Chapter 5: Punishment

The cell stank, dark and chilly. Roughened stone let in no heat, iron bench bolted to the wall leaving me colder. The plate metal wall before me let in little light, only a slit in the top of the door allowing illumination.

Didn't matter. Nothing mattered. I felt broken inside, torn into pieces I'd never reassemble. The burning need I'd felt was long gone, cut off when my power was cut off, the shackles still holding me captive. No longer driven by the hunger to strip magic to feed me, I crumpled in on myself, lost in the hopelessness my life had become.

It was hard not to alternate between sullen rage and real fear, though I wondered how authentic my fear was. I'd come to this place of a purpose, it seemed, with nowhere to turn to and no alternatives. The penalty for stripping another demon completely of their power was death, after all. I knew it, had known the consequences of such an act my entire life. It was one of the base tenants of our existence, a law rarely broken and always treated with the utmost seriousness.

So was it despair for my pending death? Or for the deep-seated belief they wouldn't go through with it, that somehow Father or Ahbi would find a way to save me and keep me alive? Tears crept down my cheeks as I realized I found both eventualities equally horrifying.

The door swung open, creaking on angry hinges, and Father stepped through.

"They will come for you soon." Such desperation in his voice, it made my empathy return, what little remained to me. Nice to know I could still feel for others. I looked up at him, felt something twist in my gut at the lost and drooping expression on his face. This was real, then, the first alternative the most likely.

And I only then understood I really didn't want to die after all.

Father seemed to struggle for words, throat constricting, lips quivering. But he gave up at last, turning and slumping away. I made no comment as my fear finally grew, gnawing at my insides as I fought my mind for control, for some defense while I shuffled, still shackled, the four short steps back and forth before my door. After all, I was born to privilege and the boy Raneen was a nobody. Ahbi would see reason, would save me.

Father left without another word, as if he only had to share with me his own fear. How kind of him. I wished he'd stayed away. And Mother, too, when she appeared at my door, stood in the way of the light, face pinched and judging.

"Why am I not surprised?" She turned from me, allowing my brother to take her place. Jabuticabron scowled, arms crossed over his broad chest.

"You had to ruin our good name with your arrogance." How thoughtful and loving, my brother.

"I disown you," Mother said. "Have already publicly before Ruler. Your father might think there is yet something to salvage, but your creation was his idea, not mine. I leave the responsibility of your failure to him."

This was news. Not that it mattered. But Father chose to create me. Maybe such a revelation should have warmed my heart, but instead it left me cold.

"I will ask Ruler for a portion of your power once you are stripped and killed," my brother said as he and Mother left. "To remember you by."

It was easy to hold my silence, to not give them what they desired. Cold, so cold and tired at last, drained of anything but weariness and fear.

Until Avenesequoia appeared and it all changed. I met her eyes, reached for her with my shackled hands and she came to me, to sit next to me, stroke my hair as I leaned against her and wondered to myself why I never allowed her in.

We had no time to speak, not while the Guards followed close behind her, pulling my sister aside, jerking me to my feet, shattering the shackles around my ankles and dragging me out of my cell.

The climb to the top of the Seat was silent, too fast, over so quickly, one last look out across the city that raised me filling my empty heart with regret.

I'd thought myself far past such weakness. But not so. My feet stumbled over one another as I allowed the Guards to drag me, defeated, down the center of the throne room to be deposited, falling heavily to my hands and knees, at the foot of Ahbi's throne.

"Ruler," I managed a cocky grin while inside I died a little more. Maybe this end was the best, the only solution to the emptiness I lived with every day. "Nice to see you again so soon."

Her rock-hard expression told me there would be no forgiveness, no little smile of understanding. Not this time. "Sassafras," she said in her booming voice. "You have been charged with stripping a fellow demon of his full power, a crime punishable by death. Do you deny this charge?"

"I guess we won't be dancing today," I muttered. A Guard prodded me with one foot, drawing out a snarl from my lips before I faced my Ruler again. "I do not," I said. "Guilty, as charged."

"I warned you your arrogance would be your undoing," she said. "And I have been proven correct."

The gathered court muttered at her brilliance while not one of them would meet my eyes. Except Cypherion, who smiled so wide his teeth dominated his ugly face.

"Bring forth the damaged one." Ahbi's fist lifted only to fall to the arm of her throne with a loud crash. I didn't have to turn, refused to in fact, and watch as more Guards led Raneen forward. But I had to look, in the end, to see his weeping mother, his hate-filled father. But worse, the vacant, child-like smile on Raneen's drooling lips as he waved a little, the spark of him gone.

Into me.

"There is no crime greater than the theft of another's magic." Ahbi sat back in her throne, as though she needed the coldness of it to feed her words. "Sassafras, Lord of the Seventh Plane, you will hereby be stripped of your magic, the bulk of it granted to one of my choosing, and then executed."

A protest built inside me as she spoke, a need to argue, to beg even. But I held my tongue, pinned by power, knowing there was nothing I could do.

So ends the life of Sassafras.

"I call on my son," Ahbi said, "Haralthazar, Lord of the Seventh Plane, to do the deed."

***