Chapter 7 A New World.
Chapter seven
A New World.
Percy Flores
Light filtered through my eyelids, pink and bright.
My body ached in familiar and unfamiliar ways.
All my muscles felt stiff, like I wasn’t made of flesh but something cold and inorganic.
My fingertips brushed against soft fabric, and I attempted to open my eyes, which felt glued closed with a year's worth of sleep.
Through my eyelashes, the world slowly took focus.
A window was opposite the bed I lay on, and the curtains drawn back allowed morning light to flood the room. Bare walls, whitewashed, a wooden closet off to the side that I could see.
I pushed myself up and fell back down. Every part of me protested at the movement. My head pounded, my pulse loud and harsh at my temples, a throbbing at the base of my skull. I took a deep breath and attempted to push myself into a sitting position again, this time with more success.
The bedroom was large and spacious, with minimal furniture, only the wardrobe and bed. The only door in the room was to my right.
My right leg ached, a dull, deep kind of pain.
Pushing the tan-coloured bedding off of me revealed that I wore a plain, pale yellow nightgown.
While I would ordinarily be concerned that someone had undressed and dressed me, my attention was occupied by the strange, clunky, boot-like structure encasing my lower right leg and foot.
I racked my brain to try to remember Dr. Phears' lessons. It was some type of cast, but not fibreglass and plaster; a supporting boot, maybe? It had straps. I thought about removing it, but then decided that was a bad idea. Wherever I was, I had received medical treatment. Gingerly, I pressed my fingers along the base of my skull and felt a few small stitches along tender flesh and a patch of shaved hair. Then I quickly checked to make sure I still had my necklace with the ring that Selene gave me on my birthday. I didn’t usually think about it, but I was relieved when I felt it against my chest.
I strained my hearing to try to hear anything outside the door.
Where was I?
I remembered the strange quiet of the maze, then pain and… Dylan. The self-proclaimed hero had come to rescue me and, as was becoming habit, made everything so much worse.
Ana!
She was here somewhere. I hoped.
I had been taken from Ardens. I was sure I wasn’t in Ardens anymore.
There was no fireplace or any source of heating that I could see within the room.
There was a slight chill to the air, but nothing as there had been in Sanguis or Ardens.
I was further south. Much further. Part of me felt different, something was missing, like a noise in the background that had suddenly gone quiet and only now was I aware that it wasn’t playing anymore.
Our bond.
I couldn’t feel Selene.
Not at all.
I tried to connect to her. I envisioned her face perfectly, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hands at my waist, her lips at my throat.
The sensation was almost real, my imagination so vivid, but it was only my imagination.
I knew instinctively that I was a great distance from my soul match and that distance felt like looking out across the sea with no land in sight, and nothing to guide me, just a blinding sun and white-blue all around.
It felt like how I imagined dying of thirst might feel, but minus the physical sensation and entirely psychological.
I had to find out where I was. Gather as much information as I could and use everything I had at my disposal to reunite with Selene.
I felt a cold sort of dread wash over me as I twisted to get out of bed and flinched, expecting pain in my side, but finding none.
The pain I remembered wasn’t my own. It had been Selene’s, and there was something terrifying and dreadful about not being connected to her pain anymore.
Did it mean she was no longer in pain? Was the bond affected by distance?
Like a radio, were we simply too far apart to feel each other?
Were her enchantments working now, no longer allowing our bond to leak through?
Or did the lack of shared pain mean something worse, far worse?
I couldn’t bring myself to even think the words.
No.
It was only anxiety for my soul match, causing my thoughts to spiral. We couldn’t exist alone. We were one now. If I were here in this life, so was Selene, somewhere.
I gingerly placed my feet on the ground. There was slight pain in my leg, but not enough to keep me from standing. I wobbled, my hand on the bed for support. The boot was clearly providing support, a brace, for my injured leg. How long had I been unconscious?
I remembered Ana’s face, the way her eyebrows rose and pulled together in a way that made her look like a sad kitten, her hand brushing against my cheek.
