Trapped in the Dark (Part 3/?)
Summary: The inner circle interrogates you for answers
T/W: torture, abuse, angst
A/N: POVs are a bit of a mess in this one but idc it is what it is
Part 2 in case you missed it
Consciousness returns slowly. It's starts with a dull, throbbing ache settling deep into your bones until there isn’t a single part of you untouched by it. Your arms burn the worst, a lingering, screaming reminder of where you’ve been suspended.
Next you register someone’s loosely holding your hand. “Cerin?” you mumble, voice rough as you try to place the touch. You’re too delirious to register it’s not a child’s grip. The hand is too large, too covered in scar tissue to be your son. The fingers around yours shift slightly at the sound, tightening just enough to try and anchor you.
Something soft is beneath you. Not the cold damp stone of the dungeons. It’s soft and fluffy like lying on a cloud. Your brow furrows, lashes fluttering as you drag yourself up through the thick fog clinging to your mind.
For a moment, you think it’s another trick, another hallucination born from exhaustion and whatever they forced into your veins. But the air is clean: it smells like antiseptic and herbs.
All you can hear is muffled voices - all overlapping as people discuss you and the possibility of something being wrong with your magic. “I've reset her bones but she’s not reacting normally to any other treatment. My magic can sense something… is not quite right.” Madja states.
You groan involuntarily as you rouse. Golden light floods your vision, intrusive and unwelcome. The light makes it obvious: this isn’t Hewn City.
Your heart stutters once, then you force yourself to calm down and assess the situation. Pain tears through you the second you sit up, it’s violent enough to nearly fold you in half, but you clamp down on the reaction, forcing your spine straight even as your vision blurs.
“Easy.” A male voice says calmly.
You drop his hold immediately once your mind registers that’s not Cerin holding your hand.
Your gaze snaps to him sharp and assessing despite the haze still dragging at your mind. He’s beautiful in the way that is unfair. Dark curls fall around his brow making him look more boyish than he is, shadows curl around him tightly and their familiarity almost makes you relax.
But he’s still a threat. You will always assume a threat before anything else. Trust has never come quickly to you.
As if he’s reading your thoughts he speaks up again, “You’re safe. You can relax.” He says it with conviction, like he believes it, like saying it immediately makes it true.
You don’t respond to him. Instead, you survey the room, mentally cataloguing what’s around you.
One, two, three - there’s at least eight people in this tiny room. All of them, apart from the shadowsinger, are watching you like you’re a threat.
Fog grips your mind and you blink slowly trying to clear it without letting them see the effort it takes. Questions burn at the back of your mind: you want to ask where you are, where’s your son, or how the hell you got here. You swallow all of them, asking would be a mistake, it’d show them how vulnerable you truly are.
You take stock of your injuries, your unresponsive magic and your lack of knowledge about the exit route here. Your odds are poor, unsurvivable if you try fighting your way out of this like you normally would, so you decide to do what you’ve always done: lie, bluff, make everyone here hesitate long enough for you to find a way to get home.
You control your breathing, steadying it like you believe the spymaster's lie that you’re safe here. You let your shoulders loosen slightly until you’re the picture of comfortable.
Let him see what he wants to see.
Azriel watches you closely unsure if this is a front or if you’re truly just exhausted. He should know better. He should see you as the threat the rest of the room does.
You look to him, the one who held your hand. He’s clearly the most invested. You know you can use his false sense of bravado and heroism against him if you lean into the damsel in distress narrative he clearly wants. So, you ask one of the questions at the forefront of your mind, keeping your voice quiet and timid just enough to be believed “H-how did I get here?”
“We found you in the basement of Hewn. Do you remember how you got there?” Mor asks softly. You recognise her from years gone by but ignore that to keep your act up – it’s not like she’d remember you anymore.
Truth and lie that’s how you play this. You tilt your head slightly, confused on purpose. “My husband.” You say forcing your lip to wobble as fake emotions surface.
“You’re okay. Take your time.” The Shadowsinger says from the chair next to you, brushing your knuckles like that’s reassuring. It’s not. He even lowers his voice like he’s afraid of startling you.
“He just... kept asking me question after question.” you whisper, letting your hands shake now, small and controlled.
“He asked things over and over again. I don’t understand… why would he?” Your breath fractures convincingly. “Why would he do that to me?”
“What did he ask you?” Rhysand asks carefully. This isn’t just curiosity; there’s desperation beneath his tone. You know without this going further that he’s going to ask you the same questions, and like your husband, he believes that he can actually pressure you into giving answers.
You feel his magic go for your mind a second later, it’s sharp, like a knife gliding along your mental barrier. It hurts like the start of a migraine until he withdraws. Your mental barrier holds but barely, you feel it fraying, and without access to your magic you cannot repair it.
You need to get out of here.
He’s going to read your thoughts any minute.
You don’t let Rhysand see your rising anxiety as you respond with the truth, “They didn’t let me sleep. Most of what they asked me is a blur.”
