shining silver. Nor deftly brought the edge to the man's throat and slashed through the fragile skin. Silver steel turned to sickly crimson as Thark's lifeblood spilled from the open gash. Nor grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt, wiped the blade clean on the jet black material, then allowed the body to collapse to the floor. Thark thrashed about for a minute or two, but every frantic beat of his heart only forced more of his blood out onto the floor. His movements grew ever more feeble until at last, he expelled one final, shuddering breath. His body gave one more involuntary jerk and then lay still.
Lois would have turned away if she had been able to. But her body was still incapable of carrying out her wishes. Instead, she tightly squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that Thark's blood wouldn't creep into her own cell. She wasn't sure she could handle that.
"Clean this up," Nor instructed his brothers. "And kill the others. You know what to do. I want no one left alive to turn on us. And I want no evidence."
Lois kept her eyes shut as tightly as she could. But she couldn't block out the sounds. She heard the other men pleading for their lives; perhaps a dozen or so different voices reached her ears. She heard the charging sound of the brothers' energy guns. She knew the distinctive sound well enough. Her father had used smaller, similar versions of the guns in his laboratory work, though the ones that he had used had channeled the energy into thin, precise lasers. The guns emitted a beam of pure energy that was capable of causing even steel and stone alike to simply cease to exist. It would easily vaporize flesh and bone.
Dull, pulsing sounds bounced off the stone walls as each man was shot. The stone room magnified the sound, amplifying it beyond anything that Lois could have imagined. She felt the shock waves that rippled through the surrounding air as they rocked her body. She felt the reverberations thrumming in her chest.
After a long while, she finally ventured to open her eyes again. Ran and Drull were gone. There were no bodies in sight; not even Thark's lifeless corpse lay on the floor, though the sticky puddle of dark red blood still lay congealing where it had gathered.
A terrifying numbness still cloaked Lois' body. She could feel the cold as it bit through her coat, but none of her limbs would obey her commands. She tried to call out to the others, but she found her vocal chords to be just as unresponsive as her body. That terrified her even more. She'd always relied on her voice when all else failed.
From the looks of things, the others were in the same situation. No one moved. No one spoke. Lois closed her eyes again, unwilling to stare at the pool of Thark's blood any longer. At least, she thought, it hadn't made its way into her cell, though it had come close.
After a while, Lois dozed off, the effects of the tranquilizers still running through her veins. She didn't dream. She was merely enveloped in a thick, black oblivion. When she awoke once more, she groaned as she found herself still confined to the cell. She hadn't really expected to be anywhere else. But, she had hoped that her imprisonment had only been some sort of horrific nightmare. If it had been, she would have allowed herself to cry on Kal's shoulder, while he held her, rubbed soothing circles on her back, and murmured calming words into her dark tresses.
There wasn't a single thing in all the world that she wouldn't have given to find herself safely back in her husband's strong arms in their chambers at the palace.
Thinking about Kal brought a stab of longing to her heart. She missed him fiercely. Ever since she had fallen in love with him, he'd been her rock, her strength. He'd given her a reason to find hope and beauty in the world around her. He'd become her life, her heart, her very soul. To be apart from him had become painful, even if he was merely down the hall watching a game in Jai's room, or hearing petitioners in the main receiving hall.
To be separated from him now tore at her heart with savage agony. She wished that she could see him, or, at the very least, hear his voice. She could have taken comfort in that. It was a struggle to remind herself that she should be grateful that he wasn't with her.
Kal was safely out of Nor's grasp. He was free. And he would be looking for her. He'd be searching for his brothers. He'd be trying to find Zara.
Lois knew that when Kal wanted something, he'd move the heavens and Krypton alike to achieve it. There was no doubt in her mind that he would find them. The thought was comforting, but in a distant, abstract way. She wished that he could be there now, rescuing them all from the bleak, frigid prison they were being held captive in.
An itch began to plague Lois' nose. Without thinking, she moved to scratch it with a gloved hand. As her protected fingertips touched the cold flesh of her nose, she suddenly realized that she could move again. Her body was no longer paralyzed. A wave of relief rolled over her. Immediately, she pushed herself away from the icy cold stone wall, though she could not escape the freezing floor. Her legs still felt rubbery and her whole body trembled, though if it was more from the cold or from the drugs that still half lingered in her body, she could not tell.
