AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The guard performed the sharpest salute I had ever seen and stood at least two inches taller. Nothing like a bollicking to improve your attitude.
I took the stairs slowly, although in truth, I wanted to race down them faster than I had on the way up.
Lily was waiting. She’d suffered quite a shock and needed me.
I entered the Viewing Room and immediately passed into the back room, then into the office.
Lily leaped up from her seat, having been gnawing on her bottom lip, and threw her arms around me, embraced me tightly, and let the tears spill down her cheeks.
“You don’t have to put up with this much longer,” I promised her, brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I found a way out. We’ll be gone from this place and you’ll never have to see or think about it ever again.”
She burst into tears once more, only this time they were not tears of sadness and desperation but hope and happiness.
Tomorrow would be a new day and it was one worth fighting for.
35
LILY
That night, I didn’t sleep a wink.
How could I? It was the big day, the big finale, potentially one of the biggest days of my life — besides the one when I was abducted and brought here of course.
Still, there was one day that could never be overshadowed, and that was the day I had met and fallen in love with Ohara. That day reared like the tallest building in an otherwise unremarkable city and could never be toppled.
I tossed and turned all night despite not knowing a jot about what Ohara’s plan actually was. There was no way for me to anticipate what the problems might be, how things could go wrong, and secretly, I supposed that was a good thing. If I was this nervous without knowing the plan, I’d be a total wreck if I did!
Instead, I had to put my full faith in him — a much, much easier proposition.
The only instruction he gave me was to be ready. I didn’t exactly know what “ready” was, so I readied myself in every way I could think of. I set to packing my things the night before and soon realized there was precisely nothing I wanted to take with me.
No clothes or personal items. Zero.
It occurred to me then just how much of a waste my time at Ikmal had been. I had lived through some horrible experiences in the past but none compared to this. I didn’t want mementos to remember this place. I would carry it with me, always.
Worse still was the fact I had been one of the lucky ones!
I had only ever had one Champion Claim me, and although our relationship was rocky at the beginning, after Ohara made his deal with Thillak, I had a much better deal than any other Prize could expect.
I peered over at the unmoving lumps beneath the other blankets. The Prizes who were my responsibility. My stomach twisted uncomfortably at the thought of leaving them.
Was I letting them down? Would they be in a worse position without me there to protect them?
At the end of each crucial stage of your life, you wanted to be able to look back and see that you had made a change, a difference to others.
Had I done that? Even in such a place as this?
I wasn’t sure.
But I knew that I couldn’t have made things worse and took refuge in that fact.
I’d climbed into bed and gotten comfortable beneath the itchy blanket that had been my sleep companion for the past five years. I listened to the females’ soft breaths. A few from the outer rimmers made strange but beautiful whistling noises like wind chimes. I often let their unconscious tune push me over that last inch and into the abyss of deep sleep.
But tonight, even they couldn’t help me.
I knew that no matter what happened tonight, whether we succeeded or failed, tonight would be the end of my time at Ikmal. Whether the release happened as an escape or at the end of a short rope was up to fate.
I heard someone shuffling into the room. I had no idea what time it was. It might have been the middle of the night or almost time to wake up.
