Page 6 of Kingdom of Death and Hope

Everything is going to be okay. Stick to your story and everything is going to work out. Whenever you need strength, contact me and I will help you. You are not alone, Kieran whispers.

“Did you miss me?” Avira pops up right in front of me.

CHAPTER 3

Screaming, I rear my head back, tipping my chair and making me fall backward. My eyes widen as I see the ceiling move in slow motion.

Pain.

Sharp, blinding pain spreads across the back of my head as I lay on the ground, still tied to the chair.

Avira’s face appears above me and she smiles. “I’ll take that as a yes. Too bad I didn’t miss you back. In fact, I didn’t want to come back to you, but I knew I had to.”

Everything around her spins as we stay in this position, my head throbbing with each passing second.

Sweets! Kieran yells in my head, making me flinch.

I moan in pain, tugging at the rope around my wrists. All I want to do right now is cradle my head in my hands and curl up into a ball.

But I can do neither.

“Let’s get you sitting up… how you should be,” she says. “If you feel like puking, please hold it in. Unless you want your cell to smell like puke until you get out of here… if you ever get out of here,” she mumbles.

Why are you in pain? What is she doing to you? Kieran fires off questions.

I just fell backward on my chair and couldn’t stop myself, I tell him. Everything is okay. I’m okay and sitting back up straight.

I completely forgot about him being able to feel all of my emotions and pain. How am I going to keep this from him so he doesn’t come storming into the dungeon to get me?

Adeline, I can tell when you lie.

I inhale slowly, closing my eyes as Avira snaps her fingers and my chair flies forward with me in it, back into a sitting position. Nausea rumbles in my stomach as everything spins around me.

I’m really okay. I just got scared and forgot that I was attached to a chair, I reply, trying to reassure him.

“I was really hoping that you would puke so that you could smell it and be in even more misery. Such a shame,” Avira sighs. “Maybe today we can make you puke and scream for mercy.”

I’m so glad Kieran can’t hear what Avira is saying. Now I just need to have enough strength to block him out from my pain.

Don’t you even think about it, Kieran growls in my mind.

I’m not thinking about doing anything, I reply, hoping he believes my lie.

How did he know what I wanted to attempt to do? It’s like he could read my mind but I know that he can’t. I have asked him so many times and he has always told me that unless I project my thoughts to him, he can only feel my emotions.

Because I know you, Adeline. I know that you won’t want me to feel any of your pain and try to save me, but I don’t want you to do that, he says.

It’s too bad that he wants to feel my pain because when I figure out how to keep it up while Avira is here and hurting me, I will have it up. I know if Kieran constantly feels me in pain that he is going to come into the palace and try to find me, resulting in himself getting captured and more than likely getting killed in the end.

I don’t want you to die, I whisper. I know you as well.

Avira grips my cheeks tightly, digging her nails into my face as she gets close to me. “What did you do with the book?”

I stare into her eyes. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t have the book.”

She growls and pushes my face to the right. Moaning, I move my jaw around, trying to get rid of the aching pain from her nails.

What is she doing to you now? Kieran asks. Tell me everything so that when I get my hands on her, I will make her suffer ten times more than she is making you suffer.