For what feels like an eternity, the whole station stands still. Suddenly I am unable to hear or see anything in my surroundings. I know that people are shouting and screaming, some with tears pouring down their cheeks, some with blood staining their clothes but I can't focus on any of that right now. All I can do is stare at Jasper who is laid in front of me, bleeding and unable to move with a bullet wound in his leg.
Max rushes past me, brushing against my shoulder as he does, waking me up out of my trance. The two of us rush towards Jasper, who is currently trying to drag himself away with his one good leg. Looking around, I try and find the person who has done this but by now he must have moved onto his next victim. He must have thought that one shot would have been enough to kill him.
"Drop to the floor." I whisper to Max when we are closer to Jasper.
He raises an eyebrow at me, looking very confused. "Why? How is that going to help?"
"Just do it, I'll explain later." I reply as I drop down to the floor. "You, stop moving and pretend you are dead. They will leave us alone then." I tell Jasper with my head resting against the cold floor.
Max seems to catch on to what I am saying and the three of us lay there, barely moving. Jasper winces in pain every now and then but he keeps it under control when the rebels are near us.
Time is working differently in this situation. I can no longer tell how long has passed, whether that be seconds, minutes or hours. All I know is that it feels like days we have been lying on the cold floor, with Jasper's leg getting considerably worse. Then a booming voice echoes all around the station.
"Citizens of Strongway, we told you that we would not give in to the queens demands. We will retaliate further until she gives us, the people of this country a voice at last. The queen was warned that our attacks would continue and so they have. Today in this very ordinary train station, blood has been spilled. This could be your sons, your daughters, sisters, brothers, it could anyone you care about and if you don't join us then the queen will never listen and we will never have a reason to stop.
Either we let her kill us by letting the disease spread or we kill ourselves then she will have no country left to run. What kind of ruler would she be then?
Join us to save your own lives while we hunt for the princesses'. We find her, we win, otherwise the attacks will keep happening and will one day affect the queen. Either way, I promise you, royal blood will be spilled."
The voice stops and people begin to leave the station. One by one we hear the sound of boots leaving. Crying begins to stop and slowly I lift my head up to see people doing the exact same thing.
The rebels have left after making their point and a mess.
"Are you able to stand up at all?" I ask Jasper although I can already guess the answer.
He shakes his head at me slowly, obviously in a lot of pain. His face is pure white, there is not a spec of colour found in it. Grabbing him by his arm and hand, I try and support him so he is in a comfortable position. His whole body is shaking badly though and sweat is dripping from his forehead.
Looking over at Max, I ask "What shall we do?" and I see that he is just as worried as I am. His face is almost as white and he keeps biting his lips as if that is going to help anything.
"It's not like we can take him to a hospital. They will only alert the guards and then he will be arrested. And that is the best case scenario." Max says and I know that he is right.
If we took Jasper to the hospital then the palace guards would definitely be alerted. If we are lucky then the palace will treat his leg wound and give him some sort of fair trial. What is more likely to happen though is they will put him in a cell to rot. With his leg, I'm sure it would be a painful death as well. Even if I handed myself back to the palace, it would not help that much. My mother has more power than me and therefore her orders mean more than mine do and she would definitely not listen to me. I need to wait until there is a time for me to bargain with her.
"Are you able to carry him?" I ask Max.
"I can try but I don't know how far I will get. Maybe we should stay here for a while until his leg gets better. I remember learning something in school about applying pressure to a bullet wound." Before I can say anything, Max has already lifted his top and has begun to apply pressure to Jasper's leg with it.
"That's great but we have a rather large problem of guards and medical staff turning up to treat people. If we are not gone soon then we are going to be in the same problem we would be in if we went to the hospital. Max, we need to leave now. That is not a suggestion that is an order." I tell him.
Between the two of us, we somehow manage to drag Jasper onto a field at the back of the station. We are away from the crowds but I still do not feel safe.
"They will do checks to make sure there are no rebels hiding around in the area. We still need to be further away." I say while pacing back and forth.
"I'm sorry but not everything can happen your way, princess." Max spits out the word 'princess' at me as if it is a dirty word.
"Well I am sorry if I am trying to not get us killed. Do you not understand what they would do to Jasper if he is caught? What they would do to all of us?" I am close to screaming in frustration.
"I understand perfectly princess. Jasper and I would be locked away in some cells in the dungeon or wherever it is you keep you keep your prisoners. You will maybe get a slap on the wrist, be told to never do that again and then go to bed with a stomach full of food. You were and never will be the victim."
