Evadere (17 page)

Chapter 11

A loud thumping vibrated from behind my eyes and radiated into my temples as I struggled to get my eyes to open. The light shining in from the window made the pain even more unbearable. I stretched out my arms and changed position from my side to my back. I was wet. The bed was wet. Was I sick? Had I spent the night sweating out a fever?

I sat straight up. My head lurched forward with the rest of my body. The thumping increased. I groaned. What was happening? My eyes wouldn’t focus. They felt so heavy. My hands went to my dress, the same one I had worn last night. It too, was drenched. My hand ran down my bare legs. A thick slime covered them. I brought my hands back up in front of my face and made my eyes open wider so I could get a sense of exactly what was going on.
 

Oh … my …

The dark red liquid dripped down my palms and ran down my wrists and arms. Blood. I was covered in blood. It was everywhere, all over me, all over the bed and blankets. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, the pain of my lungs expanding, mixing with the extreme throbbing in my head. Was all this blood mine?
 

I ripped all of the blankets away from my body and turned to get out of the bed. As I tore the covers off, a bloody mess of knotted blonde hair and crimson stained porcelain skin appeared beside me. I pushed away the hair from the face. Two dead eyes stared up at me. Two eyes that belonged to Raleigh. The blood was hers. Deep gashes severed through her beautiful gown piercing into her torso. I couldn’t get out of the bed fast enough as I fell backwards off the opposite edge of the mattress and collapsed onto the cool floor, my hands making blood prints in the cement. My stomach tensed up and then contracted as I vomited again and again, the force of the motion making my head feel as though it was going to split in half.
 

I got to my feet somehow and hobbled toward the bathroom. I turned on the shower and stripped all of the blood covered clothes to the floor. I let the hot water gush over my head and down my skin, the bottom of the tub filling with Raleigh’s blood as it vanished down the drain. This couldn’t be happening to me right now. Raleigh was
dead
. I was soaked in her blood as if I had tossed and turned all night with her corpse right beside me as I slept. The thought gagged me as I went to all fours again and threw up beside the drain.
 

I got to my feet and reached for the soap. I poured it all over my body, viciously scrubbing my skin until it burned. I had to get this off me. I couldn’t stand to be covered in it. I looked down at my hands, the blood even dried under my nails. I dug them into a bar of soap and scrubbed again, my jaw clenching together from both a churning stomach and the anxiety of it all.
 

What was I going to do? I couldn’t go back out there and see her there.
 

What had happened last night? I couldn’t remember a thing. I remembered Jillianne giving me a drink of ‘tea,’ and then passing out into a deep sleep.
 

Think! Think!
I yelled at myself. How could this have happened without my remembering a single thing? It seemed impossible, yet here it was.
 

I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a thick towel around me. I prayed I had gotten it all off. Now what to do …?

I pressed my back up against the wall and closed my eyes attempting to think. This headache was unbelievable. I ran to the mirror and checked for injury on my head as the cause, but found nothing was there. Maybe it had been that drink. What had been in that concoction Jillianne gave me?

“Help!” I cried out. “Help me, please!” I said a little louder this time. I screamed at the top of my lungs, my skull throbbing with each shrill noise, but I knew someone had to come to me. I wasn’t going out there alone to face what was left of Raleigh.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Someone I had seen at dinner a few times hurried into my room. They looked at me standing in the bathroom doorway, then looked to the pool of blood on my bed, Raleigh’s arm and hand protruding from the covers. His face went white. He was an older man, short and stout. His hand moved up to his gaping mouth as he couldn’t take his eyes away from the horror scene.

“Please, help me,” I begged. “I don’t know what happened. I just woke up and found her beside me like that. I was covered in blood. I just showered it all off, but I can’t stand to go past her.”

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Raleigh,” I cried.

“Raleigh?”

“Yes.” I sucked in a large gulp of air.
 

“You wait,” he stuttered. “Wait right here.” He put his finger up. “You wait right here, and I’ll go get someone.”

Tears streamed down my face. “Hurry.”

The little man practically sprinted from the room.

Emry appeared at the entrance of the door. I rushed over and wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me back, my wet hair dripping all over him.

“I don’t know what happened,” I cried. “I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill Raleigh.”

“Shh,” he said, his hand on the back of my head so I didn’t have to turn around and see her lifeless body again. “I know. I know you didn’t do this. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Just try to calm down.”

“You believe me?” I looked up into his eyes just then.

He frowned. “Of course I would never think you capable of murder. What’s the matter with you? I’d never think such a thing.”

I leaned my sobbing face against him again, unable to stop trembling.
 

“What’s this I hear about Raleigh being dead …” I heard Atavia’s voice echo down the hall and then fall short as she entered the room. I didn’t want to see her. I just wanted to continue to be comforted by Emry.

Ben Hanley stepped up behind Emry. I recognized his shiny shoes right away as I had been looking down. Emry turned to Ben as I stood beside him, our hands still tightly intertwined.

“Ben, get some men in here to get rid of the … body. Jillianne, go get some girls to clean this all up. Don’t even try to clean those sheets and mattress though. Have them burned,” Emry instructed everyone.

“What’s
she
still doing here?” Atavia bellowed out. “Get away from my son.”

I ducked behind Emry, never letting go of his hand.

“Mother, take a deep breath,” Emry suggested. “This isn’t what it seems.”

“It’s exactly what it seems,” she shouted. “This girl is nothing but trouble.”

“It doesn’t look good,” Jillianne admitted.
 

“Who else do you suggest we point the finger to?” Atavia asked, her voice stern and on the verge of irate.

