The Rise Read Free Page B

make a traitorous tear leak from my eye, and I was seated. I think I heard the Queen hiss ever so softly, sucking air in sharply between her teeth. Excited little bursts of energy struck me from where Bethany was seated; she was enjoying this. For a moment, my mind was stalled. I felt nothing but shock and pain in the backs of my legs. I heard only the rapid pace of my heart, the whoosh of the air escaping my chest.
     
    And then Marv placed his hulk of a hand on my shoulder, and clamped down with his rough fingers. I knew without trying that I could not move now if I wanted. But that wasn’t all I knew. That wasn’t why my body jerked forward as though I had been electrocuted, and my shoes pounded the floor like the same.
     
    I could not have stopped it. The contact was just too much. I squeezed my eyes shut and watched instead with my mind. I think a small, agonized groan escaped my throat, but I can’t be sure. So much information, so many secrets, so much… darkness. Now I’m sure I groaned. Marv’s soul was black and tainted and ugly. This too, was a bad, bad man.
     
    My shoulders slumped when I was finally able to pull myself away from Marv’s soul, and my breath came in short gasps. More tears rolled down my face. If there had been any doubt in my mind about the type of people I was dealing with here, it was gone now. These men weren’t just bad, they were evil, all the way to the core. It was enough to make my heart hurt. The kind of encounter that instantly drains you of hope, saps the happiness from your world, and leaves you wandering in the dark. When I opened my eyes, blinking at the lights in the room that hadn’t seemed so dazzlingly bright just moments ago, King William was kneeling right in front of me.
     
    Now my breath stopped all together.
     
    “Don’t be afraid, my Dear,” King William said softly, almost whispering. “I don’t need to hurt you to find out what you know, but I will find out. Talking will more likely just make it easier on you.”
     
    He’ssss the one with ssssecretssss…
     
    “What do you want?” I said, and the words came out choked, broken. Marv’s grip on my shoulder was depressing me both physically and mentally. Salt water dripped off of my chin, and I watched it fall to my shirt and make little dark splotches there.
     
    King William sighed, and the smell of peppermint and copper hit my nose. The combination made my stomach turn. “All right, I’ll skip the pleasantries,” he said. “I want to know where your sister is. The Sun Warrior? Alexa, I believe her name is.”
     
    My head jerked up. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me, but for whatever reason I hadn’t been expecting this to be about Alexa. Endless questions flew through my head in the space between a heartbeat, rapid and seeming to grow darker as they progressed. There were two that stood out in my mind. First, if this wasn’t about me, then why was Bethany here? Second, what had my sister gotten herself into since last I had seen her? Knowing Alexa, it was pretty bad.
     
    I looked into King William’s eyes, my vision still a little blurry from the tears that were now drying up quickly. His eyes were unlike any I had ever seen, and once again I felt my control over my mind slipping. If he hadn’t offered the answer to my biggest question right then, I may have tried to charge through his walls and retrieve the answers myself. His eyes were like the sight of water to a parched throat. Dirty water, maybe, but true thirst is never picky.
     
    “Your sister has committed some very serious crimes,” King William said, holding my gaze and pausing as so to let his words sink in. “Treason, as a matter of fact.” Another pause, longer this time. “And murder.”
     
    Like a strike of lightening, anger flared, red and ugly, inside of me. My sister was a killer , not a murderer. There is a difference. Also, if this was the man in charge of the whole show, then Alexa was more of a hero