"What happened?" Lois asked finally, glad that her vocal chords were also cooperating.
Zara breathed a sigh of relief. "Lois, thank Rao. We were getting worried about you."
"Worried?" Lois repeated, confused.
Zara nodded. "Your body reacted particularly badly to whatever drugs Nor's men used on us. The rest of us have been able to move and speak for a while now. And you wouldn't wake up when we called to you. I even shook you a little."
"Where did Nor and the others go?" Lois shot a fearful look around the room.
"They left us for time being," Jai said, leaning against the bars at the front of his cell. "They said something about delivering a message."
"What do they want?" Lois asked, crawling to the front of her own cell.
Ching shook his head. "We don't know. Ransom, I expect."
"Ransom?" Lois scrunched her brow. "What could they possibly want? The Uthors are the third richest noble house on the planet. It doesn't make sense."
"I know," Ching agreed. "I've been trying to figure it out myself." He shook his head again. "There's a deeper motive here. I just wish I could figure out what it is. My head's still sort of...fuzzy though. It has to be about power though. I'd bet my life on that."
"Kal's still free," Lois said. "He'll find us." She hoped she sounded convincing.
"I hope so." Ching's eyes slid over to the drying blood that stained the gray stone floor. "I hope so."
"He will," Lois said, mustering up all of her conviction into those two words.
And yet, she still harbored a healthy amount of trepidation. Lord Nor wasn't known as a man of patience, by any stretch of the imagination. What if he grew bored of whatever sick game he was playing? What if he killed one of them? What if he killed them all? What if Kal was too late to save them? What if Kal came looking for them and got captured himself? What if Kal got himself killed while trying to save them?
Lois knew that if Kal died, she'd never be the same person again. If he died and she somehow managed to live, life as she knew it would be over. She didn't want to live in a world without Kal. She needed him, as much as she needed air to breathe. And if he died trying to save her, she would never forgive herself for as long as her heart continued to beat.
Tears of panic began to well in her eyes and she roughly wiped them away with the back of one gloved hand. The small beads of moisture rolled off the waterproof surface, making the dull material suddenly glossy where the wetness had been streaked. She hugged her knees to her chest, in an attempt to make herself feel more secure. It was a habit of hers ever since she was a child, huddled in her room, listening as verbal warfare raged between her mother and father. But the technique failed her now. It only made her heart ache all the greater for Kal's solid, loving embrace.
After a time, Lois heard footsteps coming down a flight of steps that lay off to her right hand side, though she couldn't see them from the angle of her cell. But she could hear the heavy tread of boots as they descended the metal steps. Each one sounded as loud as a crack of lightning, and made her heart thump in terror. And yet, when the owner appeared before her cell, he didn't acknowledge her or the others. Instead, the man got on his knees and began to scrub away the dark stain of dried blood that marred the floor. Lois' nose crinkled at the acrid smell of the various chemicals as the man worked.
The manservant did his work without pausing. He never once looked up. He never once spoke. He simply focused on the grisly task set before him. When he was finished, he packed his supplies back up into the small bucket that he carried with him, and swiftly made his way back out of the dungeon.
"Who was that?" Lois ventured to ask, once she was sure that the man was out of hearing.
"His name is Rygel," Ching said, spitting the name out like a curse. "He's Lux Uthor's right hand man."
"If Rygel's around, you can bet that Lux has a hand in this kidnapping," Jai added, his dark eyes flashing with rage. "I'd hoped that maybe Nor and his brothers were doing this on their own."
"Why?"
Lois was pretty certain that she didn't want to know the answer to that question. But she couldn't help asking it nonetheless. Sometimes, she thought of her curiosity as some strange form of curse. She bit her lower lip as Ching sighed.
"Nor, Ran, and Drull are all muscle," Zara said in a hushed whisper. "They're thugs, brutes. Nor has a slippery tongue, that's true. But Lord Uthor is smart."
"So if he's the one behind this..." Lois said, her thoughts whirling at a dizzying pace.
"You can be assured that whatever the plot is that he's cooked up, it will be hard for my father to find a loophole." Ching frowned. "He won't make it easy for anyone to find us."
"Kal will find us," Lois repeated, though her heart had sunk considerably at Ching's words.
