Cry Me a River |✔️

Chapter 66- To the Dungeon

^^My baby's back!! xD^^

"So verily, with every difficulty there is relief."

Chapter 66

To the Dungeon

River's POV

The world was painted in black and grays. My mind was hazy, disconnected as I hovered between space and reality. Shapes and figures stood above me as harsh voices spat at me through the haze and fog. It all felt so dream-like. I was there, watching the story unfold yet not truly experiencing it.

A high-pitched wine filled my mind, shook my very core as pain registered in my mind. Yet from where, I did not know. I was a masked captive in a dark world, riddled with anxiety.

"No."

A pitched, melodious voice rung through my darkened cell. A spark ignited. The familiar voice registered in my mind.

Luna. Luna, is that you?

Yet, no reply.

Then, suddenly, a face pulled through the grime. His face contorted, pulled back in absolute horror. Lines marred his face, signs of age against his whitening skin. White stubble marked his chin and upper lip that had now turned to sneer.

His Highness.

His hand reached up to the sky and with it came a stampede of men coated in metal. Their armor moved with a series of harsh clinks, feet stomping against withered flowers and mauled grass as they moved in great haste in my direction.

And like that, the haze cleared. The fear shaking my body had completely startled me awake. My fingers coiled around the soft grass, nails finding sanction digging into the cold dirt. My knuckles squeezed tight. Though against my paling skin, the white could barely be seen. Rather it blended right into my now ghostly form.

My breaths came out in shattered gasps. And only when one man kicked over a golden pail in his hurried movements did I begin to recognize the return of color.

My eyes had not withdrawn from the large, moving armor towards me until that very moment and in the millisecond it took me to eye the fallen pail, it was the last before my gaze pulled back only to find the large figures above me.

My heart stopped.

My breath lodged in my throat, choking me. And just as I wheezed a single breath, multiple arms reached me. A whimpered cry escaped my throat as I shoved to the ground, my head connecting once again against hard rock and pointed stone.

Black stars twinkled momentarily against my vision, spotting the already gruesome scene. Multiple armored hands wrapped around my arms, pulling me from the ground forcefully.

My heart beated in my ears, the gruff voices of the men above me overshadowed by my pulsing chest. The garden grew farther and farther away as I was dragged backward, away from my haven, away from Alastair's room.

Away.

As I was pulled around a pillar, my throat tightening as my eyes locked on a familiar caged door, a gust of wind brushed past my grimy hair, pulling my attention to the garden for just one last look. And as my eyes locked on His Highness standing beside the fountain with a crooked smirk lining his euphoric, upturned face, horror swept through me.

He had planned this. He wanted this.

No man can watch another pulled through such atrocity, such cruelty with a pleased smile. No, that was but the face one shows his enemy by his downfall.

And down, I was surely falling.

☽

I was shoved into a dark, clammy cell. My feet pressed against the cold rock as I took to the bed swinging from a thick pair of chains across the cell. Though, within moments of sitting on it, I become well aware that it was less bed and more rock, like the ground I had just fallen on.