Page 50 of How Does It Feel?

It wouldn’t catch.

I pressed harder, careful not to snap the end off in the lock. Sweat droplets beaded across my forehead as my panic began to flare.

“Shit!” I cried.

It wasn’t working.

“Callie, please! You cannot leave this cell yet. It is not safe for you out there! I am doing what I can to convince him—”

“Convince who?” I paused and felt the blood drain from my face.

I turned to look down at the small creature.

“You know who,” he stated. “I’ve known him longer than most, and he can be reasoned with. I just need to convince him to return you to the humans. I’m close, I know it. He will listen to me.”

“Return me to the humans so I can be a part of the genocide when you destroy us and take over?” I said bitterly.

It all began to sink in. I had fallen into something much larger than I could have ever realized. Even if I managed to escape, for how long would it be? Was I even escaping them once I returned home?

A cold sweat sent chills down my spine

They would annihilate everything and everyone in the human realm if I didn’t find a way to stop them.

I fell back against the iron bars. My body slid down limply until I sat with my knees pressed to my chest on the musty stone floor. The distant rhythm of dripping water somewhere in the dungeon was the only noise.

“I can’t let him take over the human world,” I whispered more to myself than brown rat.

What about Cecelia? Earl? Cliff? They would all die. Everyone would die.

“There is something different about you, Callie. I can convince him to keep you alive. I just need more time. He’s not as horrible as most think. Please give me time, do not leave the safety of this cell.”

I stood back up on shaky legs as I heaved out a long jagged breath. I removed the key, wiped the bone on my dress, then re-inserted it into the cell’s keyhole. I needed away from these bars, away from this place. It was doing something to me.

I looked at the heap of green bog on the floor.

I pressed the bone key up, this time putting pressure on the top.

Clink. It had hit the tumblers.

The cylinder shifted, opening the cell door.

My mouth hung open.

I turned to make eye contact with Brown rat, his tiny mouth slacked wide as we looked at each other, shocked it had worked.

I bolted as fast as I could to the other side of the iron bars. The free side. I was at the end of the long hallway. Cells lined the left side while torches hung on the right.

Silence.

Everyone was either asleep or dead. I took my first breath of musty freedom. I was so close. I would get out of here and find the ring of destroying angel mushrooms—the portal. They would send me home so I could alert the humans. Tell them . . .

I stilled.

Tell them what? That there was another world full of magical faeries? That in that world, the evil Unseelie Fae fought against the good Seelie Fae for possession of our world? No one would believe me.

Was I really that sure I wasn’t lying in a hospital with a head injury dreaming this all up?

I ran for the stairs I knew would be around the corner at the end of the hall, the same stairs the prince had dragged me down.