the Queen out of the cell and into the tunnel, which was lined with jail cell doors. We had gone a ways when Alex grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“What do you mean, you know a way to escape?” he whispered. “Where is it?”
“When Laylen and I went and saw Vladislav,” I said, speaking so quickly I tripped over my words. “He said people had escaped before. But most of them drowned.”
He took in what I said. “So we need to find water.”
I pointed up at the ceiling, at the water seeping through the cracks. “We need to go up.”
Alex reached up and touched the muddy ceiling with his finger tips. “So there has got to be an exit somewhere that takes us up.”
“What are you two doing back there!” The Queen’s fuming voice boomed down the tunnel. “Get up here now.”
We hurried and caught up with her. Alex still had his thinking face on, and I could tell he was trying to come up with some sort of plan to get us out of here. I still felt a little skeptical, though, because we still had to find where the way out was, and we also needed to figure out a way to get away from the Queen and her Water Faeries.
But all thoughts of escaping left my mind, when we reached where the Queen was taking us. In fact all of my thoughts disappeared and were replaced by one thing.
Fear.
They say torture is…well, torture. But this was so much worse than I’d expected. Water Faeries were floating around everywhere. But that was the easiest part to take in. The worst were the peoples’ screams that filled up the room. I knew Alex told me that the people who were sentenced here were bad, but it didn’t mean that what was being done to them was right. Each one of them was strapped down on a wooden table, being tortured in various ways, but each one looked equally painful. My stomach rolled at the sight of one man in particular that had his arm twisted in a way that an arm should not be twisted.
“Don’t look at them,” Alex said and I looked away from the torture chamber.
But not looking at them couldn’t block out the sounds…the cries…the pain.
The only thing I could be thankful for at the moment was that the Queen took us to a different room that had cement walls thick enough to muffle out the screams. In the room, there was a single chair that had straps attached to the arms.
The Queen turned to face us. “Tell me Gemma. What is it your most afraid of?”
I swallowed hard. She was so asking the wrong person this question. Fear was such a new thing to me, and the only thing I could think of that would qualify as my most-afraid-of thing was Stephan and the Death Walkers.
“I don’t know,” I said, sounding weak. I hated that I sounded weak.
“You don’t know?” She looked at me intriguingly and a toothless grin spread across her face. “Well, I think it’s time you found out.” She raised her hand in the air and snapped her fingers. Two Water Faeries flew up to me and grabbed me by the arms. I tried to pull away from them, but their bony fingers had freakishly strong grips.
“Stop!” Alex called out. “I’ll go first.”
“Oh no,” said the Queen with amusement in her voice. “I have a feeling that you watching her get tortured is probably going to bring out just as much fear, as if it were you getting tortured yourself.”
Alex started to protest, but the Queen silenced him. Then two Water Faeries came up behind Alex and grabbed him by the arms, holding him where he stood. He tried to fight and pull away, but like I already mentioned the Water Faeries are freakishly strong. Apparently, even stronger than a Keeper.
The two Water Faeries dragged me over to the chair and one held down my arms, while the other strapped me to the chair. Once they let go of me, I tried to yank my arms free from the straps, but the only thing that accomplished was my sore wrists aching even more.
“Oh good. She’s already getting scared,” the Queen said, pleased. There was this long gap that passed before she said to the Water Faeries, “Well, get on with it.”
They hovered beside me, and suddenly they were in front of me, their eyeless eyes so close to my face that