FOR THE UNKNOWN KINGDOM | BOOK 1

CHAPTER 19

All the times I'd still been in Lantra, he'd always appeared injured, scars and scratches marking his skin. At first, I'd thought he'd gotten into a fight with someone, or something like that; at first, I'd asked him to never appear in my life again. If he'd agreed, I would have been dead by now, executed and burning in some cauldron in Hell. If he'd agreed . . . A chill ran down my spine at the thought of everything that would have happened if he hadn't come back for me, if he'd let me drown, if he'd let me die.

The road we'd taken was riddled with an eerie kind of mist I'd never experienced before, and resulted in a restrained view of everything that lay ahead of us. Yet we continued walking.

"I can stay to another world only for a limited amount of time. The longer I stay, the worse the punishment is afterwards," he replied, his eyes still locked in mine as if he couldn't believe what I'd done, as if the color of my eyes was the only color he'd ever witnessed and suddenly his world wasn't black and white anymore but stellar green.

I forced myself to look away from him and focus on the road ahead as I said, "Well . . . Thank you, then."

My words hung between us, making the howling wind sound like a soft whisper.

"Anytime," he replied.

His lips formed a gentle grin, but his eyes betrayed him. The usual glimpse that had previously danced in them was gone, not a sparkle of enthusiasm or anticipation in them anymore. Waves of worry seemed to emanate from his stare, I could feel them floating in the atmosphere as well.

I would surmise that the street was endless, being given how much time we'd been walking without taking a turn and how foggy the atmosphere was, if I hadn't seen an imposing building looming in front of us. In the color of gray and without balconies, I counted the floors based on the windows. Darkness and smoke beckoned beyond it. I savored the sensation of comfort that Denfer's presence next to me emitted and kept walking. An iron fence secured the towering building from invaders. It looked like a prison. Yet the fence's door was open.

And there were voices, too. A loud but distant murmuring, like myriads of people had been enclosed in this ghostly, preternatural building. My blood froze in my veins at that thought alone and I clenched my fists. "Come here," Denfer demanded, gripping my wrist to follow him. I did.

He guided us behind a bench, and he knelt on the soggy ground, forcing me to do the same. For a moment, it seemed like we were playing hide and seek, trying to camouflage ourselves from that pickling sensation of fear that ruled over the capital. There was silence and the sound of rain falling over the rooftops of the houses that looked like graves in the nighttime. And on top of that, there was this slithering murmuring scorching our ears.

"They must not understand that we're here," he whispered in my ear. I loosed a breath. Denfer held his own.

He rubbed his neck as in contemplation of what was happening, and agony rippled across his tan face.

"Will you tell me what's going on?" I dared to ask.

A moment of silence.

"They're planning their suicide if I'm not being mistaken." His voice was harsh, deep and my eyes opened wide as I met his stare.

Death lingered over the city of the dead, and somehow I'd never experienced fear so deep and mad as I did now. Putting a hand on my chest, I focused on my breathing. In and out. Out and in.

"What the Hell, Denfer?" I managed to say. "Why? Why would they do this?"

He covered his head with his palms, his fingers messing with his wet hair. "They're unhappy, Velian. The Gap World is killing them. They prefer Hell over this," he said while pointing a finger at the houses, the poverty, the rain. "At least, the Devil feeds all of its prisoners."