There Is Nothing but Darkness

She woke to darkness and the smell of medicine.

The cozy, herbal smell of the palace physician's usual remedies attacked her sense of smell. Her head throbbed. A dull, deep ache that seemed to live somewhere behind her eyes worsened as she tried to open them. Tried again. She tried a third time with the kind of desperate effort that made her whole face hurt.

Nothing.

Just darkness. Complete and absolute.

"She's awake." Maya's voice. Her voice was so rough that she could tell that she'd been crying. Elves weren't supposed to cry. Velena was fairly sure of that. She'd have to ask later. Add it to the list of things Maya wasn't supposed to do but did anyway.

"Maya?" Her own voice came out small and scraped. Smaller than she'd meant it to. She gripped the sheets beneath her fingers. "Maya, I can't... I can't see anything. W-Why can't I... why can't I see anything?"

A hand found hers. Cool fingers. Long and familiar. It was Maya's hand. Squeezing tight.

"You're going to be alright."

"M-Maya?" Velena's voice did something strange. A wobble she didn't recognize. "I can't see."

"I know. The physicians are... they're doing what they can."

"That's what people say when they're not able to do anything... tha- that's the phrase for when no one can fix it."

Maya didn't answer. Which was itself an answer. The worst kind.

Velena lay very still for a moment. The darkness pressed in around her. Not the friendly darkness of a bedroom at night, where you knew the furniture was still there and the window was still in its frame and if you reached out you'd find something solid. This was different. This was darkness without edges. Without depth. Without the promise that anything was waiting in it.

She decided that she hated it immediately.

The room turned cold.

"Where's Orev?"

The silence that followed was long.

"Maya. Where's Orev?"

"...the guard took him. This morning."

"What do you mean, took him? Took him where? For what?"

"There was an investigation. The conduit was untempered. It shouldn't have been able to activate at all. The investigators determined that his Key Tone was the catalyst. It was... unusually strong and uncontrolled..." Maya's voice was careful. Each word was placed precisely. "They're calling it criminal negligence. Some of the council is calling it worse."

"Worse how...?"

"An attack. On a-" Maya stopped herself. "On a noble household."

Velena understood, even through the fog of pain and whatever medicine they'd given her, what Maya had almost said and why she'd swallowed it. The room wasn't empty. Physicians, Guards maybe. She could sense that there were other people in the room. People Maya didn't trust to find out.

"They think he did this on purpose…" Her voice came out flat. Not a question.

"The council is... looking for someone to blame."

"He didn't do it on purpose! I told him his Key Tone was loud! On the bridge! I said, 'You might have a strong aptitude for magic.' Those were my exact words! I-I said them! He couldn't control it. It wasn't his fault, it was-"

"I know."

"I need to tell them. I need to tell my- I- I need to tell my mother. She'll fix it. She can talk to the- to the authorities. She knows people. Important people. She knows all the important people, that's practically her whole job-"

"Your brother is already arguing on the boy's behalf." Maya's voice stayed steady. The careful, measured voice of someone delivering information she'd had hours to prepare. "He's pushing for exile rather than..."

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.

Velena's stomach dropped. "Exile?"

"It's the best outcome we can hope for. The alternative is..."

"Execution," Velena said. The word tasted wrong in her mouth. Metallic. Like the forge. "They want to execute him...For an accident? For something I asked him to do? For a cane I wanted to see?!"

"The council doesn't know that part. And your father-"

"My father needs someone to blame. I know- I know how he is." She tried to sit up. The darkness tilted violently, her head screaming in protest, and Maya's hands were on her shoulders immediately, pressing her back down against the pillows.

"You can't. You can barely stay conscious."

"I don't care about staying conscious! I care about Orev! He's going to be sent away forever for something that wasn't his fault, and he doesn't even-" She stopped. The worst part. The part that had been gnawing at her since she'd clawed her way out of the dark. "He doesn't know, does he? Who I actually am."

"No."

"So he thinks... what?! He thinks he blinded some random noble girl and now he's being exiled for it?! Doesn't he know it's the princess? Doesn't he know why the punishment is this severe? He's sitting in a cell somewhere thinking he ruined the life of some minor lord's daughter and the entire kingdom wants his head and he doesn't even know why it's this bad?!"

"I don't think anyone's told him anything. The guard took him before dawn. I doubt they explained a single thing."

Velena laid still. The darkness pressed in. Her head throbbed. Her eyes, or whatever was left of her eyes, ached in a way that felt like it would never stop.

And somewhere in the lower city, in a cell or a holding room or wherever they put twelve-year-old boys who'd committed the crime of having a Key Tone that was too loud, Orev was alone. Thinking he deserved it. Thinking the whole thing was his fault. Thinking he'd destroyed some girl's life and exile was letting him off easy.

"That idiot," she whispered. "He probably confessed, didn't he?"

Maya paused. "How did you know?"

"I've known him for years! I could tell that he's an idiot! He probably walked right up to the guard and said 'it was my fault' before anyone even asked him a question. Didn't he?!"

"...yes..."

"Of course he did! Of course..." She turned her head on the pillow. It didn't change the darkness, but it felt like it should. "I want to see him..."

"You can't see him, young miss."

The words landed harder than Maya intended. Velena heard it in the silence that followed. The small, sharp intake of breath meant Maya wished she could take it back.

"I know," Velena said quietly. "I know I can't. I just... I want to be there. Wherever he is…before he goes..."

"He's being exiled at dawn."

"Then we go before dawn."

"You're not supposed to leave the bed."

"I'm not supposed to do a lot of things. I've never let that stop me before. I'm not about to stop now."