To give herself a purpose, Lois began to test the bars that made up her cell. She tried twisting them, pushing on them, pulling at them, all in a vain attempt to find a loose one. She tried to shake the cell door, with no real hope that the lock might give way. But she was unwilling to rule out any possibility. She instructed the others to do the same, all to no avail. Finally, she curled her knees to her chest again, reluctantly giving up for the time being.
Silent tears welled up in her eyes again. She managed to hold them back only by sheer willpower. She felt utterly powerless, utterly helpless. And that frustrated her beyond words, enraged her, truth be told. In the time that she had known Kal, even before she had come to fall in love with him, she'd never had such feelings before. She had been powerless to prevent her arranged marriage, that much was true, but she had found a way to fight back, by trying to hate her new husband. When she had fought with Kal, he'd allowed her to have all the power. He'd rarely ever fought back, except to defend himself against whatever untruths she had flung at him. And from the moment that she'd made amends with him, he'd surrendered all of himself to her. He'd empowered her. He'd done everything in his ability to give her every sense of freedom and power that he could. To suddenly lose control of everything angered Lois, and soon her ire rivaled the intensity of her fear.
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she never heard the footsteps coming back down the steps into the dungeon. She wasn't even sure of how much time had passed since she wandered down the dark paths of her bleak thoughts. Instead, she was startled when Lux Uthor and his sons appeared before her cell.
Krypton's third wealthiest man stood in the center of the room, surveying the four cages with a cold eye. He peered into each cell, appraising the occupants silently, the same way that a person might view a commonplace animal in a zoo. He nodded to himself, as if in response to some inner monologue. Then he turned to his sons.
"You stupid fools," he said, his voice deadly calm, showing no emotion. "Four out of five isn't good enough."
"I know," Nor agreed.
"It's not our fault the men that got sent out were incompetent," Ran argued.
Lux frowned. "Of course it is, you idiot. You chose the men for the job, didn't you?" He sighed. "What's done is done, I suppose. There's not much that we can do about it now. We'll have to make do."
"What do we do now?" Drull asked.
"We stick to the plan," Lux replied. "We improvise if need be."
"But with Kal-El still free, will Jor-El bend to our demands?" Nor asked, crossing his arms before him as he leaned against one stone wall, just to the side of Ching's cage.
Lux nodded confidently. "Oh, I think he will. That fool won't look at it from a logical perspective. He won't count himself lucky that he still has one trueborn son left to carry on his bloodline and right to rule. He'll only see that he's missing the rest of his family. He'll want these four back as well. That will be his undoing. He will bend to our demands, and then we'll have him. Krypton will be ours for the taking. The reign of the Els will be over."
"And when Jor-El abdicates? What do you want us to do with these four?" Nor asked.
"Kill the men, if you wish," Lux shrugged dismissively. "Take Zara for a concubine if you so desire. At least you know that she'll never bear you any half-blooded mongrels." His voice hit a note of disgust as he referenced Zara's failure to produce a living heir to the throne of Krypton.
"Touch my wife and I will kill you," Ching growled.
"And the other?" Drull asked, ignoring the crown prince entirely, eyeing Lois as though she were a piece of meat.
Lux looked her over. "Don't even think about it," he said, smacking the back of his youngest son's head. "Once Jen Mai is set up as Chief Elder, I plan on having him annul the marriage between her and Kal-El. That is, of course, if I don't decide to just kill the boy."
"You mean...?" Ran asked, letting his voice trail off. He blinked stupidly at Lois.
Lux smiled evilly. "Boys, say hello to your new mother."
Lois worked hard to stifle a shudder of revulsion. The thought of being separated from Kal and of being forced to marry Lux made her feel sick to her stomach. She flinched away as Lux bent down and took a closer look into her cell.
"I'll never marry you!" Lois asserted defiantly. "My husband will find you. And you'd better watch out when he does."
Lux laughed, his vile eyes dancing in amusement. "Let him come. Let him challenge me. It'll save me the effort of having to hunt him down myself."
"He'll break you in half," Lois said contemptuously.
"I think not," Lux replied evenly. "For all of Kal-El's physical prowess, he's too gentle a soul to ever prevail in a real fight. He doesn't have the guts to go for the kill."
