Page 76 of Into The Green

And me, armed with my gemstones, some talismans, loud music, and a couple vials of poison I had mixed myself, yeah, I didn't stand a chance.

It was September first according to my calendar. Months. It had been three months since I got out of The Green.

Three freaking months.

I slept in spells. The chanting of the redcaps snatching what little comfort I had in my iron prison. I barely ate, the knowledge of my impending future making me too queasy to keep anything down. I worried. I fretted. I read. I tried to comfort myself. I made plans- wild, stupid, grand plans that I knew I could never carry out.

In the daytime, the redcaps slipped away back, I hoped, into The Green. But I didn't take comfort in that. I didn't allow that to give me the confidence to leave my train car.

To put it pretty plainly, I was a wreck. I was crumbling. I chewed my nails to bloody stumps. My hair had started to fall out in stress. I lost weight. I got weak from exhaustion and hunger and lack of sunlight.

I had ventured out to grab bath water, taking a long soak, looking over a body that was almost foreign to me after so much change. There were scars on my arms and legs and feet. My bones poked through where they never had before. I had no mirror, but I knew my cheeks were sinking, my eyes were swollen and unfocused.

I was wrapped in a towel, rolling a rose quartz sphere around the floor with my foot, entertainment being a foreign concept after being so dreadfully alone for so long.

It was then, right then, that my worst fear was realized.

The door wrenched open, making me kick the sphere across the floor as I gasped, my hand going to my heart as I looked frantically around for something, anything I could use to defend myself, to give me a fighting chance. But nothing was close.

The ball stopped rolling and I looked over to find it stopped beneath someone's foot.

"Honey..."

EIGHTEEN

Jasper

It was complete and utter fucking chaos for almost an hour. See, the funny thing about work camps is, the guards get a little too comfortable with their power. When Cece let the women go and the women let the men free, yeah, they weren't just itching to leave. They were thirsting for blood.

And fuck if they didn't spill a whole goddamn river of it.

It was brutal, vicious, horrific. The screams were enough to deafen you, blood-curdling, inhuman screams as guards were literally clawed, bit, and torn limb from limb.

By the time the screams died and the silence fell, every man or woman still capable of standing, stood at once. Each and every one of us literally dripping with blood. Some of the men and women had it dripping from their mouths like fucking vampires. And as sick as that was, I understood that each and every last one of the Dark fae guards had whatever they got coming to them.

"Jasp," Doyle's voice called to me, flooding me with relief. I hadn't had eyes on him in at least half an hour.

"Jade?" I asked immediately, spine straightening.

"Gone. I saw Onyx tear out of here like his tail was on fire, Jade clinging to his back. They'd be at Baba Yaga's by now."

"Thank fuck," I said, taking a deep breath, the first I had been able to since I first found out Jade was missing.

"Jasp... where's Cece?"

The breath got caught in my lungs, burning. "What?" I asked, looking around a little frantically, taking in the dead and dying bodies around us, men and women and guards, heart in my throat that one of them could be her. "She wasn't with Jade and Onyx?"

"No. I didn't see her anywhere."

"The girl in the ripped dress?" a woman's voice asked and I looked over to see she was one of the ones with the horror-movie bloody mouths.

"Yes."

"She came out a minute after the girl and the dog. But..."

"But what? Did a guard get to her?" I asked, my throat constricting at the idea.

She shook her head. "No. It was weird. It wasn't guards and I've never seen them here before..."