The Art of Courts and Lies (Book 1 in The Gifted Trilogy)

17- The True Enemy

It felt as if I had just swallowed a stone whole and when Briar closed my bloody fists over her own and moved me away from the unbreakable walls of our cage, I didn't fight her.

    "What's the matter with her?" One of the girls asked.

    "You guys don't get it do you?" Briar hissed seeing as I was currently unable to form words. She had been standing close enough to hear Kesserian when he let that little detail slip. "They trapped us in here because the people out there are our people! The threat is not on our lives, but on being freed by our people!"

    A girl with curly red hair stepped forward, her eyes wide in fear. "You mean our loved ones are here? Our families."

    "At the least, somebody that cares enough about one of us to fight an impossible battle" I managed to confirm.

    At that, the girl dropped to her knees and let out the most painful cry I had ever heard.

    "No!" she screamed, tears running down her face. "Ethan!"

    A girl with mousy hair dropped to the floor next to her, trying to comfort her panicked friend. "Marissa! What's wrong? Who's Ethan?"

    The crying girl, apparently Marissa, was now shaking horribly and couldn't find the energy to look anywhere but at her trembling hands in front of her.

    "He's the love of my life!" she let out in a wail of agony, her words barely comprehensible. "He was my fiance when-" she hiccuped. "-When I was taken. He swore to the guards that dragged me away that he would find me and he would kill the bloody bastards that dared to take me away from him."

    The blood in my veins turned cold. If that man had stayed true to the promise he made his fiancé, then this girl might currently be trapped down here while the love of her life was being tortured only a few feet above us.

    The thought apparently crossed plenty of the other girl's minds because they were all now looking towards the ceiling in horror.

    "My father" a girl with pale blond hair started, her lips trembling. "My father had sworn to me if I was ever selected, he would stop at nothing to bring me back to him."

    "My sister" another girl called out, clutching a fist to her chest while shaking her head madly. "She's brave and stubborn enough to try something like this too. Told me I was the only thing that mattered in her life and she'd be damned if she let anyone take me away from her."

    A dozen of the girls collectively dropped to the stone floor together, as if the weight was suddenly unbearable to carry. Only Briar and I remained standing. I took her hand and squeezed.

    "Wren, what if my dad and brother are up there too?" she asked me and for the first time since I'd met her, I saw a look of fear cross Briar's face.

    I suddenly thought about Porter. It had been almost a week since I had been taken and made Porter promise to get Tessa safely to another continent. Was six days long enough for him to sail her there and then sail back alone? Was he really foolish enough to try and break me out of somewhere he knew was impenetrable?

    The answer came immediately and I felt my knees give out as well. Yes. Yes, he was that reckless. Yes, he was stubborn and inventive enough to try and form a plan like this. It was one of the hundreds of reasons he became my best friend. While I was being trapped underground there was a possibility that my best friend was only a few feet away, fighting for his life to get to me.

    And the idea shattered my entire being.

    The same idea must have been shattering the girls all around me too, because nobody said a thing. The only sound where choked cries and panicked breathing.