NovelEnglish
Chapter 43 The Dungeon
*Theo*
“Where shall we take him, my lady?” one of the guards asked Sophia as I stood in front of them,
wearing the torn remains of my guard pants.
Sophia puzzled over me, stroking her chin with one finger as she thought about what to do with me. I
knew that Ciana was panicking back behind me in the garden area still, near where all of the shredded
rose bushes lay, but there were guards between us.
“Take him down to the basement,” Sophia said. “I saw some kind of cages down there. Put him in one
of those.”
I snickered, knowing she couldn’t legally hold me. After all, ‘she wasn’t yet married to the king, so she
wasn’t the Luna Queen. She had absolutely no authority whatsoever to take me prisoner or hold me in
a dungeon.
But I went along with her, all of it part of the plan.
“You can’t do that!” Ciana shouted.
I turned and looked at her, willing her to be quiet. She had to know by now that I was up to something,
didn’t she? The panicked look on her face said otherwise.
Was she really worried about me? That silly woman…
It was nice to think that she might care a little bit about what happened to me, but in reality, she was
probably just concerned that we’d never get back to our own reality if I was locked up somewhere and
not able to help with our plan.
In the basement, I immediately noticed that it was not a dungeon. There were bars here and there that
formed different areas, but I saw telltale signs that this room held lots of secrets. I had to wonder who
had lived here before Sophia and what kinds of activities they might have used the area for.
It wasn’t to hold people as prisoners, not for long anyway. Of that, I was fairly certain.
“This’ll teach you!” one of the guards said as he shoved me behind a flimsy barrier of bars.
“Yeah, he’ll die down here! Starve to death!” another one laughed.
They all traipsed up the stairs, and I shook my head. Getting out of there would take me less than five
minutes.
But that wasn’t what I had in mind.
I could tell by the way the stones were constructed both in the walls and the floors that this place wasn’t
as solid as it was meant to appear to be. There was more to it than that, and I intended to discover
exactly what it was, even if no one else understood my purpose. It might seem to be a distraction from
the true matter at hand, but I needed to sort it all out because I thought it just might make our task
easier.
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For a couple of hours, I took my time feeling along the walls and floor, looking at the different way that
the rocks fit together, searching for some sort of weakness, a breach in the strong hold. A few areas
interested me more than others. I thought I saw a switch mechanism in the floor, but I was afraid to
push it because I didn’t know exactly what it did. It would probably be better to do that under cover of
darkness.
“That was rather impulsive,” Ciana said as she rushed in, seemingly appearing on the other side of the
bars out of nowhere. “You had to go and destroy all of those rose bushes and get yourself thrown in the
dungeon!”
The worried look on her face actually made me feel good. What the heck was wrong with me?
Trying not to smile, I addressed her. “It’s not as bad as you think. Didn’t you notice how unique this
place is?”
I knew her better than she thought I did. I saw the way that she was always looking at every place she
was at, studying it, taking it all in.
“So?” she asked me. “You’re trapped now.”
I shook my head at her. “I don’t think I am. You see-”
Before I could finish, I heard the familiar voice of my brother and saw him traipsing over to the other
side of the bars to stand beside her. “What in the world happened?” Warren asked, still thinking he was
the king. “I’ve heard Sophia was giving you a hard time. Are you hurt?”
He was speaking to Ciana, toying with her, acting like there was a possibility he still had feelings for
her, and it made me want to lash out irrationally at him. How dare he choose to be with another woman
but think that he still had possession of her?
Momentarily, I forgot that it would actually work in our favor if Warren was still interested in Ciana.
Instead, I found myself shouting at him. “Well, if it isn’t the high and mighty king,” I said, my eyes
narrowing as I felt a darkness settle over my countenance. “Who do you think you are? If you’ve made
the decision to abandon her, why are you even here now? Or… deep down, you don’t even know which
of these women you want, do you?”
“How dare you address me in such a manner?” he asked me, coming a bit closer. He and Ciana were
right on the other side of the bars now. “You’re just a guard, and I’m the king.”
Snarling at him, I approached the button in the floor I’d found earlier, a loose stone cast among the
others. I wanted to get out of there so I could teach him a lesson. No longer caring that it would be
better to do this behind his back, I stepped on it, hoping that the flimsy bars would fall away.
I saw Ciana’s eyes widen first as her hands went shooting up in the air. Warren’s did, too, but I wasn’t
as concerned about him.
It wasn’t the bars that fell away-it was the floor! And it just so happened that both of them had been
standing over the trapdoor I’d just triggered when the mechanism was tripped.
