She sticks out her hand awkwardly to shake Laylen’s hand. “I’m Aleesa.”
Laylen shakes her hand politely. “Nice to meet you Aleesa.”
I eye over Aleesa’s yellow eyes, dark hair, sharp features and something doesn’t add up. “You don’t look like them. Alex and Aislin, I mean.”
“Oh, I get my looks from my mother. She was fey,” she says, like it explains everything.
“Many of the fey have bright yellow eyes and dark hair like hers,” Laylen adds. “Nicholas was an exception.”
“So Stephan’s your father,” I state still in a state of disbelief.
She nods, tucking one of her tangled curls behind her ear. “I am the half-faerie, half-Keeper sacrifice he needs. I am what will bind the fey to him.”
My eyes widen. “The sacrifice.”
“Yep,” she says simply with her hands behind her back as she rocks forward on her heels.
“How long have you been down here?” I ask.
Her face twists with complexity. “I’m not sure. Forever, I think.”
I shudder, feeling sorry for her. “What about your mom? Where’s she?”
“Oh, she’s gone,” she says with a shrug. “She left me because I’m an abomination.”
I thought my life had been bad, but I think hers tops mine. At least I wasn’t locked up and tortured for god sakes and it proves just how morbid Stephan is; to do this to his own daughter.
“Laylen can I talk to you for just a second?” I back toward the tunnel, motioning him to follow me.
He does, looking confused. “What’s wrong?”
“What are we going to do with her?” I whisper, glancing at Aleesa. “We can’t just leave here.”
He looks back at Aleesa, who’s fiddling with a hole in the hem of her worn-out dress. “I guess take her with us.” He shrugs.
“But is she…I don’t know… She seems a little off. What if she flips out on us or something?” I feel bad for saying it, but it needs to be discussed, if nothing else to prepare ourselves.
“I could flip out on you and yet you’re still with me.”
“Yeah, but you’re you. I trust you more than I trust anyone.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
I sigh and press a kiss to his scruffy cheek. “We’ll take her with us. But just keep an eye on her, okay?” I start to head back for Aleesa, but pause, an emotion arising inside me, one that I think means Laylen and I are becoming good friends and that I truly care about him. “And I’ll always trust you, Laylen. I’ll trust you forever.”
***
Getting Aleesa to leave with us is a difficult task. She keeps saying over and over again that she isn’t allowed to go anywhere outside of the torture chamber. But after some persuading, she finally agrees.
We go up the staircase to the door that Aleesa tells us leads to the inside of the castle. When we approach the top, I realize just how bad my palms are sweating.
“Okay,” Laylen says as he grabs the doorknob. “Everyone be on guard.”
I nod, clutching onto the sword handle, my legs shaking like a fawn learning how to walk. Laylen cracks the door open and withdraws a small knife out of the back pocket of his jeans as he looks out.
Then he lowers the knife and turns to us. “It seems the secret entrance has led us to yet another secret entrance.”
“Really?” I ask as we cautiously step out into a slender hallway. “Are we inside the walls?”
Laylen traces his fingers along the wood paneling. “I think so.”
Aleesa hums quietly behind me as we continue down the hallway. The ceiling is low and the walls are decorated with childish art. I sketch my fingers along the drawings of stick people, houses, flowers. Why do I remember this? Each one gives me a sense of familiarity.
Then suddenly it comes violently rushing back to me, a memory once forgotten, or erased from my mind. Alex and I as children, running up and down the hall, drawing on the walls, laughing, playing. I can almost hear the giggles haunting the hallway now.
“You okay?” Laylen asks me.
I pull my hand away from the wall. “Yeah. Sorry, I was just spacing off.”
He gives me a worried smile, but focuses on the task at hand and keeps walking until we reach the end of the hallway where there’s another door.
“I wonder what’s on the other side.” I say.
“A spare bedroom,” Aleesa says, gazing up at the ceiling.
Laylen presses his ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything…” He grips the doorknob and turns it. “Get ready,” he says, then pushes it open.
It’s a bedroom with a bedframe and a dusty dresser. And chained to one of the stones wall is my mom. She just escaped from being a prisoner a few days ago and it tears at my heart to see her like this. She looks like she’s sleeping, her head slumped over, her shoulders hunched. There is a piece of duct-tape over her mouth and I run up to her and carefully pull it off.
“Mom,” I say, hooking a finger under her chin and tipping her head up. “Can you hear me?”
Her head bobs as she blinks at me, tears staining her cheeks. “Gemma,” she croaks. “Is that you?”
“It’s okay.” I reach for the chain around her wrist. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
She blinks again dazedly and then starts to panic. “You have to go. You have to go now.” She tugs at the chains, causing the skin on her wrist to split open and bleed. “It’s a trap. Gemma, go! GO!”
A chill slithers down my spine as I turn around and see a thick fog crawling across the floor. Ice covers across the walls, the ceiling, and the floor in a split second and the temperature rapidly drops.
“Can you get the chains off her?” I ask Laylen.
He takes hold of one of the chains and bends the links, trying to get the heavy metal to snap apart. But it’s thick and covered with the Death Walker’s ice.
“Give me just a minute,” he says as he continues to try to get the metal to break.
Aleesa lets out a high-pitched scream, covers her ears, and backs into the corner of the room. “Help me!”
I hear the sound of heavy footsteps heading in our direction, one by one. I glance back at Laylen, still struggling to get the chains undone.
“I’m hurrying,” he says, jerking on the chains. “The damn things are thick and the ice is making it worse.”
I face the doorway, where the fog is blowing in. This strange calm settles over me and I block everything out as my power takes over my body and mind, one stronger than I’ve ever felt, like every part of my brain is in tune with my body. Suddenly, I know what I have to do to protect us and the strange thing is I know that I can.