Chapter 1- “You are not welcome.”
You are overestimating me, if you think that I, like a hero in a book, escaped the prison, fleeing with Nicole with romantic words, or, sacrificed myself so that Nicole could flee- I was not even given the chance for that.
Instead we were, almost immediately after she helped me to get into proper mind, imprisoned by Joshua, though, to my gladness, were in the same cell. I could not help but find Joshua’s white-hot enragement amusing when he discovered that Nicole had found the way to undo what he had done to me. Later in the cell I began to mull over some intricate and complicated things. If I had been able to be freed from the ‘sanity’ that I was forced into, why not Rose?
Was I to give her a kiss, and wow, ta-da, she’d be freed from her sanity? Or was she too long in the mental imprisonment that she was unable to freed, no matter how good the method was?
My wild running thoughts were put to a halt by the slam of the cell door, smashed open by Fredrick, who, with a glare at us, pulled the new prisoner in, and hauled him into a cell, and locked the door, and stalked away, after shouting, “Execution ten minutes later!”
I glanced at the prisoner- who was half-dead, who was crying, who was slumped, who was my friend, who was my friend, and who was Ben. When he looked at my way, uncomfortably I glanced skywards, tilting my face away from him.
“You might be wondering why I am here with two pathetic prisoners,” he said in quiet and reserved voice.
I didn’t answer, but Nicole did.
“Perhaps the new prisoner did something that completely made him be detested by Rose,” said Nicole.
“Detestable, yes,” he said with a nod. “She told me to harm two people who were in her way, and I didn’t.”
“For the first time you followed your conscience,” I mumbled.
“Yes,” he said, straightening, tears in his eyes but his mouth smiling widely. “For the first time I am happy. I don’t want to harm any lives.”
“That is the way a human should be,” Nicole announced, “and when you die, executed, you shall be remembered by us, as the proud Blue Band member, a great member of Blue Band and a great civil servant to his country and the world.”
“And to me, you will be engraved in my heart, as the bravest warrior I have ever known,” I said, looking down at my bare soot-covered feet, unable to look at him into his eyes.
I dragged myself as close to his cell, pulling the chains, and my mouth quirked into a smile. “You know what? I’ll make sure I take revenge on Rose for you. You watch.”
“I will,” he said, a smile spreading across his face, and excluding the time he married Clare, he looked like the happiest, for he was bearing the widest smile that I have ever seen him make.
I clasped his hand, and we leaned our foreheads together, grabbing each other’s forearm, silent. Sobs of Nicole echoed around the cell, and we both released each other, when the door opened, and the executioner came in with an axe in his hand.
“Tell Clare that I love her, and tell Kelly and the kids-“
“I’ll tell Kelly and your boys that they had the bravest man as their father,” I finished, and he nodded.