“Ciana!” I shouted, diving forward to try to grab her through the bars. She was a bit on the edge of the
part of the floor that fell away, so I hoped I might be able to reach her or that she might be able to grab
hold of the side.
Warren disappeared beneath the floor almost immediately, but Ciana’s hand darted out to catch the lip
of the opening. I dropped to my knees and shoved my hand through, straining to reach her. Just as my
fingers grazed the back of her knuckles, she lost her grasp and disappeared from my sight with a small
yelp.
“Shit!” I fell back onto my ass. That had not been what I had in mind at all….
***
*Ciana*
Water. I heard the sound of flowing water. My body ached, and my eyes refused to open at first. But
somewhere nearby, there was definitely a body of water.
Blinking, I forced my eyes to open, doing my best to ignore the splitting headache that made even the
dim, flickering light around me painful. I managed to sit up, pressing the heel of my hand to my
forehead, and slowly, I focused, trying to figure out where I was.
At first, I thought I must’ve fallen into another realm. The place where I was lying was unbelievable, like
something out of a dream. I’d been in a few enchanted forests in my time since I loved to chase
animals and explore, but I’d never been to any place like this before, and I wouldn’t have thought it was
real.
We were in a cave. The walls were high and smooth, with a few stalagmites and stalactites here and
there. The rich sienna color glowed in the amber lights that flickered off and on all around us, and when
I tried to get a sense of just how many fireflies were flickering as they fluttered by, I knew it would be
impossible to count. There had to be thousands of them.
The water lapped at my shins, so I wasn’t completely immersed in it, thank goodness, or I likely
would’ve drowned. Something told me I had been there a while. Looking straight up, I couldn’t see the
hole I’d fallen through. We must’ve washed down the river or something.
It was then that I realized that I was thinking “we” because I wasn’t alone. Warren was lying on the
ground next to me, and it was clear that his injuries were worse than mine. His face was pale, and his
breathing was shallow.
“Your Majesty?” I said, shaking him slightly. “Wake up, please. Open your eyes.” I slapped his cheeks a
little until he began to blink. Then, he opened his eyes, and I could see he was just as confused as I
was.
“Wh-where are we?” he asked. “What happened?”
“We fell through a trapdoor, remember?”
“That’s right! That little cuss pushed a button and made us fall.” He tried to sit up then, fueled by his
anger, but he wasn’t strong enough, and he fell backward onto his elbows, swearing under his breath.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm“What hurts?” I asked him.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, trying again. “I’m the king. Nothing can hurt me.”
I smiled a little at his determination. “You are the king, but you’re not immortal. Still, I agree. We can’t
let anything happen to you.”
He looked into my eyes then, his eyes widening slightly, and I almost thought it was the real Warren
looking at me, his expression was so tender.
It was clear he thought I was concerned about him because I had feelings for the king, but had actually
been being selfish when I’d said those words. We needed Warren to help us with the task at hand, and
if he was dead, well, how would we ever get the crystal to work?
He knew nothing about that, of course, so he was looking at me like he thought I was in love with him
still. He brushed a hand along my cheek as he continued to stare into my eyes. “You were always so
sweet…”
What was that? Did he still have feelings toward me or was he actually feeling guilty now for how he
had treated me? If I were myself, I might smart off to him and he’d be offended, but I remembered I
was playing a part. I thought… maybe I should try Plan A again by winning him over and getting him to
marry me.
In any case, we needed to assess our situation and get back to the castle. I checked him for injuries.
He had a large gash in his leg that started at his knee and ended at the top of his thigh. It was deep,
and he had lost a lot of blood.
Somehow, he was still alive, though, which made me think he had already started to heal. Using some
scraps of material from his shirt, I bandaged him up.
It was clear to me that he couldn’t walk at the moment, not until he had the opportunity to heal a little
more.
So… the only thing I could do was carry him. “We should get out of here,” I told him, suddenly having a
bad feeling.
“But how?” he asked, gesturing at his leg. “It would be better for you to go out alone and look for help.”
I fluttered my eyelashes to him and shook my head with a determined look on my face. “If I need to
carry you, I will, but there’s no way I will leave your side.”
He seemed to be shocked to hear my words as he murmured, “You don’t need to…”
I interrupted him firmly, “I do! And don’t worry, my dearest,” I said to him. “I will never let anything
happen to you. You are by far the most important person in the world, and as long as I have breath in
my lungs, I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
Yes, he was important. If he died in this illusional world, we wouldn’t be able to complete that darn
quest.
His cheeks turned pink as he took in my words. Muttering something under his breath, he looked away,
and I thought he said, “I never deserved you.”
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