The Benighted by A. M. Dunnewin

Author:A. M. Dunnewin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, gothic fiction, royalty, steampunk, young adult, romance, action
Publisher: Dark Hour Press, LLC
Published: 2013-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Skylar stared half-dazed at the wall. Something had awoken her, and with her stomach groaning for food, she had crawled towards the plate that had been set next to the iron bars again. Sitting slumped over, the back of her torn dress loosely re-stitched by mysterious hands, Skylar ate the bland mush while wondering about the past lives who had lived in the cell. She looked over to stare at the heirlooms on the walls, the stained legacies left behind, before something shifted in the darkness.

Death was not the haunt people had made it out to be, and she sat staring while the old acquaintance tried to befriend her. There was no noise as it shifted between the cracks in the stone, avoiding the light of the torch. A moan echoed from somewhere, and she stole a glance to see where it was coming from. It wasn’t until she remembered the bars that she knew she would never see what had made the noise. When she turned back to the wall, the movement in the dark was gone.

The isolation stretched out around her, but while still dazed, she finished what was on the plate before glancing up at the torch flame that was flickering against the wall outside of her cell. Part of her knew the dark concealment was getting under her skin, fixing images and casting them on the walls for only her to see, but there was nothing she could do about it. The dark, the coldness, the demonic screams—it all made it easy for the insanity to slip in.

The tremors erupting without warning didn’t help, either. But the tremor that rocked the stone at that moment, moving the ground more violently than before, made Skylar realize that even the stone structure around her had its flaws. It shoved her forward onto her hands as the pipes against the wall rattled into the stone, sending a chorus of bangs to scatter across the prison, leaping with the screams of those it had frightened. The ground rattled her cup until it threatened to tip over, spilling the water her thirst had found precious. Before it could hit the ground, Skylar snatched it, holding it as the quake subsided into soft rumblings and eventually died down. While the following silence was deafening and the stillness nerve-wracking, Skylar remained sitting on the ground, staring at the cup in her hand.

You’re stronger than you think.

The words spoke for her, just like they had when she had first heard them in the abandoned barn. Harlin basking in the morning sunlight replaced the image of the cup she was still staring at in her hand.

“You were given this life because you’re strong enough to live it,” he had been explaining.

“It still doesn’t make things any easier,” she groaned, sprawled on her stomach against the dirt floor, the muscles in her arms burning from the push-ups he had made her do.

“It’s not supposed to. Easiness is not the way of the world.”

Skylar was too

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.