His Little Hunter

Chapter 11

ALLISON’S POV

When I peeled my heavy lids open, I found myself laying on the floor, darkness surrounding me as a feeling similar to what I imagined having your skull split open felt like radiated through my head. It felt like a bomb had gone off in my skull.

The pounding only increased when I tried to lift my heavy body off the ground. My hand came up to rub my temple in an attempt to ease some of the pain but I was met with resistance as the sound of chains faintly echoed in the room.

I blindly felt at my wrist, my confusion and panic growing at the feeling of metal cuffs connected to chains. Both my wrists had been shackled by heavy metal, my range of movement limited. The hell?

Where the f**k was I?

Why was I bound and why did I feel like I’d just had a head-on collision with a truck?

I racked my brain, trying to piece together what had happened before I’d passed out but I pulled up blank, my headache only worsening from the mental exertion.

What the hell is going on?

The darkness shrouding the room only made me more agitated. Over the years I’d grown out of my crippling fear of the dark. I could manage a dark room without having a panic attack but that didn’t mean I felt comfortable with the lack of vision. I blinked repeatedly, trying to will my eyes to adjust to the darkness and when they finally did, my heart sank into my stomach.

I was behind bars, in a cell of some sort of prison and beyond my cell was a fairly large room.

Through the darkness, my eyes made out the shape of a table in the centre of the room, the wall directly behind it decorated with an assortment of whips and torture devices that I was painfully familiar with. The collection was vast, each item seeming to glint even in the darkness, a testament to the harm they could inflict.

On the head and foot of the rather large table were cuffs similar to the ones that currently adorned my wrists, restraints made to hold the victim’s hands and legs in place while the sinister instruments that lined the wall behind were used on the unfortunate victim.

From memory, I knew that the table could be adjusted to match the size and height of the victim. It didn’t matter how large or how small they were, the table didn’t discriminate. Pain didn’t discriminate.

A flash of a memory and my breath hitched, my hand instinctively moving to rub at my stomach as a phantom pain radiated from it. Panic was steadily growing.

A few feet away from the table was a wooden chair with similar cuffs on the armrest and front legs. It looked less intimidating than the table and its wall of weapons but looks could be deceiving.

It wasn’t visible but there was a hidden button behind the chair that sent dozens of blades shooting out from the backrest of the chair, piercing whoever was unfortunate enough to be seated on it. The blades were placed strategically so as to only narrowly miss the vital organs of their victim.

I swallowed a lump as a painful memory suddenly flashed through my mind, my hand reaching to rub at my chest in response only to be restricted by my shackled wrists.

There were no windows in the room, hence the heavy darkness that bathed the space but unlit torches lined the walls of the room outside the cell, the only possible source of light in the dreary place. From my position on the ground, my line of vision was limited but I knew there was a door to the left that led out of this horrid place. A large metal door with a characteristic ominous screech that echoed whenever it was opened.

I’d learned to associate that screech with impending pain.

Panic grew with each detail of the room I absorbed, each detail I recognized and remembered. I was in a place I never thought I’d ever see again. A place I never wished to be in ever again.

I tried to calm my raging heart but the organ continued to pound like it would beat out of my chest.

This couldn’t be real.

It had to be a bad dream.

Right, this was just a nightmare caused by my encounter with the royal. It wasn’t real.

Don’t people say you can’t feel pain in dreams? I pinched my thigh hoping to feel nothing but was horrified when pain radiated from the site.

No. This has to be a dream. How else could I explain waking up here?

Suddenly that terrifying screech echoed through the room and my whole body stilled, fear chilling the blood in my veins. The pounding in my chest grew louder as the sound of footsteps floated through the space.

Someone was coming.

I stopped breathing. Even though I knew HE was long dead, a paranoid part of me expected to see him emerge from the darkness with that haunting smile he always wore. That look of excitement just before I was begging for death.

The visitor’s silhouette finally appeared in my line of sight but through the heavy darkness, I could make out no details of him and that only fuelled my discomfort. Could it be HIM?

This person was tall with broad shoulders but he wasn’t tall enough to be HIM and he was way too large.

The strike of a match echoed through the room followed by the dull sound of a flame roaring to life and soon the room was no longer dark. Warm firelight bathed the formerly black room and I could now make out things with more clarity. Including the visitor’s face.

It wasn’t HIM. I felt some form of relief at that but it was a face I recognised. A face I hated just as much.

“Long time no see, slave.” He said when he stood in front of the cell, his tongue deliberately rolling and enunciating every letter of the last word mockingly.

Fear and panic swiftly shifted into fury. Fury so potent it felt like my chest was on fire. I glared at the smirk on his face, remembering all the times I’d seen it and the events that brought it forth.

“Did you miss me?”