His Darling

His Darling | 10

CHAPTER TEN.

My eyes flew open.

Blank.

Agonizingly disoriented and confused, I blinked slowly, my mind feeling like it was stuffed with cotton. My body like a rock, slowly sinking into the bottom of a dark dense sea.

Am I dead?

Is this what it feels like to be falling down into the pits of hell? Because this couldn't possibly be heaven. It was much too--

A gasp registered in my head. Not mine. Someone else's.

"Mama," a small voice said in urgency. "Look,"

It was like I was snatched up to the surface.

Then I remembered. I remembered everything. Landon and his group,  the chaos that erupted soon after because Xander refused to hand me over for reasons I couldn't understand. The horrible shouts and screams. The vicious, blonde girl shooting an arrow through my arm.

My head went to all places--out of control. My breath began to quicken involuntarily and my eyes began to roam everywhere, finally settling on my left arm. It was in one piece but heavily bandaged up. I looked around again. At the old bare walls, at the small, crappy room with little to no furniture to the two figures in the room. The taller figure--a woman, I realized, due to her slender physique,  was near the drawer. It was filled with bottles and she was quickly reading off the labels of the bottles, paying no mind to the smaller figure walking towards me.

It was a little girl. Around five years old. Pigtails high on her head, arms clutching a ragged doll. She had rosy cheeks and pale, glistening skin. She wore a dress with flowers on them and looked beyond harmless.

But her skin...

It was covered in scales. And had eyes as dark as coal. Bottomless. It wasn't normal. I couldn't help but feel a sense of utter confusion and fright.

The little girl smiled and sat on the bed, her dark eyes big with curiosity as she burst through what I considered my personal space by moving closer. It was like she'd never seen another human being in her life. She stared. "Your hair," she said, and I expected the worse.

I knew it. Xander had enough and he chopped it all off.

My hand quickly went self-consciously to my hair.

The girl leaned in as if to touch it. "It's so...spiral-y,"

Someone had washed and untangled it and the 'leave in' or whatever sort of substance was beginning to cling to my drying hair, making it what it always was: curly.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"They're just curls, dear," said the woman without looking back. She had an accent.

"I've never seen curls like these, momma," she extended her small arm and grabbed a couple of strands between her fingers.

I didn't know what to do. People weren't this bold with me. They were not this fascinated with my hair. Hell, I was never fond of my hair. It was a pain to deal with.  It was never the way I wanted it--never tamed. For years I'd wish my hair was soft and silky, like most girls in my school. It looked easy to handle and it was always radiant and beautiful.

I swallowed. "Where am I?"

"My property," answered the woman, turning around. "I'm Kania,"

She was beautiful. Much like the little girl, who I figured was her daughter. Both had brown long hair and shared the same structure of the jaw and nose. But she lacked her daughter's vivid scales and dark, eerie eyes.