A Little Insane: The Dark Prince

Chapter Ten - The Prison

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   "Why isn't he waking up?" Pearl asked as she gently brushed a damped rag over Hart's forehead.

They were inside a house. Hart laid completely unconscious on a human bed. Riley sat across the room from him, sitting in a regular wooden chair, resting his hands on his knees as he let his sister clean the blood on his face.

"I don't know. He hasn't moved since I woke up," Riley said.

The ceremony hadn't lasted more than a few minutes before a bloodbath happened. There wasn't anything Riley remembered after he blacked out. That time was unknown to him. All he knew was that he woke up in the black fountain surrounded by bodies except Hart's and he had to use a lot of strength to get himself out of Rev. He was lucky that he saw Hart's body being dragged away by monsters otherwise he might not have seen him again for a long time.

Riley suspected from the beginning that it wasn't a good idea to just march straight into Siren's home and just get married. Hart was different now, but Riley never expected the dark prince to submit so easily to the idea of marriage. It seemed like Siren knew Hart's weakness and that weakness was Riley.

It bothered Riley how Hart was able to trust Siren without a second thought, as if they hadn't just destroyed a percentage of her army recruits in a blink of an eye. She would not have opened her doors to either of them, but Hart didn't know hell like Riley did. He didn't spend thirty years in the evil world.

"We need to keep moving, we can't stay here long," Fiona said as she finished wiping her brother's face.

"Why?" Pearl asked.

"Because something feels really bad about this and I can't explain it. While the rest of the Rogues protect Annetta, we should be figuring out what to do about Hart and Siren."

Pearl dropped her rag in a bucket of water and turned to them. "What about Siren?"

"She just had rulers from other cities murdered. Don't you understand what this means?" Fiona said. She raised a finger when Pearl was going to ask the obvious. "It means war, blondie. The cities have nobody on the thrones. There was only one way Siren could gather them under the same roof and that was through Hartheon. She took her chance, knowing very well she wasn't going to get another opportunity like this. Now the other cities are defenseless and are probably in chaos. It's not like hell gets many rulers. This is a timeless place and only humans come back."

"I don't understand her. She can't rule over hell, which is obviously what she wants to do," Pearl said as she grabbed the rag from the bucket again and wrung it, draining the water from the fabric. She dabbed Hart's forehead as he kept sweating.

"I think she believes Lucifer isn't in control anymore, maybe even dead. I mean . . . has anyone even seen him?" Fiona said.

"I've seen him," Riley said.

Pearl and Fiona looked at him in surprise.

"How?"

"When I was on Earth I saw him hurting Hart and Sera. I don't think it was physically him, but it was him controlling the magic. I think he was angry at them and that's why he was punishing them. That's my only proof that he's real and he's out there."

The group stayed quiet for a while, pondering on the whereabouts of Lucifer. There was only one person in hell who truly knew anything about him and had the answers they were looking for. But the silence stayed, their lips sealed and their eyes fixed on The Dark Prince, as the inevitable truth burned into their minds.