The man who has to die (Chapter 5)

The girl remembers her mother in times of hardship. She gets up to deliver some cruel news to the boy and the prisoner. (2,500~ words)

“Since my daughter couldn't satiate our guest’s appetite, it's only right that, as her father, I should remedy her mistake.” Father stands up, and her head rolls onto the cave floor with a dull thud. Without bothering to look back at her paralyzed form, he approaches the gate of the cage and claps twice. “Butler, would you escort the food into the beast's enclosure?”
The disheveled man with a terrified expression, hearing his fate, turns around and tries to run- however, he could never be a match for the older man next to him and is caught by the back of his neck. Dragged without a chance, the man is tossed inside the cage like throwing meat to a dog.
Father smiles down at the cowering fool who lands at his feet. He doesn't look back when he turns away, and Father exits the cage with an elegant and gentle expression on his face. A passerby would assume he came back from meeting his lovely wife and daughter.
The events today will be locked behind that giant metal door. Never would they leave, the blonde man promised.
His daughter groans at the sound of the walls screaming. They cry and wail as Father enters the house, but quickly shut up as the dungeon door slams closed. Her head spins. Warmth spreads through her hair as it's dyed from a new angle in a dark red color. It starkly contrasts the near-white blonde she inherited from Mother, who complimented her daughter's hair at every opportunity. It used to never fail to make her laugh when she heard it because it was like Mother was complimenting herself. Mother would then insist that her daughter was far more beautiful, waxing poetic about her golden eyes and silken hair and skin. However, though she never spoke it out loud, her daughter secretly wished she had inherited her mothers dark blue eyes, which resembled the ocean she had never seen.
With Father gone, tears flow like blood from her eyes.
If her mother was here…
A whine grows from her mouth. High pitched and weak, it serves no purpose but to seek comfort from the ghost of her mother. If she had been in her room, maybe she would already be a sobbing mess, but this is all she can allow herself in the company of others. It burns to hold inside and it'll burn if she lets it out.
Her hand unwittingly claws at the cave floor.
Useless.
What does she try so hard for?
To avoid pain? To stay alive? To not lose the memories of her mother, which would disappear with her life?
There's no specific reason.
She just refuses to die. She refuses to give in.
Until she's old enough to escape… she won't die. Definitely, she will not die in these walls, even if it's dying one step outside the gate.
Her fingers, clawing at the floor, clench into a fist and push up.
Even if she doesn't want to be, she is her fathers daughter. And her father is simply too strong.
Her broken body is forced upward and onto her elbows, which push onto her extended arms, that push her onto her knees. Her bloody and dirty hair shadows her eyes, which fiercely glare at the ground. She isn't helpless, nor is she weak or afraid. She’s injured but she's fighting.
And she definitely isn't a good daughter.
Her legs aren't broken, thankfully, and she uses her good leg to push herself the rest of the way up. Adrenaline surely aids this strength, but it also comes from her heart and mind, which hardens like tempered steel. Unlike before when she needed help to balance, she can recover it on her own because she'd already done it once.
Standing properly now, she can focus on the sounds she's been ignoring since Father left.
“-not going to eat you.”
“You are, b-because you eat, eat people…! I- I don't want to die! hrng, you- you- you’re a monster! A monster, hck, a monster is going to eat me..!”
“I'm really not…”
Next to the man crying pitifully on the floor, the boy stands off to the side with folded arms, a complicated look on his face. It turns his lips down and bunches up the skin between his brows, like a cross between a scowl and befuddlement.
The whining of the man grows louder when she begins to limp closer.
Her legs hurt. Her back hurts. Breathing and walking hurts, but her head hurts the most, and it's all a terrible combination for a terrible mood.
“Really,” the boy mutters, “I'm not going to eat you, so…”
BANG!
She kicks the man in the stomach. He is sent rolling and the boy chokes on his words. The man shudders, eyes going wide. That little girl, injured and hardly able to walk, kicked him hard enough to send a full grown man halfway across the room. Not only that but in the brief moment he saw her face before she kicked him, her emotionless eyes overlapped with her fathers face, who would kick and torment him just the same. He trembles when recalling that person's face, wrapping his arms around himself and rocking slightly.
