The Queen's Conquer

Chapter 57 : As Dawn Rises

Parastin • [pair-a-stin]
Protect (to keep safe).

🖤

~+~

~ Anastasia ~

Falling asleep is easier than I expected despite my insurmountable worries. But with food in my system—after throwing all of that dinner up on Jace and Bianca's beautiful manor floors—and fatigue aching through every bone of my body, the second I lay down on the cot is when my consciousness finally gives up on trying to stay awake.

When I reawaken, it feels as though an eternity has passed since I last grasped a sense of my surroundings. And it's not that which scares me, but whatever feeling snaps from deep within, forcing me to shoot up from my bland sheets.

I don't know how to describe it. I don't know what it means, either. And the more I try to understand what it exactly is, the more muted the world becomes.

Shuffling resonates to my right. My gaze drifts, finding Max stirring awake on his own cot as if my thoughts have become loud enough to disturb his peaceful sleep.

"Anastasia?" is the first thing that leaves his lips. He sounds scared—scared to be looking at me. Like something's wrong.

I don't know where the urge comes from, but I touch my cheeks with my fingertips, feeling the cold skin of my face. My eyes can't stop staring at the tent's entrance—the flaps which conceal us from the night beyond.

Why am I awake when we're not supposed to leave for several more hours?

"Ana," Max repeats more firmly now when I don't respond. He's untangling himself from his covers, throwing on a shirt I hadn't even noticed he'd taken off before going to bed, and finally slipping on his boots.

He sits beside me on the end of my cot, trying to get me to unfocus from the tent's flaps by grabbing my arms and shaking me gently.

"Ana, why the hell are your eyes glowing purple?"

This is what startles me back to the present. "What?"

"Your eyes are glowing," he emphasizes.

This has only ever happened a few times before: when I've been in my wolf form and that one time in the hospital bathroom when I'd returned to Phantomridge. Delphine's conscience was responsible for every incident...but why now? Why with no explanation or notice?

"I-I—" I stutter, equally confused. But then I admit blatantly out of urgency and disorientation, "Something doesn't f-feel right..."

"Well, that's extremely vague," he retorts. "Did you have a bad dream or something?"

I'm on the verge of responding, but I'm unable to answer his question when an electric sensation runs up my neck and down my spine, providing further indication that a reaction is beginning to set off within me—an inexplicable backlash to my gut feeling.

I cry out and hunch over the blankets that cover my lower half, gripping the side of my neck as sparks fly through my vision and nausea rocks through my core. The air thins as my mind falls into some kind of paralyzed state—an inescapable territory, I learn, the more I try to fight it.

Max is saying something through my sharp gasps, trying to get it through the strain of my vigilance. I make out the words "wait" and "help"—nothing further. Nothing beyond what my ears want me to hear.

But I feel like I'm being sucked under a wave—sucked away from life as if something's trying to bash me through the ground.

Then my surroundings become hypersensitized. I'm being lifted to sit upright even though every movement feels as if it's splitting my bones open. I don't know who's touching me; it must be a male just based on his scent alone...the thousands of scents that only make me iller...