The idea of not giving up was suddenly eating away at me. “But wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t hold on? If I just let myself go?”
He looked alarmed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know…” The prickle was starting to poke at me. Poke, poke, poke. I scratched viciously at the back of my neck. “It means, wouldn’t things be better if I was gone?”
His eyes widened, and he looked as if he was freaking out. Not the reaction I was expecting, but okay. “Wh—why are you saying this?” he asked.
The prickle was really going at it. “Because, it would be better for a whole lot of people if I was. I mean, if I might be the one who’s going to open the portal instead of closing it, wouldn’t that make me be responsible for everyone’s deaths?”
“Where did you get the idea that you’re what’s going to open up the portal.”
“It’s kind of obvious, once I really thought about it. I mean Stephan’s working with the Death Walkers, bares the Mark of Malefiscus, and I saw him in that vision where the world had ended in ice. What do all those things have in common? They’re all bad. So why would Stephan want the star’s power for anything good.”
Alex rubbed his hands across his face, I think, maybe to hide the fact that he thought the same thing I did. When he dropped his hands, though, the look on his face took me back.
“I don’t care what you think the star’s energy is being used for.” His bright green-eyed gaze burned into me. “We came down here to save your mom, so we could try to piece this all together and come up with a plan to stop it. And until we get all that done you can’t give up. You can’t give up before we’ve really even tried, okay?”
Who was this guy sitting next to me, staring at me with such an intense look of determination in his eyes? Yeah, I knew it was Alex, but not the Alex who I first met.
“Okay,” I said, forcing my strange “giving up feeling” away for the moment. “I won’t give up until we’ve tried.”
He nodded and we both sat there in the silence again, staring at the cement wall in front of us. Alex put his knife back in his pocket, slid his hand over, and set it on top of mine. I shut my eyes and let the buzzing take me away from this horrible place. I let in deafen out the screams. I let it sweep me away.
Chapter 35
Alex and I stayed the way we were until the door to our cell swung open. When I opened my eyes, I saw that a Water Faerie was hovering in the doorway. I thought about running—knocking the Water Faerie down and bolting for an exit. Although there wasn’t anywhere for me to go…“Oh my God,” I breathed.
Alex looked from the Water Faerie to me. “It’ll be okay, Gemma. Just make sure you hold on.”
I grabbed his arm, my eyes widening as I whispered, “I think I might know a way to get out of here.”
“What?” he said loudly and I shushed him.
“It’s time.” The Queen appeared in the doorway. “Both of you follow me.”
I got to my feet, but Alex just sat there staring at me, still shocked by what I said. He was probably wondering how the heck I could know there was a way out of here. The only reason I did know there might be a way out was because of Laylen’s and my trip to see Vladislav. See, during our visit, when we asked Vladislav if anyone had ever escaped The Underworld, he said yes, and then added that most of the people who do try to escape drown during the attempt. So there was another way out of here besides through the Ira. There was a way by water.
But where was the water? The Underworld was supposed to be below the lake so…I glanced up at the ceiling, at the water dripping down from it.
“Hurry up!” The Queen roared.
Alex got to his feet, and we followed the Queen out of the cell and into the tunnel, which was lined with jail cell doors. We had gone a ways when Alex grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“What do you mean, you know a way to escape?” he whispered. “Where is it?”
“When Laylen and I went and saw Vladislav,” I said, speaking so quickly I tripped over my words. “He said people had escaped before. But most of them drowned.”
He took in what I said. “So we need to find water.”
I pointed up at the ceiling, at the water seeping through the cracks. “We need to go up.”
Alex reached up and touched the muddy ceiling with his finger tips. “So there has got to be an exit somewhere that takes us up.”
“What are you two doing back there!” The Queen’s fuming voice boomed down the tunnel. “Get up here now.”
We hurried and caught up with her. Alex still had his thinking face on, and I could tell he was trying to come up with some sort of plan to get us out of here. I still felt a little skeptical, though, because we still had to find where the way out was, and we also needed to figure out a way to get away from the Queen and her Water Faeries.
But all thoughts of escaping left my mind, when we reached where the Queen was taking us. In fact all of my thoughts disappeared and were replaced by one thing.
Fear.
They say torture is…well, torture. But this was so much worse than I’d expected. Water Faeries were floating around everywhere. But that was the easiest part to take in. The worst were the peoples’ screams that filled up the room. I knew Alex told me that the people who were sentenced here were bad, but it didn’t mean that what was being done to them was right. Each one of them was strapped down on a wooden table, being tortured in various ways, but each one looked equally painful. My stomach rolled at the sight of one man in particular that had his arm twisted in a way that an arm should not be twisted.
“Don’t look at them,” Alex said and I looked away from the torture chamber.