"You don't know my husband very well," Lois shot back.
She knew that she was bluffing. She knew that Lux was right. Kal was a force to be reckoned with in a fight, that much was true. But he was a gentle soul. He'd never go for the kill, even if a fight demanded it. He'd try to find a way to subdue his opponent without causing them harm. And in a fight against someone like Lux or his sons, that would be Kal's undoing.
His gentle heart would cost him his life.
Lux wasn't fooled by Lois' boasting. "Ah, but I do know your lord husband. Quite well, actually. There isn't anything he can do that I haven't already anticipated."
Lois spit at the man, the action seeming to happen independent of her brain. Her body simply reacted to the man. Some of it hit his right cheek. Lux wiped the spittle off his flesh with one finger. He clucked his tongue and shook his head.
"Now, now," he said, his voice smooth and eerily calm. "You really ought to behave yourself. I don't know what vile behavior your precious prince allows, but I will not stand for such things."
Lois backed away from the man as he spoke, until her shoulder blades connected with the freezing, solid wall behind her. The threat in Lux's voice was unmistakable. She had no doubts in her mind that he would not hesitate to kill her if she ever displeased him. As the knowledge sunk in, she wondered if Lux's late wife had met a similar fate. She wondered if that was what had happened to the missing members of his household staff. Kal and the others had said that the girls had never turned up. Lois knew now, for a certainty, that Lux possessed the technology needed to make a body simply vanish into thin air.
Nor cleared his throat. "And if Jor-El does hold out?"
"We stick to the plan," Lord Uthor said, straightening back up and stepping away from Lois' cell. "We cannot afford any moments of weakness. We will carry through with our threats."
"Yes," Nor agreed, nodding his head. "But which one do we kill first?"
"That one," Lux replied, flicking his hand casually at Jai's cell. "The half-prince. If Jor-El is stupid enough to test me, I want you to send the boy's head to him. Understood?"
The three young lords nodded. "Yes, Father," they said, their voices blending into one.
"Good," Lux said, his voice deadly calm. "Now then. I have things to attend to. Drull, I want you to keep an eye on the video screens. The second the Supreme Lord makes his statement, I want to know about it. Ran, I want you to come find me if anyone comes sniffing around. I don't care if they are selling cookies. I want to know about it."
The two men in question bowed, then scurried off to attend to the duties their lord father had set before them. Nor stayed behind, awaiting his orders.
"And me?" he asked, when Lux failed to speak. "What task would you have me do?"
Lux thought for a moment before speaking. "Arrange a security detail."
"I'll lead them myself," Nor swore.
"No," his father said, shaking his head. "I want you with me. We have work to do. You have one hour. Then I want you in my study."
"As you wish," Nor said, bowing stiffly.
The two men turned and started back up the stairs. Lois heard each footstep, each one sounding like a death knell. She let her defiant mask fall from her face as her insides turned to jelly. Doomed was the only word that came to her mind. Doomed to lose Kal if he tried to save her. Doomed to lose Kal if he didn't, though Lois knew that would never be the case. Doomed to be forced into marrying a monster. Doomed to be killed with a careless word the second she displeased that same monster.
"Man, that was gutsy," Jai said, giving Lois an approving, though unsteady smile. "Talking back to Lux like that, I mean."
"Thanks," Lois mumbled. She tried to give Jai a smile.
But the young man was pallid white. Lux wanted to kill him. He'd so casually pointed at the half-prince as the first one to kill, should his ransom demands be ignored. He'd given the decision less thought than he would which piece of fruit to eat at breakfast. Lois' heart broke for the youngest son of Jor-El, even as she was gripped with terror for him.
"You'll be okay," Lois tried to reassure him. "He won't hurt you. Your father and brother will see to that."
Jai didn't look reassured in the least. He still gripped the bars of his cell tightly. His whitened knuckles matched the bloodlessness of his face. His eyes were wide and staring, not seeming to really see anything.
"I swear," he said in a small voice, more to himself than anyone else. It was, perhaps, a prayer to any benevolent force that might chance to hear him. "If I live through this, I'll never touch another concubine again. I don't want to die. I'm too young to die. I haven't even lived yet. Please, don't let me die."
