A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 97: Wake Up Call x 3 = Reality

"Where are you taking me?" Andrew asked as I held his hand, making the big sister act seem a little more real as I embarrassed him. The tips of his ears were bright red, but his face told me he was absolutely livid right now.

"Somewhere you obviously won't like."

"I was vying for something more specific," he snorted, looking away.

I squeezed his hand tightly. "Don't break character, now. We're in the middle of a crowd."

He flinched, but after that he was more obedient. When people listen, I'm docile. When they don't, I'm not very docile.

After walking for a bit off a side street, passing through alleys and going by more vendors, Andrew started getting suspicious.

"If you won't tell me where we are going, will you at least tell me if we will be back in the castle by tonight?" He gulped, seeing that we were walking into the not-so-good part of the capital. The festivities had died out a long time ago as we passed the last nice-looking house, and now all we heard was noise in the background.

"We will. Actually, we'll be back in time for the last dance. I hope your father sent a note ahead of time that you won't be back until then~"

"Wait, how long have you been planning this?" Andrew cut that vicious, suspicious glare my way.

"Since last night, why?"

"Nothing," he looked away and inspected a house that was coming up on our right at the end of the block, how shaggy and worn it looked. There were no people inside, I could tell, because it wasn't safe for living in. There were rats in broad daylight scampering across the floorboards, the roof creaked as the slightest wind blew against it, and there were vines that had crawled up the side and covered the inside walls after invading through the chimney and shattered windows.

Most of the houses here were like that, but in a bit of a better shape. People were in the doorways, slumped and starved. There were gaunt-looking children standing huddled in the shade over there to escape the beaming suns, hoping Saedli would make it even colder. There was the corpse of a dog over there, covered in ants and other scavenger creatures that shouldn't be in the area.

Right now, we were in the slums.

And this is where the wake up call begins, part one of three. Step 1: "Fear."

"What are we doing here?" Andrew was looking around with concern in his eyes, uncomfortable. We'd dropped hands a long time ago, and for that I was grateful. He was rubbing them on his pants because they were so sweaty.

"Oh, just passing by. There are some people we're going to encounter soon, so when we meet them, please don't scream. Just do as you're told and everything will go fine."

"What?"

At that moment, what I'd expected occurred.

"Stop." A man appeared behind us and was holding up a cheap copper sword. It looked very old, probably from the current king's grandfather's rule.

I stopped since it wasn't too much trouble. I didn't bother to put on a show of being scared, seeing as it was too much work. I already didn't want to be here as is, so let's just get this over with. We have thirteen hours to get through, and I was not looking forward to how dirty I would have to get and how much Andrew would complain.

"By the way," I turned to Andrew, who was paling more by the second as rough-looking men popped out of the woodwork and started surrounding us. "My name is River."