Under: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 5 (The Othala Witch Collection)

by Conner Kressley

  He eyed the unruffled sheets. “I’m assuming that’s as uncomfortable as it looks?” he asked, looking over at me. His red hair, like that of his mother’s current body, sat in wild tufts on his head, and his lips, plump and inviting, curled up mischievously at the ends.

  I opened my mouth, but the words still wouldn’t come.

  “Oh,” he said, looking me over. “Did she forget to reverse that?”

  He waved his hand, and a low groan started in my throat. I could talk again.

  “There we go,” Prince Park said. “I’d apologize, but I’m sure you understand how ridiculously busy things can get around here.”

  “I want to see my sister,” I said, my voice hoarse and low.

  “Again?” He raised his eyebrows, eyes going wide. “You just saw her yesterday. Now, I’m not an expert on siblings by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve always heard that they sometimes need a bit of space in order to grow into their own identity.” He smiled. “How about we give her that?”

  “How about you let us go?” I asked, breathing heavy and moving closer to him.

  Prince Park was taller than he’d looked stretched across his throne. His long arms and legs complemented his broad frame even more while standing up.

  “You know we can’t do that. Not yet,” he said. “And, to be completely frank, I’m not quite sure why you’d want that. You’re guests of the regent. Do you not understand how big an honor that is?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. Why don’t you tell me what it all means—what’s the plan here?”

  “You want me to tell you that?” he asked, covering his chest with his hand in mock bafflement. “I’m just here to feed you, farm girl.” He motioned to the covered tray on the counter. “That is, unless you’re feeling too self-righteous for sustenance.”

  “You know what?” I said, crossing my arms and narrowing my eyes. “I think I am. You can take that right back out with you.”

  “Should I take your voice back with me as well?” he asked, his lips twisting into a smirk. I couldn’t get a read on him. Was he teasing or serious?

  But it was then that I saw something strange. Something that told me all I needed to know about Prince Park.

  His eyebrow.

  It was broken in half, setting right above his sea-green eyes.

  Prince Park had been the surgeon.

  “You,” I muttered, storming closer to him. “You did that to me.” I paused as I drew closer, my voice softening as I remembered more of that nightmare. “But you didn’t want to… You told me you were sorry.”

  Prince Park’s eyes widened. He lunged at me, pinning me up against the wall.

  I struggled, but he held me in place.

  Bringing his face, taut with tension, close to mine, he whispered into my ear. “Are you insane, farm girl? Do you want to make this worse? Just do as you’re told.” He swallowed hard. “Do as you’re told and don’t ask any questions.” He pulled back, his eyes wide and full of regret. “Please.”

  I sat there, unmoving and unblinking.

  He released me, pulling away.

  “Since I’ve convinced you that it’s in your best interest to eat, I’ll be on my way,” he said, his voice taking on that self-important, pompous tone that I now wondered about. “After all, a prince can’t stay in one place for too long. People might start to talk.”

  He looked back at me, his eyes conveying much that he couldn’t say otherwise.

  The door swung back open, and he walked out, leaving me to my thoughts…and a plate of pancakes and boar’s meat.

  The next few days went by in a flash of horrors and hardships. Prince Park didn’t return, leaving my daily meal drops to the diminutive women who had helped me the first day.

  What was more, I was no longer allowed to be alone.

  Starting on the second day, one roommate after another joined me in my cell. The first was a blind woman with a shaved head and a tattoo of a triangle on her left arm. Power was flickering off her, letting me know—without a doubt—that, like me, she was a witch.

  They threw her in the cell first thing in the morning, her body slamming hard against the wall. She’d screamed as she fell along the cinder blocks, hollering demands to know where she was and why she was here.

  Her lack of vision, I soon learned, was a new development. Apparently, something she said or did rubbed Brula the wrong way. Just as the woman had taken my voice, she saw fit to take this poor woman’s sight.

  I kept telling her as the day went on that she would get it back. All she had to do was be contrite.

  The regent was a good person, a merciful ruler. I had gotten my voice back, after all.

  I, of course, left out the fact that Prince Park had given me my voice in what had to be the most offhand way imaginable.

  There was no need to let this poor soul in on how little the regent and her people actually seemed to care about us. And besides, maybe she would get her sight back. Stranger things had happened.

  The last time I ever saw her, though, was late that same night as she was dragged kicking and screaming out of the cell. She was still as blind as a ravager, but without the enhanced sense of smell to make up for it.

  My next cell mate—a painfully young boy with a long scar across his chest—didn’t speak much at first. He played that whole ‘tough guy’ act that I had seen more times than I cared to count during my Dustland days.

  But, as the day went on, I learned more about him. His name was Aaron. He lived in the lower part of the center—what some would consider the hardscrabble, dangerous part.

  His parents had dropped him off at sector housing just hours after his birth. He had never seen them. Never heard from them. Had no idea who they were.

  My heart broke for him, and, with him, for Gemma.