My hand smacks Max around his face. What he said is true but it still hurts.
"Please c... can you s...s...stop arguing?" The two of us stop what we are doing and turn around to look at Jasper who is helpless on the floor.
"Sorry Jasper, I think we both got carried away. How are you feeling?" I bend down and ask him.
"Fantastic, thanks for asking. Urggh... is there not anything you can do?" he groans, clutching onto his bleeding leg.
"I'm not sure but we are doing our best." I hear Max tell him while I bend down and check his leg.
Removing Max's top, which has be wrapped tightly around the wound, I take a closer look at it. It turns my stomach sick but I know I have to be strong for Jasper's benefit, he is the one going through the pain in the first place. What I do see is the injury getting considerably worse; the blood doesn't seem to stop flowing out.
"Put the dressing back on and try and find something else to wrap around it for even more pressure. That should help." Max comes over and tells me, his voice a lot softer than before. I do as he says, wrapping the blood soaked top back around the leg and then I remove my own top and wrap that around it as well.
"Aren't you cold?" asks Max.
"Aren't you?" I ask him back, not wanting to admit that I am freezing. "What do we do now?"
"Just wait, that is all we can do." He tells me.
The sun soon begins to rise, warming us up slightly but not that much. The colours do look beautiful in the sky and ordinarily I would love to watch them and fall into a daydream but today my mind is elsewhere, focused on Jasper and how we are going to get out of this alive.
"Do you think we should sleep?" I ask, feeling like I could fall asleep in any minute. "The two of us could work in shifts again?" I ask Max who reluctantly agrees.
I get to sleep first while Max watches Jasper and keeps a look out for any rebels or palace guards. It takes me a while before I actually manage to fall asleep and even then; I am only asleep for a couple of hours before being waken up.
"Have you managed to get some sleep yet?" I ask Jasper once Max has fallen asleep.
"I managed to have a couple of hours when you were asleep but the pain was too much. It's hard to sleep when your leg won't stop bleeding. And anyway, I think Max had thought I had died when he realised that I was no longer awake." Jasper smiles at me and I let out a little laugh.
"Well maybe try and get some more, you'll be thankful for the rest in the next couple of days when we are back at it again." I say to him, trying to keep the atmosphere light.
Jasper shuffles over onto one of his side and dozes off, leaving me alone watching over the two of them. There is nothing much to see where we are, just green fields which stretch out for miles, leaving us with nowhere to hide if we needed to. The station is just out of sight from where we are but every now and then I can still hear a siren, or a scream from someone who has just discovered that one of their loved ones are dead. My heart aches for everyone that has been affected.
I decide to wake the two boys up after a few hours, when I finally begin to feel hungry. They probably want something to eat as well. We end up eating some of the food that we took from the hotels that we stayed in which fills us up quite nicely. After we have finished eating, I look into the bag to see that our food supply is running low.
"We do not have much food left; we need to start rationing what we do have." I say once we have finished eating. I see a worried look across both of their faces. "We'll be fine, let's not worry just yet." I say trying to reassure them both and myself at the same time.
"How much money do we have left?" Jasper asks and I shrug my shoulders at him and look over at Max.
"We don't have much of that either. Just enough for another train ticket and that's about it really." Max says with his voice sounding full of gloom.
It is starting to look like that we are really stuck.
"We're going to be living off of berries again aren't we?" Jasper asks, which makes us all laugh, defusing the tension.
"You know you love them Jasper." Max jokes with him.
"Hmm almost as much as I love you." He says back which makes me smile.
Over the week, we manage to retreat further back into the field as Jasper's leg heals. It seems to be healing rather nicely which is lucky for us otherwise we would not have known what to do. When it comes to eating, we have smaller portions in order to make the food last longer along with scourging the fields to see if we can find any more food. Once the week has ended we decide that Jasper is well enough to start walking again and we make our way back down to station only to find out that it is still closed after the attacks.
We get directed to a station at the other end of the city where we then have to buy another ticket because the one we already have is no longer valid. That is all our money gone, just about.
"No getting off until we reach the Cold Lands this time. Even if someone tries dragging us off of the train, we stay put." I say to Jasper and Max who both then nod at me.
"Straight to the Cold Lands it is then." Jasper says as we board are train and begin our journey for hopefully the last time.
A/N: so it is #RoyalWedneaday once again.
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