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3
BELLE
My head is pounding so hard it’s making me nauseous. I blink, trying to focus my eyes, but no matter how hard I try it doesn’t work. Trying to see makes me more dizzy so I keep them closed.
“Asia? Charlie?” My voice cracks and it sounds more like a croak than words.
“Belle?” Asia asks and something touches my hand.
I jerk away from the contact before my brain processes that it’s Asia’s hand touching mine. I reach back out, still feeling tentative and unable to see clearly until we find one another. I’m lying on stone.
Stone. Not dirt, this isn’t right. It’s flat, too. With my free hand I rub the stone to find it’s smooth. This isn’t natural.
“Where?” I try to ask more but the words are cut off by a wave of nausea so violent it’s all I can do to not lose it.
“They caught us,” Asia whispers.
“They? No…” I trail off, struggling with a new wave of sickness, then try to get myself oriented. “Bahr? Kiss?”
“Yeah,” Asia snorts. “That was, uhm, one hell of a kiss.”
Okay. That was real. He did kiss me, at long freaking last, and this is the reward? This is some bullshit.
“Charlie?”
“I’m here,” Charlie says.
I open my eyes and the double vision is clearing. Asia is sitting next to my head and when I look down I see Charlie is close too. Neither of them look messed up or hurt, but my head is killing me.
“What happened?” I ask, struggling to sit up.
Asia helps me to a sitting position and I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. The other two shift to sit on either side.
“Othim gave you the kiss to end all kisses,” Asia says.
“And then? That’s the last thing I remember.”
“Then the Order showed up, surprised all of us, and hit Bahr with something that made electricity dance all over the two of you. It knocked you both out cold. And, probably worse for you, Bahr fell on top of you, covering you over with his body,” Charlie says.
“It was romantic,” Asia says. “Except for the whole being captured thing.”
“That explains the metallic burnt taste on my tongue,” I say, looking around.
We’re in what looks like a small cell. It’s maybe ten feet square, with flat stone walls and a smooth stone floor. There are blankets tossed in the corner, a pot in the opposite one, and a door with a large window covered with bars. Sitting against the wall are three short stools the legs of which look like they’ve been recently cut. What there isn’t any sign of is Bahr.
“How long was I out?”
Before either of them can answer, a scream echoes off the walls, bouncing around the small room, doubling over and over until it fades. I flinch and so do the other girls. Asia closes her eyes and mutters something that I think might be a prayer.
“They’re at it again,” Charlie says, her voice trembling.
“What was that?” Asia and Charlie look at each other across me but don’t answer. Charlie thrusts her chin in Asia’s direction as if ordering her to say something and Asia shakes her head no.
“This isn’t the time for coyness! What?”
“Pretty sure that’s Bahr,” Asia says, dropping her eyes to the ground and hugging her own knees tighter.
“No,” I say, but it’s blind denial.