"You must remember some of it - they broke bones to get you to answer them." Cassian states raising an eyebrow.
You give yourself a minute to repress your real feelings before you let out a fake wobbly sigh, looking down into your lap before continuing. “They wanted to know about Darius.” A half-truth.
“Who is Darius?” Rhysand asks too quickly.
“He’s on Keir’s list, he’s missing.” Mor supplies, turning back to you. “What do you know about Darius and what happened to him?”
It’s the wrong question to ask. If she was smarter, she’d ask how you’re involved.
“He thought I knew where Darius had gone. I saw him the day before. He looked after Cerin, I picked him up later that day. Nothing else happened. It was ordinary.” You mutter scrunching your brows together like you're confused at the sentiment.
Rhysand is watching too closely like he’s caught you slip up. “Who is Cerin?” The High Lord’s focus momentarily shifts away from you to the others in the room as if the answer might be within the group.
Mor only shrugs, the movement is careless like it doesn’t matter.
You don’t let your relief crack your façade. They don’t know him.
But that means he’s still within reach of your husband. Your grip tightens slightly against your own palm where it presses into the bed, grounding yourself before the panic can surface.
Your mind races, mapping possibilities, outcomes, every version of what could already be happening back home.
Rhysand turns back to you waiting for an actual answer to the question.
“He’s my son.” you say, and this time there’s no mistaking the edge beneath it. “I need to go back and find him.” It’s not a request; it’s a statement that you are leaving here.
You push to your feet, wobbly but upright, nonetheless. Your body protests immediately but you ignore it, concerned that every second that you stay here being questioned by them is another second he’s alone.
“No.” Rhysand sighs like he’s tired of you.
You stare at him like he’s being unreasonable. “He’s just a child.”
“I don’t care.” Rhysand retorts and you believe him. There’s not a flicker of hesitation on his face.
He steps closer voice lowering into something more dangerous as he speaks up “For months now, people have been disappearing from Hewn City, and then you appear, half dead, and the disappearances stop.” Your stomach tightens as he adds, “that’s not a coincidence.”
You always thought the High Lord’s visits to Hewn were him masking who he was but maybe you were wrong and this is actually him.
“You’re not leaving until you tell us about whatever it is that you’re hiding.” Feyre states firmly.
“I’m not hi-” you cut yourself off as pain hits you, it’s instant and brutal. It coils through your ribs, stealing the rest of the sentence from your lungs. Your breath fractures, a sharp inhale breaking free before you can stop it.
“What was that?” Azriel questions looking between Rhys, Feyre and Madja. He directs you to sit down on the edge of the bed much to your annoyance.
“It wasn’t me.” Rhysand clarifies sensing his brother's anger, he trusts her for no discernible reason.
“It wasn’t me either.” Feyre confirms confused by what triggered such a reaction.
Madja is already moving. “It could be nothing more than trauma surfacing,” she says quickly. She sounds calm, but you see the concern written on her face as she continues to theorise “It could just be bruising or something internal.”
Rhysand stops Madja before she can reach the female. “Can we question her before you examine her again?”
“I don’t know how stable she is.” Madja admits.
“I’m fine. Can we just get on with this so I can go home?” You force your voice to crack at the right moment hoping it’ll make at least one more person in the room empathise with you.
“Who is killing the people of Hewn City?” Rhysand tries again.
“You. Your regime, the power structure you actively support there.” You answer quickly lacing your tone with another anxious wobble.
Azriel lets out a loud shaky sigh. This isn’t going well.
“You seem in an awful rush to get back to Hewn. Are you forgetting they don’t exactly like you over there?” Cassian questions.
“I need to get to Cerin.” you say, urgency cracking through your control. What if he’s alone, scared or worse what if he’s with someone else?
Azriel’s voice is strained when he speaks up, “Rhys, let me go find the boy. If she’s telling the truth...”
“No” the High Lord interjects with the same ruthless finality. “Neither of you are going anywhere.”
“My shadows are screaming at me to get that child out.” Azriel tries to explain. He shifts like he’s itching to leave.
“Let him go.” You demand unsure why you trust him already out of everyone in the room. Something inside you knows that he wouldn’t harm Cerin; he might actually help him to control his shadows.
"He's the same age as Nyx." You look to Feyre, the only other mother in the room. "What if it was him trapped there?"
"It's not and it never would be. We're not stupid enough to leave him alone. Answer my questions and I’ll consider letting Azriel search for him” Rhysand says.
You let out a humourless laugh. "You think I had a choice?"
“What did they ask you?” He repeats the question from earlier.
Waiting longer might cost you everything. You also know you can’t tell him the truth.
“I already said.” The pain is worse this time. It slams through you hard enough that your vision flickers. Your breath comes too fast now. You force it slower, trying to drag your control back.
You need to think quickly to work around it like you were doing before.
Azriel shifts, “Rhys, she’s-”
“I don’t care.” Rhysand cuts him off nor breaking your eye contact.
