The Dark Prince's Captive • Complete

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲-𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞 - 𝑹𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓

I recognized that I was acting strangely. Savannah had definitely been giving me enough weird looks ever since I grabbed her after we cleaned up in the bathroom and told her we needed to come here.

It wasn’t rational. I mean, I got that. I really did. It was, as one of my friends described another of our friend’s love of all things mystical like crystals and energy classes and astrology—woo woo stuff—and I’d never really believed in any of it.

And yet…here I was.

Climbing endless, and I do mean endless, stairs towards the ruins of a castle built over 500 years ago just because I’d been having very visceral dreams about a woman who died here once.

It was idiotic.

Irrational.

I would’ve laughed at anyone who told me they were doing what I was doing right now. I would’ve worried about the mental health of any friend who got on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle because they promised they’d take her where she wanted to go.

And I never would’ve trusted them when they said they just had an inner knowing that it would turn out okay. I would have asked for the number of their trusted psychiatrist.

So the fact that I was the one behaving this way…

Well, all of it should disturb me in a profound manner, and it ought to disturb me even more that it simply…didn’t.

I don’t know, maybe I had some wiring that had gotten fried somehow recently. Or maybe this was who I’ve been all along?

Or maybe it was schizophrenia.

That was the most rational explanation, really, and I was leaning toward it.

It would explain away all my symptoms. Seeing things that weren’t there. Believing I had a connection with some ghost woman from the past. Behaving irrationally, having delusions of grandeur, acting out in dangerous, self-destructive ways…

Thinking I’d gotten myself entangled with a nest of vampires.

I paused mid-step, hand on the railing of the never-ending staircase up to the castle. I had no idea how many hundreds we’d already come up or how many hundreds there were yet to go.

Savannah was wheezing, struggling about ten feet below me. “Dear God,” she whimpered, grabbing at a cramp in her side. “Please tell me this means you’ve come to your senses and we can go back down again.”

I looked around us. Dense cliff-side forests surrounded us on both sides as the sun dipped below the horizon. The sun had set a while ago and dusk was settling.

We weren’t supposed to be here. The sign had said not to come up after dark. But it was such an out-of-the-way attraction, it wasn’t like there were guards.

And the way I felt lately—itchy in my own skin, ready to take on the world if it came at me, and also like I just wanted to curl up on a mattress somewhere and sob and scream for all the pain and the suffering, so much suffering and blood for so, so long…

No. I shook my head. I couldn’t go back down. I had to see this through.

My feet started moving again and soon I was marching as resolutely up the rest of the stairs as I had the first half.

The sign at the top congratulated us on making it up the 1480 stairs to get there.
But I was too quickly distracted by the sight of the fortress itself, standing dark against the bright moon and starlit sky like a jagged tooth. The sight nagged at me from deep in my memory.

“Okay, we’re here,” Savannah said, huffing for breath and collapsing on the top step. “Satisfied?”

Was she serious? I looked down at her incredulously. We’d only just arrived.

The pull from the castle was stronger than ever and she wanted to just sit down? Now? It was like telling a child they couldn’t touch their birthday cake even though they’d been waiting for it all year. Just cruel.

I bit my lip. “Why don’t you wait here and I’ll just go in a little bit and check it out. I’ll be right back, promise.” My eyes went back to the last little staircase up to the ruins.

“Jesus, River, what is with you?” Savannah exploded, completely taking me off guard.

“Wh—?” I start, confused, but she cut me off.

“I’ve been humoring you, doing all sorts of crazy shit because it looked like you were going to do it anyway whether I came with you or not. Which, by the way, not cool. It is not okay to just ditch your friends like that.”

I frowned, taken aback. I hadn’t meant to— it was just that, all of the sudden, after seeing what I’d seen at the monastery, well, what I’d seen while there. The vision, if that was what you could call it.

Well, after I threw up in the dirt, I just had this deep knowing down in my bones that I had to come here. Right away. Do not stop to collect $200. Or, you know, before I checked in with my teammates and took a vote. I’d just needed to go like I’d never needed to go before.

So I went.

Savannah followed right behind.

And now she was calling me on my shit.

I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t know how to explain it, Savannah. I just know I’m supposed to be here.”

“Did you call on a spirit without telling us? Is that it? Did one of them guide you here? Why didn’t you just tell us you were a diviner?”

What? “What are you even talking about? You mean what you can do?” I felt my eyebrows scrunch up. “No.” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Not before seeing you do it.”

Savannah jumped up from the step she was sitting on, suddenly looking far less winded than she had only moments before. “Don’t you lie to me, girl. I know it might not seem like I care about Alex much but he’s like family. And I’ll do anything for family. Take out anyone who threatens us.”

My mouth dropped open and I took a step back from her.

Was she really suggesting—? And threatening me?

I guess her friendship had just been the pretend kind.

She wasn’t following me because she was concerned about me. She was watching me. For Alex’s sake.

At best she was a babysitter and at worst… At worst, she was my warden.

I spoke my next words quietly. “If that’s how you really feel, then maybe you should head right back down this mountain and leave me the hell alone.”

With that, I turned, sprang up the rest of the stairs, and disappeared into the huge, ruinous castle without her.

I heard her cursing behind me, but I didn’t care.

I was on my own. Just like always.

Click on the star. Please.