Except this time, I fell forward. I met no resistance. Punching my surroundings was how I always broke through the trance of the illusion.
They must have moved me from my cell while I was sleeping and threw me into a larger one. I was getting faster at recognizing the illusions and breaking out of them.
“Shit, Sie,” Peter said as he rushed over to my hunched form. I must’ve fallen off the illusion-bed of pillows when I attempted to throw the punch. I was laying face down on soft furs.
But something was off. The texture felt so real and unlike the cold, dry cell. For a prison that claimed to be hidden underwater, there was none of the substance around. I licked my cracked lips, wishing to be bathed in the fluid. Wishing for my time with Scottie by the sapphire lake again. I wanted these furs to be her silken skin…
There was so much I wanted that I would never get now.
I would give up the five brand from my wrist if it meant I could be with her again. I couldn’t stop replaying the last time I saw her. How they dragged me away and left her withhim.I didn’t want the Fire Prince breathing. I didn’t want him alive. My fingers curled into the furs, thinking about how his fingers roamed over her bare back the night before my coronation.
And she was still in Lux, withhim, and I would die in this prison, forced to watch endless illusions of them together until it killed me.
Peter grabbed my hand and the touch felt so damn real. “Sie, you aren’t in the prison. We rescued you.”
I looked down at the palm my friend was holding. The scarfrom my blood bond with Scottie was now a thin, white line. I thought of her new cut and the implications of it. Did the Fire Prince force her to make it? What else did he make her do? The worst part about my sentence in the prison was that I would never get to murder him for what he had done to her.
My prayers were being answered because the prick walked into the tent the next moment. He paused by the entrance, looking down at me on the ground. I wanted to give him a matching scar on the other side of his face. I didn’t care that this was only an illusion. It would feel damn good to beat the living shit out of him.
I sprang to my feet, surprised that my body felt nimble. A smile spread over my lips as this was finally an illusion I would enjoy. I was waiting to meet the resistance of the chains, breaking the spell on my mind, but it never came. I was thankful for this kind of torture. If I couldn’t kill the Fire Prince in real life, I’d happily settle for this.
The prince’s silver eyes flashed. I grinned further, my lip splitting as blood trickled down my chin from how chapped and dry they were. I went to bring my fist down onto his face, but he moved out of the way the second before it collided. Peter was up before I could attempt to throw another, and the two of them had me pinned to the ground.
I swore as I struggled beneath both of their weights. “I’m going to fucking murder you,” I promised him. The fever wreaked havoc on my body and left me weaker than I should have been, and I never properly recovered from all the poison I’d been consuming in Tennebris. But if I was at my full strength—
“Whoa. He’s part of the reason you’re alive and breathing outside of a cell right now,” my friend said.
The Fire Prince pressed down on my shoulder. “And I’ll throw you back into one if you don’t calm down.”
My eyes really were playing tricks on me because sapphireones filled the tent as the flaps swayed again. “What are you doing to him?”
“He tried to kill your lover boy,” Peter declared as both him and Tezya shoved off of me. Scottie’s eyes narrowed on Peter, but she said nothing. Didn’t even deny she loved the prick.
I stood, still shocked I wasn’t hitting any resistance.
“If you’re done acting like an animal and promise not to attack any of the people here, you can come to dinner,” the Prince of Lux said through gritted teeth.
I started pacing, half enjoying the freedom of walking and half wanting the illusion to end. It was always harder to come out of the longer ones.This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.I started mumbling, praying to snap out of it.
My eyes scanned the tent, confused as to why this illusion was lasting, why I wasn’t brought back to reality yet. I waited for whatever they were going to throw at me next. I couldn’t stomach seeing Scottie and Tezya at it again. I had to break free before that happened…
“You’re not back in the prison, Sie,” Peter said again as he patted my forearm. I looked down at where his hand met mine. My skin was closed. My arm was healed. I rolled my shoulders, finding stiffness there, but I felt everything. My body wasn’t consumed by fever anymore.
“This isn’t an illusion,” he added as he assessed me, somehow knowing what I was struggling with. My friend tugged on his earlobe, and I entered his mind out of habit.You’re free, Sie. We got you out. You’re safe now.
I looked into my friend’s mossy green eyes as he telepathically said over and over again that I was free. The illusions never did this. No one but Peter knew about our telltale sign.
I met Scottie’s gaze next as I stopped pacing and started to allow Peter’s words to sink in. She’d never looked so real before. My eyes scanned every inch of her body until they landed on her scarred hand. Her new scab was glaring back at me. I fisted myown palm in response. They never depicted her with another scar. The illusion users in the prison only projected her with a matching one to mine. The news of her with the Fire Prince hadn’t spread, probably kept under wraps by the King.
This was real.
Fuck.
She got me out. I looked between Peter, her, and the Prince of Lux, not understanding what happened, but I desperately needed to talk to her.
“Where am I?” I finally asked.
“Well ain’t that the question of the week,” Peter grinned, looking toward the man I hated with all my being.
