What did they mean? I knew who I was, didn't I? I was Rosalia Mallory, a girl left on the doorstep of our town's foster agency to find a new home. From there I went through three homes before at the age of 16 instead of having to live in the group h...
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Ash's POV:
When Rosa says that I feel my whole body go cold like someone's drenched me in icy water. Peering at me with a fearful expression I see her looking at me with a feeling of desperation lodged behind her fear and that causes me to relent. Sighing, I agree with her and promise not to tell Hunter that she's down there when we swap over in the next couple of days. "Thank you," She whispers, sincerity in her tone before she slumps down and sighs, looking up at the top. "You can go now you know, I'm not going to die." She looks at me sideways, her head tilted to the side and watching me with curiously light dark eyes. I smile and nod in her direction.
Leaving I slip through the old wooden door, being as quiet as possible but wincing when I heard the deadbolt slam into its closed position. Through the bars in the door, I see Rosa smirking in my direction and I sigh, rolling my eyes at her. She, from her lying position, shoots me the middle finger and somehow manages to get it high enough that I see it through the slats in the door and return it. Her laugh bounces back to me from the space she's in but it sounds off-key like she's afraid. Looking back at her once more I turn and walk back up to the other, warmer, levels in search of the sign we'd seen carved onto the door of the Ebony Hex mansion, my thoughts crowded with worries about both Rosa and the people we both cared about who were left behind. Left without any knowledge as to where she went or if she was ever coming back...
Rosalia's POV:
Hours later - the next day
Looking around I blink awake, my memory of my conversation with Ash feeling like nothing more than a distant memory. I remember asking him to keep Hunter away if he comes near, a dull feeling of paranoia lodged in my stomach. Moaning to myself my stomach growls emptily and as if to make it worse I can hear Artemis's low whine from whatever they keep injecting us with the longer we're trapped here.
Although perhaps the worst pain is that in my heart that keeps warning me that something is about to go horribly, terribly wrong. The type of feeling I haven't experienced since just before someone possessed Ash enough to make him attack me, bringing to life my nightmare of being chased around the palace and...oh no.....no, no, no. Please no. If my bad feeling is anything to go off of then...then the next experience coming my way is the one I've dreaded from the day I admitted my feelings to myself.
It means that today is the day I have to watch Hunter nearly die.
The dimly lit dungeon room solidifies out of the darkness around me just like any other time I've woken up in this veritable hell hole. I looked up blearily from my prone position on the floor to see Hunter stood at one end and me at the other. His look of pain and resignation cuts to my heart and I try to move. Shackles clink at my ankles and I have to stop before whatever's making them work hurts me again enough of the electric current already thundering through me and leaving me with a pounding headache and stars dancing across my eyes. My arms remain limp at my side. "You shouldn't have come." I can hear the tears in my voice but he doesn't seem to notice. "You shouldn't be here," I try to push my voice higher above the hoarse whisper of before. "I told Ash..." I cough, more discoloured blood decorating my palms. "I told Ash to keep you away." Tears blur my vision. "You...you need to go. You shouldn't be here." The bad feeling I'd woken up with intensifies the longer he's standing there, his expression confused.