"Jai," Ching said, carefully threading his hand through the cell bars, until he could touch his brother's shoulder. "Snap out of it. You have to focus now. Okay? Falling apart won't do any of us any good. All right? I'll do whatever I can to keep you safe. Okay?"
Jai finally seemed to focus on his older brother. He tremulously nodded his head. "I'll try."
"Good man." Ching gave him a smile and a squeeze on the shoulder. "We need a plan."
"Plan?" Jai repeated, as though the word was foreign. "Plan for what? We're stuck inside cages."
Ching sighed. "I know. But there has to be something that we can do."
"Like what?"
The crown prince sighed again and shook his head. "I don't know yet. But I'm working on it."
"Ching..." Zara's voice was pained and frightened as it cut through the freezing air of the dungeon.
Lois' head snapped around at the sound. Zara was doubled over, clutching at her abdomen. Her face - what Lois could see if it - was drawn into a roadmap of pained lines and pinched flesh. Moans escaped her lips and tears wetted her cheeks. As Lois' eyes swiftly assessed the other woman, they came to rest on her groin. A dark, red stain had bloomed there; blood seeped through the woman's light colored pants as if from some horrific, open wound. Lois felt her own blood turn to ice in her veins.
"Zara?" she squeaked out, the sound entangling itself in her vocal chords, as though it feared to come out into the open. "What's happening?"
"No," Ching said, his voice a ghostly, hollow whisper. "No."
"Zara?" Lois repeated. "Ching? What's happening? I can't help if I don't know what the problem is."
"There's nothing you can do. I'm..." Zara said, her voice rough as she struggled against the severe agony that had overtaken her body. "I'm...having a..." she groaned again. "Miscarriage," she finally uttered, through gritted teeth.
Lois' heart stopped beating for the slightest moment as the fragile organ shattered into a thousand bloody pieces. Zara's pain suddenly became her own, though Lois could only imagine a fraction of the other woman's distress. Lois knew that she could not possibly understand a tenth of the emotional anguish that her sister-of-the-heart was experiencing. Sympathetic tears pricked at Lois' eyes.
"What do I do?" she said, asking Ching and Zara both in the same breath.
The usually cheerful crown prince looked mournfully at his wife. Tears were racing down his cheeks. Lois realized, in that moment, that she'd never seen the man upset before. And now, she was looking into the face of heartbreak itself.
"There's nothing you can do," he said, repeating his wife's words. "She needs a doctor. Oh Zara, I'm so sorry."
"I...I...didn't know that you guys..." Jai stammered.
Ching shook his head. "We didn't tell anyone. It was too early. Only five weeks along. We wanted to be sure this baby would survive."
Lois wished with her whole heart that she could trade cells with Ching. He needed to be near his wife. And Zara needed her husband at her side, to take whatever comfort she could from having him at hand. Lois felt strangely inadequate to be of any source of solace for the grieving couple.
"I'm so sorry," she offered, feeling as though she was failing them somehow by offering such simple words. "Truly, I am."
She reached her hand through the bars that separated her from Zara. The other woman took her hand, grateful for the small bit of consolation that it held. She held on tightly, as if it were her only lifeline, her only way to stay connected to the world. Lois let her, taking a small amount of comfort in the contact as well, though the very thought made her feel guilty. She felt she had no right to take any comfort from the heartbroken woman. She was supposed to be giving support, not taking it.
"Help!" Lois shouted, in an effort to attract attention to the emergency that was unfolding. "Somebody help! We need a doctor! Is anyone there?"
But the dungeon was empty, aside from the four young royals. The dull stone of the room flung her words back at her, mocking her. They echoed as they bounced off the walls; a small chorus of derisive voices. If any of the sounds penetrated the thick walls, Lois never knew. No one came to see what the ruckus was about. No one summoned any aid for the bleeding princess. No one even came to the door to tell them to be silent.
After a while, Zara's pain seemed to lessen. Her grip on Lois' hand loosened. She no longer moaned in agony. But she continued to hold Lois' hand. It still remained her lifeline. Her moaning did not cease. But the sound of it changed. It was no longer born of excruciating cramps. It was the mournful, soul-chilling sound of a heart shattering, of dreams snatched cruelly away, of hope dying.
Lois could not help but to allow her tears to match those of Zara and Ching.
To Be Continued...