“No, no… not him, not him, anyone but him…” mumbling under his breath, he goes blind and deaf to the happenings nearby. “Die… I don't want to die… I can’t… no, no no, no…”
Her foot throbs. Kicking that man, as emaciated as he is, still nearly broke her bones. The pain is fresh, but she’ll gladly ignore it so that she can knock the sense back into him.
“Hey, why did you… Wait, are you going to do it again!?” The boy hastily steps in front of her to block her path as she tries to approach the decrepit person wallowing on the floor again. She glances at his face, avoids his eyes, and attempts to walk forward anyway.
She could probably push him out of the way, she thinks… probably.
“Stop, stop it! Why are you doing this?” She finds out that she can't overpower him as he grasps her shoulders to hold her in place. “Are you trying to kill him!”
She finally looks into his eyes. He gulps. Inside her eyes is a murky depth, all encompassing and dreadfully dark, without a light to be found. It swallows up the emotions he feels for a brief moment, and it gives him the unmistakable impression that she is as vast as the ocean and as complicated as a labyrinth. The gold flakes layered on top of gold veins and a gold ocean see him in his entirety, without error. In front of this judge, he is perceived, and she is unperceivable. They are not equal. The distance between them is incomprehensible.
Then she blinks, and it's gone.
“I couldn't stand to listen to his voice any longer.” She explains. The boy gapes at her ruthlessness. “And, you shouldn't lie to him,” Her golden eyes look over his shoulder toward the rocking figure. “He is going to die, and you are going to eat him. Because that’s what Father decided.” Those words resonate inside her soul like no other. Her voice is rough but she speaks clearly.
“Whether it's you or him, neither of you are strong enough nor clever enough to escape that. The reality is that this man was dead from the moment he stepped into this cave. Same as that servant who delivered the message of the arrival of troops from the Second Family of the North. They were both dead as soon as my father decided it would be so.”
She places a hand on the boy's wrist, which restrains her movement. He hesitates, pain in his eyes. It's only when she sends him a meaningful look that he has to let his arms fall in anguish. He clenches his fists and hangs his head, defeated.
“Neither of you are strong enough nor clever enough to escape that.”
It stings to listen to, but it was true. In this place where he held no power, he was helpless in front of that man she calls her Father.
Like a distorted reflection, the daughter resembles himself. Her empty eyes were filled with something he couldn't see, but it was infinite in size. Like a clear salt lake that reflected the stars above. If you didn't pay attention, the boundary between them blurred. Perhaps he had mistaken the water for the stars at his first glance. Maybe he's still mistaken.
She limps past him. His arched back lines up with hers, and it was as if someone had placed a mirror inside the cage to mock them both. His head hangs down but the girl walks forward against a sea of difficulty. He clenches his fist. There's nothing he can do.
She steps in front of the tortured man, who rocks back and forth by himself. He mutters unintelligible words. Perhaps, she wonders apathetically, it would be a kind of mercy to put him out of his misery now. Father can mess people up. The will to live can only last for as long as someone has something to fight for. At what point is there nothing left?
“Hey,” the man doesn't respond. “Hey.”
She nudges him with her foot and he flinches.
“Do you want to live?”
“...?” He lowers the hands covering his head and looks at her.
“If you plead with my father, he’ll take you back to the dungeons. If that's what you want.”
Memories of that horrible place flash through the man like a lightning bolt down his spine, and his entire body flinches in response.
Her red stained platinum hair falls like waves over her shoulder as she leans down. It hurts.
“If you don't care how the rest of your life is spent then I’m sure my father will send another person to replace you. I'm not sure how happy he’ll be if you do though. You saw what happened to me… and I'm his daughter.” She smiles sardonically. “If that's how he treats family, how do you think he’ll treat you?”
