Wild Jewel [Enter a world of Faerie Romance]

Wild Jewel - Chapter 31

I'm not awfully happy with this chapter, as you could tell, it's been a while and all I was doing was rewriting and rewriting this chapter. I've written part of the next ten chapters, and I can finally see the light of the end. So excited.

Alright, happy reading!

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Chapter 31

Leodáin’s POV

My mind is a mess. Daniella is to be beheaded at dawn, my mother has died in front of my eyes only an hour ago and I am on arrest inside my own bedchamber. I could feel there was something not right going on here. There was more behind Victor’s actions than was originally given. Was he planning an open attack on the Creatures of the Forbidden Forest? It certainly seemed that way. The way he’d treated the dwarf…spoken of them when I’d told everyone I’d been living amongst the creatures…the way he’d sneered at Daniella…

Daniella was constantly on my mind. Sure I was also trying to figure out a way to stop Victor and to figure out my own escape, but Daniella… It had been hard enough seeing the dwarf in those dungeons, chained and shackled, balled up against the wall to keep himself from going cold. To think of Daniella in the same situation made me feel crushed and helpless. And the chances of her shackles being iron…poisonous to her system…

Victor. This was of his doing. Was it his hatred that forced him to want nothing more than to destroy a relationship? To destroy a life? Two lives even? My life was tied in with hers, and if hers ended, mine would do so as well. It couldn’t possibly be out of revenge for his daughter’s death, could it? Surely it would be because the Creatures of the Forbidden Forest have been seen out from under their rocks for so long that it has forced him to do rash actions.

No, I couldn’t make excuses for him. No matter how I tried to see goodness, there was nothing but evilness in his actions. And Daniella’s life. I cannot just sit here while he gambles with her life. I have to get her out from that cold, dark dungeon.

I am pacing along my room, lost as to what I should do. As soon as I’d entered the room, I’d checked the secret door to the tunnels to which I knew lead to the dungeons. But somehow, someone had sealed it shut. I didn’t know what to think. No one knew about these tunnels except for Daniella and Mahlita, and neither seem as though they’d request for these tunnels to be sealed.

I am in my room for the most part of the day, and much to Victor’s words, no one was allowed in or out. Despite the fact that it meant I had no food, I couldn’t have felt more adrenaline pumped. My heartbeats were on a constant fast-paced rhythm, and the best I could do was to keep myself from breaking something in the room. My hands were shaking in anger and anxiety; rage toward Victor, grief for my mother’s death and my panic for Daniella. All through the day, my mind was getting worse, spinning around with thoughts, back and forth with Victor, my mother and, mostly, Daniella.

With my only hope for getting Daniella out sealed off, my panic increases, knowing that Daniella is there waiting for me to fulfill my promise, to find her and to break her out. But I had hardly any ideas. There would be at least a handful of soldiers outside my door, and even if I was able to miraculously fend them each off and find my way past them safely, there would be no way that I could get through the castle without someone detecting my presence and restraining me back to my own prison.

Almost as though the world had sensed my hope for something, I hear a commotion outside my door. Sort of like struggles. I hear a few swords clashing, some loud thumps and thuds and a few more hushed words, but it was almost as though someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep quiet. My confusion deepens, and my heart rate increases as I wonder what the commotion was about, when the doors swing open to reveal my fellow knights.