Dreams or Reality?

Chapter 41: Healed & Scarred

CHAPTER 41: Healed & Scarred

The fact that this is my third time waking up in a dark cell kind of scares me. What had happened in the hallway came back into my mind as I sat up. It flashed through with freakish clarity. My breathing became panicked and frantic. Wait, breathing? My mind paused for a second and my thoughts were staring me right in the face even though I was afraid to think them.

Dead people don't breathe.

Could I, maybe, possibly, be alive?

Well that simultaneously cleared up and tangled everything. I had most definitely been stabbed. I paused again, the stab wound would at least have left a scar, right? I wasn't sure I wanted to check.

But now that I'd had the idea it'd drive me insane not to know. I took off my shirt and took in a deep breath. In a perfectly straight line going directly over my ribcage and a little to the left but still mostly in the center of my chest was an approximately four inch long scar. Shit. I put my shirt back on. The scar had been right over my heart. I should not be alive, at all. But by all accounts, neither should Serquin and magic shouldn't exist and Anna should probably be dead too because that stomach wound looked too serious for her NOT to have bled to death. And yet, I was alive, Serquin was old but alive, Anna was alive and magic was real. The stuff of fairy tales, and in a way, I'm in one. An awful, twisted, sick princess-less fairy tale, but not all fairy tales have princesses and if you've ever read the Grimm's fairy tale book, you know just how twisted and disgusting those stories can get, not that I'm complaining, they're excellently written and-

What am I doing?

Oh right, I'm distracting myself.

My heartbeat was loud, I could hear it, it seemed to be pounding in my skull.

Unnatural, it seemed to say, freak, idiot, dead.

I wasn't dead. I wasn't dead yet. I had a scar but for whatever reason somebody had healed me and I was still alive. I'm alive, I have to be. I curled up into a ball. The room. The room. The room. It was that spell, the one that had been on the other cell, actually, this may very well be the other cell without torches. I could barely see my hand in front of my face, let alone the walls.

I tried to get the despair out. Happy thoughts. Those happy thoughts related to my friends, and m siblings and Demetri, all of whom may be dead. Demetri! The uncontrollable emotions had blocked my thought process and now that my thinking was fine I was freaking out.

Serquin didn't need Demetri. He might've killed him. It wouldn't have mattered to Serquin if his son was dead. DEMETRI! I mentally screamed, knowing how evident the anguish in my voice was, but I couldn't hide it. I was going to cry again. I knew I would. He couldn't be dead but he must be-

A stirring.

Something came back on the other end of my connection to him. It wasn't words or emotions or memories or anything. It was just a stirring. He was alive, his mind was open to me and he was alive. Right now he was either asleep or unconscious but I was leaning towards unconscious because if he was asleep I'd probably be able to pick up on whatever dream he was having.

I tried to reach into his head again.

Considering the fact that we'd only just established this bond and didn't know what we could do yet, I figured there was a chance trying to locate him would work. Until I realized that I had no clue how. No harm in trying, right?

He was close.

I was excited at how quickly that had come through. He was close. I didn't know whether that meant he was to my left or right or through a wall, but he was apparently close. I decided to locate him, as I said before, no harm in trying, right?