In The Woods ➳ H.S.

☙ s e v e n t y - t h r e e

Death was supposed to be peaceful, a final resting place, and an unending, undisturbed sleep - which is far from what I was experiencing. I wasn't dead, that much I knew for sure. Unfortunately, the only thing that made me sure of it was the endless pain burning through my body.

I groaned, I feel my head tip to the side and that small movement caused my stomach to do flips and bile to rise up my throat.

I forced my eyes open slightly, squinting against the darkness as I leaned over the bed I was on and emptied my stomach on the bucket already full of my past vomit.

"Be thankful you're still alive." I hear Niall say from beside me. He hadn't left the room since he came in three hours ago.

He had already been here before I came back to consciousness. He had been the one who gave me something to counteract the poison that was injected into my system - but not stop it.

Niall had filled me on what had happened too. He told me how Louis had called back his men after he had knocked out Laetitia and inject me with poison, apparently only launching an attack in the first place as a diversion to get to me.

How Harry had been lividly knocking on my door and attempting to bulldoze it with his body, but was refused entrance into my room because they were still trying to cure me.

Niall had also told me stories. Stories of what happened during the battle. His own included, which was merely sitting in front of Lea's jail cell and having his ear practically bleed off with all the cussing my sister did, and no man even went inside the room. He told me about Liam too. How the guards around Liam and Harry heard them screaming at each other. Liam had apparently switched sides in hopes to end the war he started and bring to life the fantasy future he had imagined with Will, and he had assumed if he were to kill Anne, the war would miraculously stop.

I took a few seconds to wonder how far my old friend had sank into insanity, but the dizziness I felt soon swallowed me up before I was able to think more of it.

But if all that wasn't enough of a shock to my tired mind, he dropped two more bombs: that Anne has been burnt alive along with the king's corpse, and that his own plan has come to a stop.

I no longer questioned why Anne was killed, it was tradition to bring the queen along with the king if he were to meet his end first. I found it truly unfair, but with the morning I had, I barely even had enough energy to be mad about it.

So I had asked him about his plan instead, which he hadn't answered even until now.

"I don't feel alive." I tell him, coughing before chugging down the glass of water on the table beside my bed. The cool liquid glides down my burning throat, soothing it. I sighed heavily afterward, plopping back down on the pillows.

"Well you are." Niall snaps. There was something off about him. Something in the way he lacks his usual aura that tells everyone he knows what he's doing. Now he seemed lost, and confused, as if he had been following the perfect map but the end part of it had caught on fire, burnt into ashes, and completely unretrievable.

I ignored his snappy attitude. "Tell me what else had happened in the battle." I said, eyes closing against the constant pain once more.

I hear him sigh before speaking. "Your friend is dead."

I didn't flinch. "I know. I'm the one who killed him."

"I wasn't referring to Liam." He pauses, causing my brows to furrow. What friend? I don't remember being friends with anybo- "That Malik boy. He's dead."

"Zayn." I say, and only receive silence as a reply.

Zayn's dead.

I didn't react immediately. Hell, part of me didn't even know how, and the other didn't think I should even react.