Chapter 34
“Let me welcome you to your new home.” The Queen’s words kept running through my head like a plague. You could see it on her face that she got some sort of sick, twisted pleasure when she told us we couldn’t leave. Which wasn’t surprising. She was the Queen of a world that ran on fear.
But don’t get me wrong, I still tried to get us out of there. I tried so hard to blink us out of that horrible place that I gave myself a splitting headache.
After the Queen declared we were never allowed to leave, she locked Alex and I in a cement chamber that had a single bed in it. It was like being in a jail cell, except there were no bars on the door.
The Queen was probably going to keep us here until she was ready to begin our torture sessions, where we would end up being faerie food. Or at least our fear would. Fear was not a new emotion for me—I have felt it many, many times. So I knew that in order to bring it out of a person, something bad had to happen.
“I’m really starting to wonder just how long the list of people who my father has pissed off is,” Alex said.
We had been sitting on the bed, staring at the cement walls for awhile, so the sound of his voice startled me a little.
“Probably pretty long,” I said, and he shot me dirty a look. “Sorry, but it’s probably the truth. I mean, he walks with the Death Walkers, betrays the Keepers, forces faeries to help him all because of a Blood Promise made ages ago. And he’s also pissed off the Queen of the dead for who knows what reason.
That list, right there, is really long.” Alex let out a sigh. “Yeah, you’re probably right. We probably will be running into a lot more people who hate him.”
I was right. What the…
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.
I kept looking at him the same way. “Like what?”
“Like I just shocked the heck out of you.” I shrugged. “I don’t know…because you said I was right.”
He stared at me perplexedly, as if he was trying to figure something out.
“So what are we going to do?” I asked. “I mean, are we going to be able to get out of here?” He let out a loud breath as he ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know Gemma. I don’t even know what exactly happened. I mean, do you have any idea why this didn’t work out like how you saw in the vision?
I massaged the sides of my temples, trying to force my headache away. “Because I didn’t finish seeing the vision, at least that’s what I think happened.
Nicholas forced me to take us away before I saw the whole thing play out.” Someone screamed not too far away, and I shivered. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Alex cocked an eyebrow at me. “Sorry for what?”
“For messing this up.”
He shook his head, dragging the knife he brought with along him on the frame of the bed. “You didn’t mess this up. I did, by being my father’s son.”
“Well, I think we can also put a little bit of the blame on Nicholas.” The mention of faerie boy’s name caused an acidic taste to burn in the back of my throat. “For not giving us all the details about how the Ira works. Although, we never should have trusted him to begin with.”
“Yeah, I know,” Alex leaned back against the cement wall and folded his arms across his chest.
“What will they do to us?” I asked quietly. “The Water Faeries—what will they do to instil fear in us?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, and I knew he was lying by how he avoided looking at me.
“Just tell me,” I said tiredly and slumped back against the cement wall. “I think I need to know what I’m in store for.”
He locked eyes with me. “You really want to know?” he asked, and I nodded, even though I felt like I was being choked. “Okay, well to put it simply you’re in store for a lot of pain.”
I nodded, the choking feeling practically strangling me to death.
It got quiet. Noises of dripping water filled our little concrete prison in a way that was almost maddening.
Pain. I was going to be in a lot of pain. But, was he talking about the physical kind of pain or the emotional kind?
“Look,” he said, before I could ask him to clarify which kind of pain he was referring to. “No matter what happens, I need you to hold on, okay? No matter how bad things get, don’t give up.”
The idea of not giving up was suddenly eating away at me. “But wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t hold on? If I just let myself go?”
He looked alarmed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know…” The prickle was starting to poke at me. Poke, poke, poke. I scratched viciously at the back of my neck. “It means, wouldn’t things be better if I was gone?”
His eyes widened, and he looked as if he was freaking out. Not the reaction I was expecting, but okay. “Wh—why are you saying this?” he asked.
The prickle was really going at it. “Because, it would be better for a whole lot of people if I was. I mean, if I might be the one who’s going to open the portal instead of closing it, wouldn’t that make me be responsible for everyone’s deaths?”
“Where did you get the idea that you’re what’s going to open up the portal.”
“It’s kind of obvious, once I really thought about it. I mean Stephan’s working with the Death Walkers, bares the Mark of Malefiscus, and I saw him in that vision where the world had ended in ice. What do all those things have in common? They’re all bad. So why would Stephan want the star’s power for anything good.”
Alex rubbed his hands across his face, I think, maybe to hide the fact that he thought the same thing I did. When he dropped his hands, though, the look on his face took me back.
“I don’t care what you think the star’s energy is being used for.” His bright green-eyed gaze burned into me. “We came down here to save your mom, so we could try to piece this all together and come up with a plan to stop it. And until we get all that done you can’t give up. You can’t give up before we’ve really even tried, okay?”
Who was this guy sitting next to me, staring at me with such an intense look of determination in his eyes? Yeah, I knew it was Alex, but not the Alex who I first met.
“Okay,” I said, forcing my strange “giving up feeling” away for the moment. “I won’t give up until we’ve tried.”
He nodded and we both sat there in the silence again, staring at the cement wall in front of us. Alex put his knife back in his pocket, slid his hand over, and set it on top of mine. I shut my eyes and let the buzzing take me away from this horrible place. I let in deafen out the screams. I let it sweep me away.