Friends with the King of the Underworld | Book 1

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I wasn't sure when I would start feeling like myself again.

As if I would know what that meant now.

Damien assured me that all I had was time.

But I didn't. I didn't have time. I wanted to see my parents again - I wanted to go back to my life.

I wanted to put everything that happened in the Underworld behind me.

Damien took me for a walk a couple of days later.

I didn't want to stay in the room any longer.

I still needed some reassurance as I walked through the halls - that everything was real and still there. I held on to Damien's hand or touched the pillars of the halls as we passed them.

Eventually we made it to the royal gardens.

I realized immediately as soon as we arrived how ancient the Royal Gardens really were.

Everything moved but didn't.

The trees were bursting with life - it wasn't just the sprites I'd seen before.

The garden was alive.

It breathed and teemed and flowed and ebbed - it was extraordinary. I could see life within the bark of the trees around me. A haze had been lifted. It sang to me. It was entrancing and haunting and breathtakingly beautiful.

I'd never felt anything like it.

Before, the garden only had ancient trees with mighty large trunks rooted to the ground. Now, they were bursting with energy, life and light. It was brimming with old life - its energy running through it from the leaves, to the roots in the ground to the soil around it.

I was mesmerized as I watched the energy course through the tree like tiny colorful ants running up and down the bark.

I stood closer to it - I needed to feel it beneath my fingers. I needed to touch it.

"What do you see?" Damien breathed.

I didn't even notice that he was watching me as I approached the tree, touched it and closed my eyes to hear its song.

"All of it," I whispered. "Can't you hear it?"

"You and I have very different powers."

I breathed in the frosty air and when I opened my eyes again, Damien had stepped away giving me space.

I finally tore myself away from it.

I had to ask the question again. I needed the reassurance. I didn't face him as I asked him for what must have been the twentieth time since I was awake. "Is Robyn really dead?"

"Yes." He didn't hesitate.

I swallowed. "What happened that night? The night of the party?"

At first, I thought he hadn't heard me. For a second, I thought maybe the wind carried my voice.

It wasn't until I turned to him that I saw that he was struggling. Struggling to decide whether to tell me some of it or struggling to tell me the whole truth, I wasn't sure.

I turned to him fully. "No more secrets."

He looked at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. But I could see what the weeks had done to him.

I was too swallowed up in my grief to notice his.

While he didn't have any dramatic physical changes like I had - I couldn't even recognize my hollow face in the mirror - he was beat down. His shoulders slumped for the first time since his father passed away. The cocky smile disappeared from his face. Now, he was just worried.