Page 27 of Heartless Prince

8

Tatum

I wokeup in a small bed with white sheets, dressed in an unfamiliar sweatshirt and pants. I didn’t know where I was. Or who I was. I couldn’t even remember my name, let alone anything else. All I knew was that I felt sick. Bone-chillingly, gut-wrenchingly, feverishly sick.

Nausea made my insides churn, and I sat up, holding one hand over my mouth. The left side of my neck ached, and I moved my other hand up to delicately touch the skin there. “Ow!”

I pulled my hand away as if I’d been zapped. Even touching my fingertips to the area made it feel like I was gouging a hole in my neck. There had to be a serious bruise there.

I blinked, and a brief vision swam before me: a man with a large hypodermic needle. That was all. I still had no idea what happened to me or where I was.

I looked around, trying to make sense of everything. I was in a tiny box-like room with a gray stone wall running along one side. The rest of the walls were smooth white, and the floor was concrete. The bed was low and narrow, with an air vent high on the wall nearby. A toilet with no lid sat in one corner with a large grate next to it. The room had no windows, only a door to my right, but there was a glass pane on the door with a view of whatever lay beyond.

Letting out a groan, I forced myself up and padded across the room to look through the pane on the door. There was nothing but a hallway with white walls and bright lights. I guess it was nighttime. Other than that, still no clues as to where I was.

The nausea returned in full force, intensifying and robbing me of my strength. I stumbled to the corner of the room, my stomach aching and tightening more with each passing second. I kept swallowing and my throat kept clenching, trying to stop the horrible feeling in my chest, but it all came up a moment later as I crouched over the toilet, spilling out of me as I gasped and retched.

I heard a sound a couple of minutes later as I lay panting on the floor, waiting for the feeling in my guts to subside. I sluggishly rolled my head over to look, only to notice something I missed earlier. There was a slot on the bottom of the door, and someone had just slid a tray inside with a glass of water and a miniature plastic cup filled with green liquid.

I crawled over and gulped down the water, then sniffed the green fluid. Minty. It had to be mouthwash. After gargling with it, I spat it down the large grate near the toilet and crawled back over to the bed, exhausted. I closed my eyes and let sleep claim me.

I woke again an indeterminate amount of time later. A woman in a white outfit was standing over me, her hand pressed against my forehead. Cool, calming. A wave of relief flooded me. I must be in a hospital, and this was a doctor or nurse.

“What happened to me?” I asked in a croaky whisper. “I can’t remember anything.”

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she pulled me up so that I was in a seated position, then stepped over to a metal cart she must’ve brought in while I was still asleep. It was packed with medical equipment and objects: a blood pressure monitor, specimen cups, needles, cotton balls, medical tape, pill bottles.

“What hospital is this?” I asked.

“You aren’t in a hospital,” the woman finally said.

“What? Then where am I?” I asked, panic rising in my chest.

She ignored my question and wrapped part of the blood pressure monitor around my arm. After waiting for it to do its thing, she recorded the results on a clipboard.

“Hello?” I said incredulously. “Where the hell am I? What happened to me?”

“Your memory will return soon,” she said tartly. That was all she had to offer.

She conducted various other physical exams on me, touching and rubbing certain spots on my body to feel for any abnormalities or injuries, checking my reflexes, and taking my temperature. She kept muttering things like, ‘good,’ or ‘that’s fine’ and recording the results on the same clipboard. Then she shined a miniature flashlight in my eyes to check my pupils.

I gasped. The light flashing in my eyes had brought something back; a shimmering memory. Men in the woods, burning torches everywhere….

Oh, shit.

It was all flooding back now. I knew who I was. I knew what I’d done.

I was so stupid. So naïve. I actually thought my friends and I were right, and that all the silly conspiracy theories surrounding Crown and Dagger were exactly that—silly conspiracy theories. I thought the society was just a relatively-harmless group of wealthy men who liked to party and honor weird old traditions. I thought they wouldn’t hurt me.

But here I was, clearly in captivity, sore and sickly. They obviously saw me at their ceremony and realized I didn’t belong, and this was my punishment for violating their inner sanctum.

All this for a stupid grade in a stupid class.

I should’ve known better. I should’ve stopped the second I started getting those horrible threatening texts that morning.

“Wait,” I said frantically, scrambling to get off the bed. “This is a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just… I just wanted to write a dumb paper. But I won’t tell anyone, I promise!”

The nurse wrenched me back into a seated position, then told me to stay still as she slipped on some gloves and held up a small needle.

---