Love me (Love Me, #1)

Chapter 3

It was dark. 

It was silent. 

It was empty.

I felt like I was swimming in a pool of black ink and although I was struggling to find where the surface was, I only saw a black void as I fought not to draw it into my lungs. 

Just as I felt myself slipping away again, a door opened and some feet shuffled in before closing it again quietly. I fought to pry my eyes open, but it felt as though they were welded shut with superglue and a blowtorch. The thought that I was blind flashed through my mind, but I forced it down.

"She's going to be fine Joshua, stop stressing. Give her some time, okay? She'll be back to her old self soon." A husky voice soothed. James.  

"I know she'll be fine, that's not what I'm worried about." A silky voice wracked with pain murmured. Joshua. 

"I...I thought I lost her." Joshua stammered. "I thought she was dead."

I knew he was talking about me, but at the same time someone entirely different. 

"Then I find out she is alive after all this time, which makes no sense at all since she is a mortal! Her lifetime was supposed to have ended many years ago. Now she's here and it's as if she never changed, as if she never disappeared from the kingdom to begin with! Maybe...Maybe this is another chance."

"She hasn't aged, Joshua! That's not normal." James hissed. "What if it's not the Roselyn you remember?"  

"You think I don't know that?" Joshua retorted, almost shouting.

Silence.

"She didn't recognize me." Joshua whispered. 

"Because I've never even seen you!" I screamed in my head. 

Slowly I managed to pry my eyes open and found myself in a dimly lit bedroom. My eyes searched around frantically until I spotted both James and Joshua standing face to face next to the door. I must have made some small noise or something, because both of their gazes shot towards me at the same time and I finally got a good look at them. 

Joshua looked like a wreck. He had bags under his faded emerald green eyes and his sandy blonde stuck out in several different directions. He wore the same clothes he wore in the woods before I blacked out, although the white T-shirt was incredibly wrinkled and his jeans were pretty much in tatters.

James on the other hand had cleaned up since then and was dressed in a tight white shirt with a black, leather jacket and black jeans that had fashionable tears. Blazing, electric blue eyes stared out from under short and styled brown hair and stood against his chiseled jawline. 

Joshua took a step towards me and my gaze flicked back to him, seeing concern written across his face. "How are you feeling?"

Prompted by his words, I remembered why I had fainted and whipped the thin blanket off of me to examine it but what I found left me mind-blown. 

My leg was flawless. No gash in sight or even a red mark to show it was there at all. I stared at where it was supposed to be, shocked. Had I imagined it?

 No, it had definitely happened, I decided. However, where had it gone?

I shot my gaze up to the calm Joshua and pointed at my leg like an idiot. "What...but...how..." I couldn't form a complete sentence.

He chuckled at my response and sat on the edge of the bed I was laying on. Instinctually I pulled my legs up to retreat from him, as though somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that he had kidnapped me.