You're Never Alone

Chapter 38

Word Count: 824

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The king looks at Phil with a dark smirk that sends chills down his spine. As if an idea strikes him, a ball of fire forms in the king's hand and Phil looks at it, anxiety rolling through his stomach.

    "Let's start easy. What's your name?" he asks and Phil holds back from rolling his eyes.

    "Phil."

The king tilts his head at him as he squints his eyes. "Last name?"

That's when Phil shuts his mouth. Question two and he's already stuck on an answer. The king frowns but moves on instead of torturing him for that, figuring he needs to pull out the big guns for later. Dan's father continues to hold the ball of flames at his fingertips, taunting Phil as he rattles off questions. It's all going fairly fine until the questions about the rebels begin.

"Who's the leader of the rebels?" he asks but instead of answering, Phil just looks at him with a hard expression. The king makes the fire float closer to Phil's bare torso.

"Where are all of you hiding?" Again, no answer and the flames get closer.

"Do you have anyone working from the inside?"

No answer.

Dan's father glares at Phil as he brings the ball of fire the size of a grapefruit close enough to burn Phil. However Phil doesn't flinch as he feels his ribs begin to burn. The questions with no answers just go on but now it's at the point where Phil is struggling not to make any noise as he's burned front to back around his middle.

Adrian and PJ can only watch, helpless as their leader and friend is tortured. Joe still stays in the corner of his cell with foggy eyes, blinded by the hallucinations filling his mind. Phil can only squirm and hold back any sounds from his mouth as his father literally tries to burn information out of him. But Phil doesn't crack.

Meanwhile Dan is taken to the medical wing of the palace. There, the guards help strap him to the table as a nurse injects a sedative to calm Dan's thrashing limbs down and temporarily put him to sleep to heal him without his squirming. When he wakes up, he's laying on a hospital bed with the sound of the heart machine beeping next to him. A nurse comes in as soon as she sees him stir and checks all of his vitals before helping him into a new pair of clothes. Dan has to go with everything due to the fact that he's still too out of it to be able to function or process his surroundings.

As a soldier scoops him up in his arms, Dan does realize that all of the previous cuts made by his father are now just thick, healed scars as a reminder of the torture. He remembers that royalty all have a healer so that people like Dan doesn't suffer but, that unfortunately gives his father more time to torture him so it's a win-lose situation.

The walls around him blur past as he's taken back down to the dungeon where the rest of his friends are. The soldier carrying him pushes open the door and all Dan can hear is his father talking and quiet gasps as his friends realize that he's back. The room around him goes in and out of being blurry and black making Dan disoriented. Another soldier opens his cell and Dan is placed in his cell as Phil is taken down and also taken back to his cell. The bars close and the doors shut behind the king and the soldier leaving the five of them in silence.

Phil looks at Dan's partially opened eyes and reaches through the bars between them, gently pushing the hair off of Dan's forehead.

"Are... you okay?" Dan mutters looking Phil in the eyes.

Phil nods. "Nothing I can't handle."

Dan can only nod, unable to hold the conversation because of the strong sedative still in his system. He struggles to wake up and Phil sees this as he caresses Dan's cheek lovingly.

"Gone," Dan mutters and Phil tilts his head in confusion, meeting PJ's eyes but PJ only shrugs. "How long?" he whispers and Phil realizes Dan's wondering how long he was gone.

"You were only gone for roughly an hour and a half," he reassures and Dan nods once more. Adrian sighs from next to Phil before speaking up.

"Guys, we need a plan. We can't just be tortured and stuck here forever," he says and the rest of them nod including Joe who's mostly snapped out of whatever poison was in his system.

They all sigh as they realize that one of the only ways out of here might just be to wait for the rebels to come to their aid and continue to go along with what the king says. Unfortunately that means that one of them could end up dead in the meantime.

Yes it's short but the next one is... well you'll see ;) -Tori