  If I didn’t make it out of this—a possibility that seemed more and more likely with each passing day—that was the life she would live. She would bounce from home to home until the sector turned her out into the streets with nothing but her wits to feed, clothe, and protect her.

  And then they came for Aaron, too.

  He fought so hard that they had to break his arm to remove him.

  When he saw that they had overcome him, that no one and nothing was going to be able to save him from his fate, the tough guy finally started to cry.

  After that, I made a point not to get close to any of my roommates.

  But that changed four days later when they threw another woman in with me—an elderly lady whose white hair reminded me of Mrs. Carterson from the community center back home. She curled up against the wall, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, her body so bloody and beaten that it was hard for me to tell too much else about how she normally looked. It was hard to see past all the swelling of black and blue, hard to imagine her face before the busted lip.

  What had she done—what could this poor old woman have possibly done—that would justify this sort of brutality?

  Henrick fluttered through my mind. At that moment, for a lot of reasons, I wished he were here. Chief among them was the fact that I wanted to tell him I agreed with him now. I didn’t think he was being radical. If anything, what he and his people were doing wasn’t enough. Any ruler who could treat her people like this wasn’t fit to rule for one lifetime, let alone all the stolen years Brula had piled up during her reign of apparent terror.

  The old woman was never fully conscious as she lay with her head in my lap. She started singing halfway through the day—a slow, soft song I had never heard before. I didn’t know the words, but I picked up on the melody and started humming along with her.

  This seemed to bring her peace.

  As the sun began to set over the wall in the far horizon, the woman’s singing got weaker and weaker, her breaths slower and shallower.

  But her hands were strong as they wrapped around mine. This woman, whose name I didn’t know, whose marred and broken face I didn’t recognize, had touched me in a way that I
couldn’t explain.

  Or maybe it wasn’t her. Or not just her. Maybe it was all of them. Maybe it was every person they shoved in here with me, forcing me to watch them die or be carted off one after another.

  Maybe it was the bald girl with the tattoo or the little boy who had finally been given too much to handle. Maybe it was all the others that I wouldn’t allow myself to know.

  Whatever the reason, something inside of me snapped as the woman started to choke and wheeze. These were death rattles. I had heard them before. They were no strangers to anyone living in the Dustlands, where people were not high enough on the food chain to qualify for the health care provided at the circle.

  The old woman would be dead soon—this poor, innocent woman would be dead for no reason that I could see.

  And I wasn’t having it.

  Tears trickled onto my cheeks as I looked down at her. Her chest was heaving. Her face was pale and her gaze empty. But her hands, her hands were still strong.

  She coughed again, loudly and violently. And then, even her hands gave way. Her chest stopped heaving. Her breaths stopped coming.

  She was gone.

  I placed my hand on her chest to make sure. No heartbeat. Then I felt the power surge up through me. It was different from before, more primal, more real.

  I had never tapped into this part of myself before, and I could feel how dangerous just attempting it could be.

  Never moving my hand from her chest, the energy poured from me into her.

  It swirled around, lighting things back up and reconnecting what had been so carelessly torn apart.

  Her face healed first. The swelling went down, and the bruises gave way to clear, pink skin. Then her body tightened. Finally, her heart started beating again.

  Her eyes opened wide, and her face took on a panicked expression.

  “You’re okay,” I said, running my fingers through her hair, which was going from silver to brown. “You’re all right. I fixed you.” I didn’t know how, or why she was changing so fast, I just knew that whatever I did had caused it.

  “No, you didn’t,” she said, tightening her grip on my hands. “You stole me away. You took me from the light.” She swallowed hard. “But it’s coming back. I feel it coming back for me.” She looked up at me. “Did you know there was light? I never knew there would be anything else, but there is. There’s so much light.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “And it’s for everybody.”

  She took a deep breath and wiped her tears away. “She told me that she won’t stop.” The old woman’s voice was lower now. She was departing again. “She said…she said she wouldn’t stop until she found her.”

  “Found who?” I asked, leaning in.

  “The one she’s been looking for,” the old woman said in a near whisper. “The farm girl.”

  Chapter 12

  I wasn’t sure whether Brula realized I couldn’t take anymore or if she just ran out of dying people to use to torment me, but the old woman was the last of my roommates.

  The next day, I waited, expecting to see another of Brula’s victims.

  Instead, I saw her son.

  Prince Park strode in, dressed ornately with a large studded jacket and a flowing cape.

  He was once again holding a plate of food. Something about the sight of him, about knowing he was alive, well, and thriving when all those who I had roomed with were either broken, dead, or both, made the blood boil in my veins.

  He glared at me, not bothering to offer the food. He sat it on the counter next to my bed and folded his arms as the door closed behind him.

  “Can I help you?” I asked through gritted teeth as he leaned against the wall of my cell.

  “Doubtful,” he answered. “Can you help yourself?”

  I felt the energy crackle around my fingers. That had never happened to me before. Even Henrick, who was as cocky as he was infuriating, hadn’t managed to pull power from my fingertips.

