Elements of Fire Book Two by Odette C. Bell

Author:Odette C. Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Odette C. Bell

9

It takes a long time for me to wake. I feel like I’m in a fugue. As if my mind has been filled with fog and I will never be able to have a clear thought again.

But slowly, painfully slowly, I start to feel the world around me.

At first, I can sense the hard stone beneath me. I can’t remember what’s happened to me, but I don’t remember falling asleep on rock. It’s a far cry from the comfortable bed I’m used to.

The next sense to hit me is the smell. It’s a cross between burning hair and sweet, sweet oranges.

It’s disgusting, and yet, at the same time, leading. Like it’s a hand that’s wrapping around mine and pulling me forward.

Though my body is weak, I scrounge the energy to blink one eye open, then another.

I stare up at a concrete ceiling. It’s rounded, almost as if I’m in some kind of huge pipe. It’s also cracked and moldered.

There’s only a soft light in the room – and from the flickering quality of it, I can bet it comes from a candle.

With a grating groan shaking from my lips, I manage to turn my head to the side, my messy hair catching around my ears and neck.

I catch sight of at least ten candles sitting on the floor in a rough semi-circle. They are all, somehow, flickering in time as if they are dancers who are shifting to the same beat.

There’s something truly mesmerizing about their coordinated movements that it draws me in for several seconds.

Then reality sideswipes me and practically knocks me off my stone bench.

A blast of pure adrenaline-laced fear slams into my gut as I remember being pulled under my bed in Richard’s offices.

My eyes widen, the skin around them stretching and straining as I try to push up. My arms are all weak, and they shake, bucking like stretched wire that’s about to break.

I manage to pull myself into a seated position though.

I stare around the room.

I have no idea where I am. There’s nothing in this room, save for me, the carved stone bench I’m on, the ten candles, and a door. The door is behind the candles, almost as if they’re protecting it.

I stare at them, never blinking, my eyes drying out but becoming nowhere near as parched as my throat as I gasp through a swallow.

I recruit my stomach muscles with a grunt as I try to sit straighter, but I shake back and forth like a flag that’s been caught in hurricane-level winds.

My brow’s all sweaty, and my hair is just a clump of knots around my shoulders and cheeks. I peer through it as I bring up a shaking hand and shove it out of my way.

Then I let my terrified gaze jerk back to the candles.

They’re still flickering in perfect unison, like some kind of army that can’t be split.

“… What is this place?” I finally force myself to ask.

There’s no answer. And yet, as I ask my question, the candles flicker, all ten of them dancing to the side as if they’re trying to avoid my breath.

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