A Place Beyond All Kingdoms

The True Reality

Chapter 19

Dew:

"No pulse!"

Nick's eyes get wide, his bottom lip begins to quiver as he pushes Jared out of the way. He places his fingers just under her chin. His eyes mist up after about a minute of waiting.

"Oh God!" He screams looking down.

The tears pour over, staining his cheeks red. He pushes himself to his feet and backs away from Jasmine's body.

"No! She can't be! She was alive in the cell just yesterday! How can this happen?" Fay squeals.

How can this happen? I ask myself, trying to contain tears.

I stare at Jasmine's face. Honestly, it's no mystery why she's dead. In fact, I'm not surprised. She has several cuts on both her face and chest. And up her forearms.

She has a bruise all across her cheek, and several along her neck down to her chest. I'm sure there's probably more covering her stomach, legs and feet.

Half her face is stained with blood. As is her arms. And if I'm not mistaken there's a scar across her neck going to her back left from a whip. There must be more.

Her hair is tangled and messy. Since I've known her, I've never seen her hair messy. It was always combed through and she always smelled clean and showed like mint or cinnamon.

But now she has a very rancid smell. Like bile, the acidity fluid out of your stomach, that you vomit up when you have no more food nor waters to vomit.

Which can cause you to tear some muscles and the lineing of you esophagus if you're gagging too hard and nothing comes up. So that's another thing that could have killed her.

But for her to smell like bile she must've been vomiting it up. And for her to vomit it, she not only must be sick but they must've not been feeding her either.

She was arrested only yesterday afternoon. Rosemary must have really beat her a lot. For someone to be perfectly healthy one morning and dead the next.

It makes sense, yet it unbelievable.

Suddenly I begin to feel really sick. Tht thought of knowing her alive and dead, makes me nauseous. I get up and pack my blankets quickly. Not at all wanting to sleep here tonight. I stomp out the fire, and tell them to back their stuff too.

"We- we can't leave her here!" Nick says.

"Well we can't take a dead body with us either."

"But, what if we're wrong! What if she comes back to life and- and."

More tears come. Pouring down his cheeks. I have no sympathy for him at all though. It's his fault try this has happened in the first place. If it wasn't for him, we'd be half way there.

Jasmine would be alive. She would be here with  us helping lead the way. Safe and sound... but now she's dead.

"This is your fault!"

I attack him, the anger pulsing me forward. Telling me to make him feel the pain that she did. The true voice in the back of my head. The only one who stands for the used and manipulated.

If Nick was in my kingdom and if he did what he did, even if it was for my side... I would make sure that he is executed the same way Jasmine died. Beaten, manipulated, blocked from all outside contact, starved, whipped.

That's how Nick would die. That's how he would face his demise. And for just a moment I enjoy the true power I feel coarsing through my veins, mixing itself with my blood.

Becoming a part of me. And the true reality surfaces.

I'm a princess! I will be nothing else. I was brought amongst the world to protect some and hurt others. To murder the murderers and to defend the victims.

I grab a knife from my belt. And press it against his neck hard, blood already sprouting.

And the even more true reality sinks in.

Together we will not only not make it to the Land of Enchantment, we will not survive together at all. Because I will end up killing everyone of these people if they try to do anything that'll threaten my power.