She Belongs To The Devil

Adeline slowly started to regain her consciousness. She tried to open her eyes but she realized that she was blindfolded. Then she tried to move her body but she couldn\'t do so as well. Her body was still numb from the sedative-laced needle that she was attacked with earlier.

She tried to lift just her head but when she lifted it a little, she felt as though the whole world was spinning rapidly. She gave up trying to move anything, she lay down as still as she could.

"Did they feed more sleep potion to me after I fainted? Why is my whole body feeling numb? I shouldn\'t be feeling this dizzy just because of that needle."

Adeline tried to memorize which kind of potion would have such a lasting effect but then she realized that she had no idea how much time had passed since she first fainted. "Maybe it has just been a few minutes? But why does it feel as though I have been unconscious for days? Did they lock me up somewhere?"

And she also had no idea where she was. She couldn\'t feel a thing on which she was lying. "Am I sleeping on leaves? Am I still in the forest?" She tried to move her back to check if she could hear the dry leaves cracking but her back was not taking orders from her mind at all, no matter how hard she tried..

She was grunting and forcing to move her back, her legs, anything at all but all of her attempts were futile. And she gave up trying to move forcefully; she knew she needed to give enough time to her body to recover from that numbness on its own.

But Adeline was getting restless because she wasn\'t able to do anything. She had never felt this helpless before.

She wanted to shout at the top of her lungs and curse whoever did this to her. But she controlled the urge to do so because she was in a very vulnerable state. If they were to do something to her then she wouldn\'t be able to fight back. It would be foolishness to try to provoke them when she was in such a condition.

She tried to think of a way to escape from wherever she was as soon as her body would start working again. But she had to know where she was at first. So she tried to listen instead. Her ears and nose were the only organs that were working and weren\'t restricted like her eyes.

Adeline calmed herself down and began to focus on her hearing. The place was unusually quiet for a forest. She couldn\'t hear the sounds of birds nor could she hear any howls of wolves as she would normally do during the night. She was also unable to hear the noises made by crickets.

"I am definitely not in the forest. They must have taken me somewhere else while I was still unconscious."

Adeline tried to focus on the other sounds that she could hear in the distance. She could hear the humming of a couple of people. And she could also hear the soft sound of water crashing against the stones. "I guess I am near the Ethereal River." Adeline thought to herself and sighed.

"Hawisa and Osanna must have been worried out of their minds. I hope no one else has found out yet that I am not inside the Palace. If father finds it out then he will increase the security for me. He might even punish Hawisa and Osanna like the last time!"

"Aaaaahhhhh!" she screamed inside her mind because she didn\'t want to be under constant surveillance. She wouldn\'t be able to freely meet Theodore if that happened.

Adeline inhaled sharply with the thought of Theodore. "I hope it hasn\'t been time for him to come to my room yet. If he finds out that I am in this state then he will kill whoever is out there. I don\'t want him to do that and get punished by his brother or his father for breaking the rule. I have to find Rion and get out of here before that."

Even when she was most probably locked in some deserted house near the river, Adeline was more worried about the consequence that it would bring upon her loved ones than herself.

Adeline tried to check whether she was regaining her muscle control or not. She tried to move her toes and she felt them moving. She tried to lift her legs and it was in better condition than before, she was able to lift them.

She rubbed her feet on the surface of whatever she was lying on. She felt a wooden board. As she had thought, she was locked inside some abandoned cabin.

She tried to move her hands and that was when she found out that her hands were tied together. Adeline chuckled and then thought to herself, "Fools! They tied my hands on the front. I can easily take them down like this. Maybe I can even break the rope."

Her body was recovering slowly but before she could try and stand properly, she heard the sound of shoes clicking on the floorboard.

Adeline pretended to be unconscious again when the footsteps approached closer and closer. And she counted the sets of footsteps, "One… two… three… and that is four… So there are four fools. Let\'s find out who they are."

The door opened with a squeaking noise. All four of the perpetrators stepped inside the room.

Adeline did not move a muscle. She wanted them to talk among themselves and reveal who they really were.

And they did just that.

"What do we do now? She isn\'t waking up at all." She heard a voice whispering to the others.

And she heard an aggressive whisper from the other one, "I told you that dose would be too much. But you had to feed her that potion even when she was already unconscious."

And then there was someone who sounded a little too worried. "What if she doesn\'t wake up for days? Who is going to wait for her here, we cannot just leave her here like this? And what if somebody sees her horse outside and finds her here?"

Someone banged their foot on the floor and scolded the others, "I told you we should have waited to lift the invisibility spell from that horse until she woke up. But nobody listened to me."

Someone defended aggressively, "But we had to lift the spell from us. And I asked that witch to lift it from the horse as well so that I could send her away."

"Shhh… speak softly. You might wake her up."

And suddenly Adeline spoke in a sarcastic yet intimidating tone, "Weren\'t you all waiting for me to wake up, dear brother and sisters?"