It's the harsh truth. This family has lived in this prison of a mansion for generations because of its power to read, and, in special individuals, to sway emotions. To keep them locked up and complacent, the king supplies them with servants. Father describes them as, “disposables.” None of these people have prominent skills, knowledge, or abilities. They come inside the manor and they never leave. The ones that die inside of here will be reported to the palace and the body will be sent away. An investigation will never be conducted. Father gets to kill and torture anyone who enters his palace.
All to keep the golden eyes locked up.
Escape is impossible outside of death.
“However,” she feels the barrier over his eyes shatter, and the man's emotions flutter into her mind. They’re tumultuous feelings that feel foreign and familiar at the same time. She knows the fear of death and the fear of her father, but she doesn't know the last fear he feels. She can be relieved that it numbs the pain in her body, so she lowers herself to the floor to ease the man’s heart. His feelings tell her that her impression is a lot like Father’s, even if she doesn't want that.
“That boy,” she points behind her, but the man’s eyes have frozen onto her own. “-will send you to a peaceful afterlife.”
The boy moves but she doesn't wait. “His power is connected to his god in the north. By giving your soul for the survival of him, who is a blessed being, you will be in good graces, and treated well. It will be painless, and you will experience good things again without fear. You have my word.”
Her earnest eyes speak no lies. Inside her heart, she truly believes what she says, and it resonates with the emotions of the man intensely. He believes her. This is because of the power she has, given to her by her golden eyes, and it's also the reason why this family is isolated but not wiped out.
Without control he begins to cry, trembling like a leaf in a storm. When her eyes connected to his, before his head dropped down and he sobbed, the emotions overwhelming him passed through and entered her mind. They were waves of grief and joy fighting to overcome the other, mixing and colliding in a twisting, violent battle, which lasts for tens of minutes as he hiccups and chokes on his tears in a fitful anguish. In a long but short time, the man has to come to terms with his past, present, and the future not to come.
A hole makes itself apparent in her heart. Inside, a foreign rationality reasons that she should be feeling complicated about this. In a different life, maybe she would be crying alongside him, relating to his fear of death and, in turn, feeling a similar devastation- yet it does not appear. This absence quietly exists, taking up the place where she would feel something. The emptiness grows, as if her heart were made of soft dirt. The wallowing man creates instability in her mind, which causes the fragile walls of this hole in her heart to crumble away, speeding up the deterioration. To protect herself from this expanding, swelling darkness, cold and empty in nature, she closes off her heart to the emotions that this man feels. Without access to the cruel apathy which festers inside, it allows herself to pretend.
She sighs. The reason why he is feeling this way is because of her. She has the ability to make anyone believe anything she says. If the recipient does not have undeniable evidence that it's false, they will likely believe her words until death. The golden eyes aren't always gifted with this ability, however. Father isn't even aware that she has it. If he knew, he would tell the imperial family. This could either get herself killed or land them both in a position of unrivaled power. For Father, neither is a bad option.
Anyway, there is no reason to pity this man any more than the ones dying inside of cells right now. He can walk and beg- he’s already better off than most. Father must have chosen him because he still had enough life to fight back. Father is cruel. He would've wanted his daughter to see herself in this man, who would be unable to cope with death and struggling pitifully.
The man lays down on the floor, limbs sprawled out, and stares into the cylindrical shape of the cave’s ceiling. His eyes are exhausted, but filled with conviction. He speaks up, voice hoarse.
“I have only one final request. Will you kids bear to listen to my story? Then, I will go quietly.”
The boy comes up from behind her and sits down. He chances a peek at her, but she doesn't look at him.
“I will listen. And…” the boy pauses. “My name is Killian. I will listen to your story.”
The man smiles wearily. “Killian… Thank you, Killian, I am glad.”
Her head hurts. Their quiet conversation aches in a deep place in her skull. It hurts.
The boy places a hand on hers, resting on the dusty stone floor, and makes eye contact with her meaningfully. His emotions speak for him and she understands.
“... Aurelia,” She introduces herself briefly. “... I’ll listen.”

Author's Note

I don't know how to tag... also how is the dialogue? And descriptions? I think I could improve the way I described the hole in her heart but I don't know how.