“Not Anna. Don’t even start your accusations against her. She’s no killer.”

“Jealousy is an emotion that can overtake any completely sensible person and turn them into a murderer,” Atavia yelled. “It’s one of the most, if not
the
most controlling emotion there is.”

“No!” I cried out. “I did not do this!”
 

“Poor, poor Raleigh,” Jillianne kept repeating.

“You!” I shouted. “What did you give me before bed to drink?”

“Aha!” Atavia exclaimed. “Anna was drunk, weren’t you? Just look at her. She looks horrid.”

“It was just a little tea-like substance to help her sleep,” Jillianne explained.

I wiped the tears off my chin before they fell. “It made me black out.”

“No,” Jillianne said defensively. “It was nothing like you’re thinking. You just slept soundly. You were exhausted.”

“So soundly I don’t remember Raleigh coming into my room, or dying beside me?” I questioned her. “No,” I turned toward Atavia. “Someone set me up. Someone killed Raleigh and dumped her in my room to make it look like I had something to do with it.”

“Unbelievable,” Atavia said as men entered the room and headed to the bed to remove the corpse. “You are the only one who would have wanted Raleigh dead. Everyone else loved her.”

I looked to Emry for help. He glanced back at me, his eyes full of pity as he was just as confused as the rest of us. “Mother, stop, please. I’m telling you that Anna didn’t, couldn’t have done this. She’s a wonderful person no matter what issues she’s having with me and Raleigh. This is not the way she handles things.”

The men lifted the body and began carrying her out, the blood trickling all over the floor.

“Stop,” Atavia called out. “Look at what a mess you’re making. You can’t have a stream of blood running the whole way through the castle. I have guests.”

“Your majesty?” one of the men asked.

“Put her back down. Go get something to put her in so others don’t see her.” She shook her head. “Idiots.” She turned to face everyone else. “Out, everyone out. You,” she pointed to me. “Get dressed. I want everyone in the study. Ben, don’t take your eyes off her.”

“Mother, I’ll stay with her,” Emry offered. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Atavia huffed and everyone filed out of the room.

After throwing on some clothes, I pulled my wet hair back and met Emry in the hall. He gave me a troubled look. I knew I was in for it for whatever it was that awaited me in the study with Atavia and her crew.
 

Jo ran up to me and grabbed my shoulders. “Anna,” she hissed.

She had taken me off guard. I pulled away from her grasp.
 

“What’s this I hear? You killed Raleigh?” she asked.

Emry reached out for my hand and pulled me along. “How fast rumors travel in this castle,” he mumbled.

I looked back at Jo. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he whispered as we walked down the hall.

“Really?” I said. “Don’t worry that others think I’m a murderer?”

He sighed but didn’t say anything else as we made a sharp turn and went into another room I’d never seen before. Everyone was eerily silent as we walked toward the front where
 

Atavia stood.
 

“Tell everyone what happened,” Ben said.

Everyone’s face was filled with accusation and outrage as their beauty queen was dead. Of course they’d instantly think that the attention seeking, jealous girlfriend would have been the one to commit the crime.
 

“I don’t know,” I began. “I talked with Emry last night …”

“You had a fight,” Jillianne corrected me.

I glared at her. “Yes, we sort of had a fight. He left, Jillianne came in and escorted me to my room.”

“Is that true, Jillianne?” Atavia asked.

She nodded, her brown curls bobbing up and down as she did so.

“She gave me a drink to help me sleep. I fell asleep and woke up with a terrible headache. I was covered in blood with Raleigh beside me. I threw up on the floor when I realized she was dead and hurried to wash the blood away before screaming for help as I couldn’t face going into that room alone again. That’s it.”

“Was she drunk last night, Jillianne?” Atavia asked.

“No,” Jillianne said.
 

“Emry?”

“She was sober,” he answered.
 

“When was the last time you saw Raleigh?” Ben asked.

This interrogation reminded me that Ben had been a lawyer on Earth. “She was with Emry when I went to talk to him. She left so we could be alone. That’s the last time.” I ran a hand over my smooth, wet ponytail.
 

“This doesn’t make sense,” Ben told Atavia.

“Sure it does,” she snapped. “She killed her.”

“How was she killed?” Emry asked. “Does anyone even know that yet?”

“Guards said Raleigh was stabbed,” Ben said. “Ten times.”

Everyone in the room gasped.

“Poor, dear, Raleigh,” Atavia whispered. “She had a fruitful life awaiting her.”

I glared, knowing exactly what she meant. She had always planned on getting Emry to fall for Raleigh, to marry Raleigh.

“None of you know Anna like I do,” Emry said so everyone could hear. “This nonsense of accusing her is going to stop right now.” He looked around making sure he made eye contact with everyone. “Someone else did this. Maybe one of
you
did this.”

“Emry,” Atavia chastised. “You’re out of line.”

“Aren’t I to be king?” he questioned her.

“You aren’t king yet, my boy,” Atavia said, a threat in her tone.

He eyed her for a moment, remaining silent. The control she had over him was so irritating. Emry was trying to defend me, to protect me for the first time since I came here. Even after all that had happened last night with Treyu, and Raleigh now dead, he still was on my side. That alone was making all this bearable, making it so I wasn’t a complete wreck and not breaking down at this exact moment.
 

Ben stepped next to Atavia. “My queen,” he said, lowering his head and giving her a little bow. “What do you propose?”

She put a finger to her lips and tapped it there a few times. She glanced at Emry and then me.
 

“Someone hasn’t been killed in the castle since King Calan was murdered by Karn,” I heard someone whisper from behind me. I knew Emry had heard it, too. The side of his jaw tightened in tension.