The King's Remorse

Undead - Jabez - Chapter 8 - Then Things Changed

Chapter 8

Then Things Changed

The snake sends a wave of venom crashing through me, and it sears through my veins. I cough as I choke and sputter, but I still grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut as I flex my toes and pull as hard as I can on the snake's chains.

"Jabez!" Astra cries.

"Stay here, please," Brook says. "The Amethyst Throne is very dangerous."

"We need to help," Alex says.

I adjust my grip and curl my lips as I resist the snake and snarl. The sound changes nothing, but it feels good. It feels right. Another snarl rumbles in my throat.

But when the snake doesn't budge, and all that happens is the pain grows and grows and grows until it's screaming from every bit of my body and it's all I can hear, all I can feel, all I can think, the temptation to just stop grows too.

A sob catches in my throat. I want so badly to lose myself in the icy waves of unconsciousness, drifting so far from reality that maybe I won't have to feel it all. I know I can't. I know I have to keep trying, but I still want to and I hate that I do. Astra needs me. Maybe I could've helped her by staying with the King, but I know all it takes is one little time where he gets upset. I can't help my daughter when I'm trapped and chained to the Amethyst Throne.

xxxx

I yank on the snake's body again, and it responds with more venom.

Saliva froths on my lips, and blood runs freely from my mouth and neck. Tears pour down my cheeks, and I lose touch with reality. I don't know how long has passed. I can barely feel the ground beneath my paws. I feel like I'm floating, detached from my body.

I feel a paw against my hip, and I flinch, kicking out with a hind leg as a broken growl cracks in my chest.

The snake spasms and writhes, twisting around my left foreleg until I lose all sensation and my paw goes limp.

I hear a whimper behind me that's followed by the snake's body going taut. I groan as the snake's fangs tug on raw flesh, hypersensitive from the venom and all the broken nerves. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to slow my fluttering heartbeat. I want to scream, release all of the everything from within me, and let it all go, escape everything until I'm somehow free and don't have to deal with it all. I want to scream out all of the everything until maybe I can just be left alone and I can be with my daughter and we can figure out some semblance of a normal with the gaping hole Freedom's death has left in my heart.

Maybe I can rebuild with Astra, maybe I can someday find some way to escape the King, but I cannot escape what he's done. My body will never recover. It can't.

I feel the paw brush against my hip again. I shift away the slightest bit, as far as I can go with the snake's chains still tight against my foreleg.

"Who's that?" Phoenix mutters.

"I don't know," Ky replies. "I'd imagine another victim of the cream puff. I don't think you could get your mouth bound like that without the cream puff."

"Who are you?" Phoenix spits.

"They ain't gonna respond," Alex shoots back. "Their mouth is bound."

"Outis," the King drawls. "Oh, Outis. What are you doing here? You know you cannot do anything. You've proven that time and time again. Wander the halls of my castle. You know that's all you can do."

I squint against the light when I open my eyes. Outis sits on his hind legs and holds part of the snake's body in his forepaws. He stares at Astra and the others with open distrust.