Free Sacrifice of the Septimus: Part 2 (Afterlife saga Book 7) by Stephanie Hudson Page B

next morning only to find myself disappointed that this wasn’t all a horrible dream as I’d hoped. I was still trapped in this nightmare and the person who seemed to be pulling all the strings was someone I couldn’t yet reach. I just wanted to go home and feel safe in the knowledge that Draven still loved me the way he always had done. Because even back in the days when we were separated I still knew deep down how much Draven cared for me but this…well this was a different type of torture!
    But I knew I couldn’t just sit like a plump chicken in my gilded cage waiting for my golden egg to hatch. I needed to act and I couldn’t do that here. No, I needed to formulate a plan now and as much as it pained me to say, that plan no longer included Draven.
    Sure he may have given me some attention and shown me that at least he cared about his new prize getting hurt before he could sample the goods. And in whatever way that was for a supernatural King to do I didn’t yet know and didn’t want to for that matter. Because for someone forbidden to bed humans where exactly did that leave me?
    Again I had no answers but one thing was certain and that was I definitely wasn’t going to stick around to wait and find out. Not now I knew there was no hope for me to be the Chosen One to him like I was back in my time. For I knew that falling in love with me was the only way to get him to break his own rules and the reality of that happening now after last night looked impossible. Not when he already had someone he cared for in his life. No, it was time to jump ship and swim as if a shit storm was coming…one that was named ‘the prophecy’. 
    So now all I had to do was escape this underground fortress and find the rest of my time travelling party before making my way back to the ocean, or in my case whatever the Hell it was we had jumped into in the first place. It wasn’t as if I could find some tourist office on a street corner and pick up a map to the nearest Janus gate. No, I needed to be clever about this and to do that when I had two guards watching my every move was going to be difficult.
    However, the one thing on my side was that I definitely had enough time to think about it considering I was being treated like the leper of the group. If only I had someone on my side who could help me in all this and as grateful as I was for Ranka, right now who I really needed was Pip, Sophia or Ari.
    “Where are you guys?” I whispered to myself.
    “What did you say?” Parmida snapped from the corner of the treatment room I was currently in. It was another day at Hell’s spa and once more I was laid out naked on the stone slab feeling like a bruised piece of meat. Some of the servants were washing the mushy gunk off my ribs, whilst two other girls worked on rubbing oils into my feet.
    I didn’t answer her but instead just turned my head the other way to stare at the wall. I heard her huff and I knew another lecture was on its way, as I had already heard quite a few today.
    “You don’t know how lucky you are to be singled out by the King like this.” I rolled my eyes which one of the younger servant girls saw and smiled down at me. She must have been no older than sixteen and I had to wonder what unfortunate life choices had been made to bring her to this point. Had it been a case of wrong place at the wrong time or more likely had she been born into slavery? 
    “You had better heed my warning child for you could very easily be cast aside and resold to the highest bidder should the King choose to do. And understand me now when I say that not everyone with wealth is as easy on the eye as the King is or as gentle with his women.” Of this I had no doubt but she didn’t need to hear me say that. I knew that to have such a handsome King with the reputation of being good to his women was like winning the royal lottery for girls in a harem but for me it meant nothing. He was my husband first and foremost and no matter how much