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.
I’m growing frustrated with each dead-end, wondering where else the Queen would keep my mom. However, then I open the last door on the right side and my frustration turns to anxiousness. My heart drops to my stomach as the door swings open all the way.
Inside the tiny cell is a woman, her back hunched over as she sits on the edge of the bed. She’s wearing ratty, torn pants and a shirt. Her brown hair is braided behind her head and her blue irises are fixed on the cement floor in front of her bare feet.
“Mom,” I whisper from the doorway. The word feels strange coming out of my mouth, like it doesn’t belong there.
She blinks up at me, and then looks back down at the ground.
“Jocelyn.” Alex inches around me and enters the cell. “Are you alright?”
My mother only blinks her eyes, refusing to look up or speak. Tears burn in my eyes as pain and the feeling of being unwanted flood me, but I suck them back. Summoning courage I didn’t know I had in me, I step into the room and up to the bed then kneel down in front of her.
“Mom,” I say, lowering my face into her line of vision. “It’s Gemma…your daughter.”
She glances at my violet eyes, curiosity and confusion emitting from her own. Then something flickers in her expression and, suddenly, she’s really looking at me instead of through me. She leaps to her feet and starts to hug me, but then quickly retracts and wraps her arms around herself.
“What are you two doing down here?” Her voice is tight and unwelcoming. “You shouldn’t be down here.”
“We came here for you.” I glance warily at Alex and then back at her. “To save you.”
“You never should have come here,” she says, rocking back and forth as she hugs herself. “How did you even get down here?”
“With an Ira,” I explain, trying not to go into shock over her detached state of mind. She’s been here for a while. She’s been through so much. I ball my hands into fists and stab my fingernails into my palms, shifting the emotional pain inside me to physical.
She frowns up at me. “So you got your father’s power.” She says it with such hatred.
A thousand questions run through my mind, but I bite them back and grab her arm. “We have to go.”
“We need to get to water,” Alex tells her, moving up beside me. “There’s supposed to be a place somewhere down here that will take us up through the lake. A water route maybe? Do you know where it is?”
“We can’t go anywhere.” She shakes her head and shuffles back until the backs of her legs bump into the bed. “The Fey will make us suffer if we try.”
“Jocelyn, no one’s going to hurt you anymore,” Alex says. “We’re taking you home.”
She laughs and then spins in a circle with her arms out to the side. “You think you can escape here? We’re trapped. Forever.”
Great. She’s crazy.
“What about my Foreseer power?” I ask, reaching out to touch her, but fear of rejection forces me to pull back. “Can it get us out of here?”
“We don’t have a crystal,” Alex points out. “We need to find water.”
My mom stops spinning in circles and chews on a strand of her hair as she assesses me, tapping her foot on the floor. “She might not need one if she’s entirely like her father, but if that’s also the case, she’s doomed.”
“Doomed for what?” I ask in horror. “What else could I possibly be doomed for?"
She lets go of the strand of her hair and strides forward, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Evil.” Her smile radiates her insanity.
“I-I’m not evil,” I stutter, though a voice inside my head laughs at me. I don’t know what to say or do. She isn’t the person I’ve seen in the visions. She’s cruel, insane and derisive. “And I’m going to show you right now by getting us out of here, which is a good thing.”
She only laughs, moving away, but she doesn’t argue when I take her hand. “Well, you can try,” she says. “I’m not going to stop you.”
“Okay,” I say determinedly, yet I falter when I realize I only have a vague idea of how to do it. “Now how do I do it? Channel the energy without the crystal and get us to present time.”
“Emotion,” she says simply. “Your father used to do it all the time by getting really angry.” Her gaze skims to Alex. “Or when I would tell him that I love him.”
I shift uneasily. “Is that it? Just feel a lot of emotion?”
She shrugs. “That and you need to have the ability to look a split second into the future then drop yourself into the vision a second behind what you saw, so by the time you make us drop, we’ll have aligned with present time.”
“Huh?” Alex and I say at the same time.
She ruthlessly grins as she swings our arms back and forth between us. “It’ll take a lot of skill. Seeing things quicker than the human eye and placing all of us in the right spot. One false move and we’ll be stuck in either the future or the past. Maybe forever.”
“Sounds pretty simple to me,” I say sarcastically.
She shrugs again, as though she doesn’t care about anything, and it makes me want to bawl my eyes out. “I told you it was hard.” She rubs her hand across her face. “Honestly, we’d be better off here anyways, rotting in our own heads.”
“No f**king way. I’d rather die.” I summon a deep breath. “I’m going to try it.”
“This is a bad idea,” Alex says as I lace my fingers through his and tug him closer. “Using your power like this… it’s too risky and unknown.”
A scream rings through the air and we all flinch, glancing at the door in panic.
“It’s more risky staying down here.” I cup the side of his neck and guide him closer as my mom holds my hand from behind me. “Now kiss me.”
His brows furrow as I lean in and crash my lips against his. I channel every emotion he instills in me as I taste him and let his tongue feel mine. I feel a gentle tug, but it’s not enough. I need something more powerful—something I’ve never felt before.
I pull away and Alex opens his eyes when the high-pitched shrieks of the Fey grow louder as they get closer to the cell.
“I need something more,” I say, my eyes glued to the doorway, my pulse hammering with fear. I bet the Water Fey can sense it. I bet they’re devouring it as they search for us. “I need to feel something new; that’s when it’s most intense.”
Alex rakes his free hand through his hair, leaving his arm on the back of his neck, his elbow bent upward. “What haven’t you felt yet?”