Page 76 of King of Lies

Imove as fast as I can to comply. I drop my phone down to the bench next to me as I click my belt into place and pull it tight. I hear Rhys’s voice yelling for me, but I can’t understand what he’s saying.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” Harris says.

“Watch out!” Leo yells and then the car is filled with the sounds of breaking glass and crunching metal as my screams fill the air.

My face smashes against the window next to me and an explosion of pain blasts through my face and rattles around in my brain, silencing me.

I should have known. I should have run when I had the chance. I was never safe here. Not in this country, or in his castle, and I was absolutely never safe with Rhys.

“Stella!” I hear him shout. “Hen! Answer me!”

When the car comes to rest, only the last bits of the old Billy Joel song can be heard through the car and I sing the last line, a fitting end to my tragic tale, a life where, if something awful could happen it did, and the losses compound one after another. I should have stayed hidden in my quiet life all alone.

I had thought that he was my Prince Charming. That he was whisking me off to a fairytale life in a faraway land. But he’s not Prince Charming; Rhys Alexander is the King of lies.

“And so it goes … And so it goes.”

“Hen!” he screams one last time, or more, I don’t know.

And then the blackness overwhelms me, and I fade into nothing.

Just like before.

I am nothing …

Epilogue

Not one Goddamn thing

One week later

Beep … beep … beeeppp …

It feels like I’m underwater and I can’t get to the surface. It’s dark and it’s murky but I fight my way through the oppressive weight that holds me down.

Beep … beep … beeeppp …

I blink my eyes and everything is blurry, so I blink them again. I’m in a bed, in a hospital. And then it all comes back to me.

The snakes.

The dossier on me. On Rhys.

The queen.

I wasn’t safe. I had to run.

And then the crash.

Beep … beep … beeeppp …the monitors beside me sound indicating that, even though my body doesn’t feel like it, I’m still alive.

“I’m glad you’re finally awake, Hen,” Rhys says from a chair in the corner of the room, hiding in the shadows.

“Wh-what are you doing here?”

“I told you I’d find you,” he says.