  Although, to be fair, he had never taunted me while I was locked in a cage.

  “You might want to holster that,” he said, looking at my fingertips with a faintly bored expression dulling his features. “You don’t want to know what happens to prisoners who can’t control themselves.”

  “I think I’ve seen what happens to them,” I answered, getting even angrier as I remembered each of my ill-fated roommates.

  “What you’ve seen are failed experiments,” Prince Park answered, shaking his head. “There’s no malice there. There’s no anger or resentment.”

  “Same result,” I spat back at him, my nostrils flaring.

  “True,” he conceded. “Though there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “Is that right?” I asked, glaring up at him.

  The corners of his mouth tightened.

  “Because I’m not so sure that’s true,” I added.

  “Tread lightly, farm girl,” he said quietly, his eyes darting back toward the closed door.

  He was obviously afraid I was going to allude to what happened between us back on that surgical table again. And, what was more, he seemed even more afraid that someone was going to overhear.

  Not one to do any favors for the person currently holding me against my will, I decided to let him sweat it a little.

  “I think you’re capable of doing a lot more than you let on.”

  Prince Park marched closer. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His tone left no room for discussion. He wanted me to shut up, and he wanted me to do it now. I thought about that for maybe half a second before I tossed the idea right out of my head.

  “I’m sure you do,” I answered defiantly, walking forward to bridge the gap between us. “People are dying, you know.” I could feel my mouth twist disgustedly, though I didn’t remember commanding it to do so. “Good people, bad people—I have no idea. All I know is that they’re dying right in front of me in ways that no one deserves.”

  “And how does that make you feel?” Prince Park asked me in a whisper, his face mere inches from mine. “Does it make you feel afraid? Do you want to run away, to hide? Maybe you want to rush back to your burned-up little farmhouse and tuck yourself away inside the embers.”

  “People like you are the reason people hate the regent,” I spat back before thinking.

  “And who might those people be?” he asked, looking me up and down.

  I bit my lip, blood rushing into my cheeks and reddening them.

  He leaned in even closer, tucking a strand of loose hair behind my left ear. “Unless you want someone poking around in that brain of yours, looking for the answer to my question, I wouldn’t bring it up again.”

  I could feel his breath on my cheek as he continued.

  “Now…don’t do anything stupid. Just keep your mouth shut and eat your damned food.” He swallowed hard. “Don’t make me regret saving you.”

  He spun around, tapping against the door and not even looking at me as he marched out when it opened.

  I spent the rest of the day thinking about what Park had said.

  There was more to him than he was letting on, more than the suave prince who did his mother’s bidding while, as rumor had it, infamously bedding every willing woman who caught his eye.

  All I knew was that it almost felt like this man was trying to help me. Or like he was messing with me. Or like he just wasn’t sure if he wanted me dead yet. I didn’t know what to make out of any of it, but why else would he drop these warnings? Why else would he have fought against giving me that intake procedure?

  Obviously, I didn’t have the answers to those questions. In fact, it seemed I didn’t have the answers to any questions—at least none that actually mattered. All I knew was that I needed to find out more, and the only way to do that was to be patient, do what he said, and see where this thing went.

  To that end, I ate the damn food.

  Prince Park came back the next day, and then the next. Each visit was like the first—a bunch of hyperb
ole sprinkled with just enough vague hints to keep me wondering. It stayed the same right up until the fifth day.

  On that day, when Prince Park walked in with my requisite food tray in his hands, he didn’t meet my gaze. But he didn’t have to. The bruise across his face would have been visible to me if I was standing back in the circle.

  “Word of the regent! What happened to you?” I asked as the door closed.

  I wasn’t sure why I cared. He was, after all, the enemy. Sure, he had dropped enough hints to make me question some things about him, but Park hadn’t given me any reason to truly believe his allegiance wasn’t exactly where everyone assumed it was.

  He was his mother’s son. And in the end, he always seemed to follow through with whatever she expected of him. Not wanting to simply wasn’t enough to win me over.

  Still, something in me ached when I saw him. I wanted to help him. To understand and try to make him feel better.

  “You should learn to keep your voice down,” he answered, setting the tray in its place on the counter beside my mattress.

  “And it looks like you should learn to keep your head down,” I said, eyeing him and stopping short of inspecting the bruise with my hand. “At least tell me the other guy looks worse.”

  “Not exactly,” he said, running his hand through his hair.

  The light caught him just then. For a split second, he looked like a lost soul—like someone’s brother or son. Not like the heir of the regent.

  “He must have been as big as an oak,” I said.

  “An oak?” he said, tilting his head.

  “It’s a type of tree. We have them out in the—”

  “I know what it is,” he answered. “I’ve studied the geography and history of every step of this sector. I’ve just never known anyone who’s actually seen an oak before.”

  “They’re majestic,” I answered. “Unless, of course, they’re beating on you.”

  “It wasn’t an oak,” he said, brandishing a rare smile that didn’t hold even an ounce of sarcasm or smugness. “It wasn’t even a man.”