“They wanted names,” you say carefully, shaping each word. “Movements. Who’s been meeting who.”
Rhysand notices immediately your lack of pain.
“What names?” Mor presses.
You hesitate just for a second and pain lashes through you again in warning. You choke it down, forcing your expression to neutral. “Low-level courtiers, messengers,” you push out.
His gaze is fixed wholly on you, he’s hungry for information, watching your every tell.
When you resist you seem to be in physical pain. Is it possible that something could exist that overrides will and punishes the act of resistance. A force that doesn’t just demand truth but makes lies physically unbearable…
Surely that’d be better known, but what else explains your reactions?
He reaches out to Madja's mind, asking her if she's ever come across such a substance.
"No. But her magic isn't acting as it should even with faebane in her system." Madja talks into his mind.
The healer looks over to him questioning silently if she can re-examine you. He nods deciding to give the female a much-needed break from their line of fire.
Maybe she'll be more susceptible to talking if Madja helps with the pain.
No one realises that you’re still in fight of flight. As Madja’s hands reach for you, you react before she can touch you. Your arm snaps up way too fast for someone supposedly half-conscious. You strike her hand away with a crack that echoes in the too-quiet room. The force of it stings up your arm, but you don’t bat an eyelid.
Madja freezes, startled more than hurt, her hand hovering where you knocked it aside.
“Don’t touch me” you warn her. You lean in just enough, your voice dropping to a cold whisper meant only for her “try that again and I won’t stop at your hand.”
That wasn’t the reaction of someone dazed or helpless.
Next to you, Azriel’s head tilts like he’s reassessing the threat you pose. It’s the kind of attention that doesn’t land lightly, because it’s been sharpened by centuries of learning exactly how to survive court politics. In his mind, he’s already running through if you could become dangerous to the Night Court but he’s clouded by the pull he feels towards you.
Rhysand feels himself smile widely, like you’ve just confirmed something he was already beginning to suspect. “Welcome to the conversation.”
Your hand lowers slowly back to your side, but your body stays tense, coiled like a wire pulled tight with restrained violence.
“Well, you certainly recover quickly.” Amren mutters. If things were different you’d laugh, instead you narrow your gaze at her.
“You’re not as helpless as you’d like us to believe.” Feyre states watching you closely.
Rhysand steps nearer. “Let’s try that again. What did they ask you?”
“Maybe if you want better answers, you should try better questions.” You roll your eyes at him.
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to disrespect your High Lord?” Feyre questions.
You glance at her, slow and unimpressed, like the title means very little to you. “I think if he wanted respect, he should’ve started with earning it.”
Feyre’s expression tightens instantly, irritation flashing across her face. “You don’t get to walk in here, lie to us, and then act like you’re in any position to judge him. You’re alive because of him. So maybe rethink how far you want to push that attitude” She growls.
“You can’t stand there and pretend this is a mercy, you’ve dragged me out of a cell just to lock me in another.” You remark already annoyed by her.
“Maybe if you tell me who controls the 'messengers', I will consider letting Azriel leave to find your son” Rhysand states, finally asking the right question.
You don’t respond. Agony tears through you so violently your knees nearly give out.
Your control is slipping.
“You’re hurting her.” Azriel states and this time there’s no attempt to soften it, he’s glaring at Rhysand openly now.
Rhysand looks like he truly doesn’t care what it costs you as long as he gets answers.
“You’re letting emotion cloud your judgement Az.” Rhysand states.
Cassian shifts like he might step in. Mor looks between them, uneasy now. Amren watches like she’s enjoying the fracture forming.
“Answer me.” Rhysand barks at you.
Pain explodes through your body again as you say, “I can’t tell you.” A sound leaves you that you don’t recognise as fae.
Azriel catches you before you fall, but this time your body doesn’t register it properly. His arms are there, solid around your shoulders, anchoring you upright but your mind keeps misfiring.
For a second, you’re not in the room. You’re back in the cold damp of the cells with someone asking you questions you can't distinguish.
“Stop.” He says to Rhysand.
You blink up at Azriel, but his face keeps shifting “I’m fine,” you try to say. It comes out wrong, slurred at the edges like you’re drunk.
“No, you’re not” he says quietly.
"Do you know what they gave you?" Azriel questions, adjusting his hold on you carefully.
“Azriel-” Rhysand interjects.
“Stop. She can’t stand, and you’re still pushing her.” Azriel says in disbelief as he stares at his brother.
“She is still the only source of information we have that is directly tied-”Cassian tries to justify their actions.
“I don’t care!” Azriel snaps.
That gets everyone’s attention.
“You should.” Amren responds in warning. The shadows around him deepen slightly, surging to protect him as his anger rises.
Your fingers twitch against Azriel’s sleeve. He feels it instantly and looks down at you, “Stay with me.” he whispers brushing a finger along your cheek.
“Azriel put her down and walk away.” Rhysand instructs him.
A/N: I'm thinking I might have a short Cerin POV next... Prepare to be upset
