Laughter slips though my lips. “Torture my soul,” I say, inching closer so our foreheads almost touch. “Been there. Done that.”
She snarls and forcefully shakes the chair, letting me feel her wrath. “Are you mocking me? Me? The Queen of the Underworld?”
No. I’m just trying to stay calm, but the irony of what she’s going to do is kind of amusing.
“Have you lost your sanity already?” she snaps, the tight grip of her fingers rupturing the wooden armrest of the chair. “Are you worthless?”
“Maybe,” I say dryly.
She gapes at me, but then all shock and rage erase from her expression as she holds the sapphire up in front of my face. “How about I take that smirk off your face?”
I try to turn off anything that I’m feeling as the sapphire begins to shimmer and vibrantly glow, but then an image of Alex lying in a pool of his own blood beside the lake presses into my head and fear starts to surface. I shove it down, yet then I see my mom rotting away in this awful place. The Queen’s laughter echoes inside my head as I see myself in a room alone, secluded, and detached. Then it shifts to a different room, one where I’m with Alex and he tells me he loves me and I can’t say it back.
Fear floods through me as I see myself killing Nicholas, slitting his throat, and liking it. I see the mark on my arm. I see myself standing by Stephan and the Death Walkers. It’s too much and I let out a scream wanting to rip my heart out of my chest so I don’t have to feel the pain anymore.
The Queen laughs as I scream again when I picture myself burning into ash. The speed of the images only quickens the more time goes by, flipping at such a swift rate they start to muddle together.
Then suddenly it stops; the noise in my head and the ache in my heart. When I open my eyes, the Queen and the sapphire have dropped to the floor.
Seconds later, the Water Fey also drop to the floor in piles that encompass the Queen’s slackened body. Time freezes for a moment as Alex and I take in what happened.
We both stare at the heaps of boney bodies and then Alex rushes toward me.
“What the hell happened?” I ask as he crouches down and unlatches the straps around my ankles.
“I have no idea,” he says.
I glance down at my locket. “Did this do it?”
He eyes the violet-stoned pedant. “I’m not sure… It could be… or it might have something to do with you… with your soul.” He slips the last buckle loose from my wrist and then pulls me to my feet.
“Because it’s broken,” I state, massaging my aching chest with my hand. “Maybe it broke her, too.”
He looks at me with remorse. “Let’s get out of here before they wake up.”
I nod and we run past the bodies of the Fey and out the door. The Water Fey in the torture chamber are out cold, too, slumped all over the floor and the tables; even on the humans who are awake and instantly beg us to free them.
“Come on, little girl,” one guy with blonde, shaggy hair and sullen eyes purrs from his restraints. “Just undo the straps, okay? I promise I don’t bite.”
“Gemma.” The sound of Alex’s voice brings me back to reality as he tugs on my arm. “Let’s go. Remember they’re here for a reason.”
We hurry away from the guy and I sprint to keep up with Alex as he dashes into the tunnel. The vines above our heads are charred and aren’t re-growing, bits and pieces are all over the ground, floating in the mud puddles.
“We have to try and find water,” Alex says as we race past the cell doors. “They have to get into the lake somehow and, if we can find out how, then maybe we can swim up through it.”
“I can’t swim, though,” I say, my shoes splashing in the puddles.
“I’ll help you,” he replies, curving us to the right. We round a sharp corner and more doors appear.
“Wait,” I skid to a stop, tugging on his arm, forcing him to stop. “We have to find my mom first.”
He shakes his head, looking at me sympathetically, but there’s stubbornness in him as well. “We have to go,” he says. “We don’t know how long they’ll be out.”
“I’m not going without her.” I refuse to budge, digging my shoes into the dirt and holding my ground. Alex shakes his head and I quickly add, “Alex, it’s my mom.”
He wavers, his expression softening, and then he grudgingly nods. “All right, but as soon as I hear any sign that they’re waking up, we’re leaving without her. Got it?”
“Thank you.” I stand on my tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek.
We hastily start to unlatch doors and check inside the cells. Most of them are empty. A few have humans in them, most are sickly looking, scrawny and underweight. A few of them scream at us the instant we open the door while others look comatose.