She had knocked me out.
I was surprised, though I really shouldn’t have been. I had witnessed her powers in full at the Academy. Still, part of me couldn’t believe she had used them against me.
I tried to stand without leaning against the bed and succeeded.
“Right,” I said, risking making a sound but wanting to try my voice.
My throat felt drier than anything I had experienced before. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my voice came in a hoarse whisper. But I could speak, and I knew that all I needed was a drink and a little more practice, and my voice would return to me.
The nightgown I wore felt too revealing; it made me feel vulnerable and exposed, and even though wherever I was wasn't as cold, it wasn’t exactly warm either. I made my way to the wardrobe and hoped that it wouldn’t be empty.
It wasn’t, but the clothes were those of a stranger. A man's clothing. Someone much larger than me. I sighed. It would do.
There were a few selections of shirts and trousers, and men-sized dress shoes lined the bottom of the wardrobe.
I pulled open one of two small drawers and found socks and men's underwear in one, and a couple of watches, cufflinks, and two pairs of leather belts in the other. At least I wouldn’t be entirely barefoot. Socks would have to do.
I took a cream-coloured shirt from the hanger; it felt heavy yet soft, like a wool mix material.
I pulled the nightgown over my head quickly, then changed into the shirt and buttoned it.
The shirt was like a nightgown itself, so overly large, but I rolled the sleeves up past my elbows and grabbed a pair of brown cord trousers from the hanger.
A colour theme was apparent—the beige walls, the tan bedding, the off-white shirts and brown trousers.
The room felt like it belonged to someone.
The legs of the trousers were far too wide, which would be helpful for the boot if not at all fashionable.
I smiled to myself. Selene would not approve of this outfit; she’d tut disapprovingly in a way that felt playfully like a challenge, before she masterfully undressed me simply to tease me, before redressing me to her liking.
I grabbed a pair of socks and a belt and hobbled back to the bed, sitting on the edge while I decided the best way to get my booted leg into the trousers.
The boot was just that, a boot. It had straps, and I thought it was best to remove it, test what it was like to put pressure on my leg without the boot and put it back on if necessary.
The boot was easy enough to get off. There were external straps and an internal liner that fit snugly.
The removal of the boot revealed my badly bruised leg, or at least that it was once badly bruised.
The bruising was now yellowish and clearly healing, and a narrow, white scar ran vertically down half my shin.
I pulled the oversized trousers halfway up my legs before carefully standing, and I realised why I had been placed in the brace of a boot.
A sharp pain shot up my leg; it was bearable, but still, the boot would provide more support.
I tucked the shirt into the trousers and threaded the belt through the belt loops, putting it to its tightest notch. They would stay up at least.
Sitting back on the bed, I pulled on the similarly oversized socks that reached my knees.
The socks would provide some compression, which would be good for my injured leg.
I rolled the trousers up, cuffing the bottom of the left leg and rolling the material all the way up to my knee on the right, before strapping the boot back in place.
I knew I must have looked a mess. I could feel how tangled my hair was.
My breath was disgusting even to myself, and I felt like I hadn’t had a real wash in a week, which might have been true with the healing process of my bruised leg.
I assumed that it had been broken and, at some stage, was a much worse sight than it currently was, though I had no memory of how I had injured my leg, only that when I had awoken in the maze to Dylan and the others, my leg had already been injured.
I stood and stared at the door to the room. I wasn’t sure I had been exactly quiet while getting dressed, and I didn’t know what was on the other side of the door, but I knew I couldn’t just stay in the room, paralysed with fear, with the unknown. I had to leave.
The door opened quietly, and the wooden flooring made no sound as I stepped forward into a wide corridor.
The corridor was lined with more doors. To my left was a dead end, a white wall with a large calendar pinned on a corkboard. To my right, the corridor met another; a row of large, bright windows lit the space.
I walked slowly towards the corkboard. Curiosity demanded that I investigate the calendar closest to me, which might tell me where I was.