She Belongs To The Devil

Ariel burst out of Niylah's room to see Ramon shaking the ash-grey body of Kenneth. Her eyes widened and her breathing stopped in shock. And to add to her terror, Damien was also lying beside Kenneth. He was also not moving at all.

She wanted to run towards the two of them. However, she froze in place. Her hands trembled like a leaf. And her eyes glistened with tears.

"Ariel! Don't just stand there!" Ramon looked at her with terror in his eyes and shouted at her so that she would do something. "Kenneth doesn't have a pulse!"

Ariel finally came back to her senses and ran to Kenneth's side.

Ramon gave way to Ariel and then shifted to check Damien's pulse.

Ariel had no time to find Kenneth's veins and check for a pulse. So she rested her ear on Kenneth's chest and tried to listen to his heartbeat. Thankfully, he still had a faint and weak heartbeat.

"Oh god! What happened to His Highness?" a few guards, who had gone on a patrol, came running to the common room.

One of the guards even pulled out his sword and pointed it at Ariel. He misread the situation and accused Ariel, "What did you do to our Crown Prince? Did you kill him?"

Ariel was closing her eyes and trying to focus on using her energy to heal Kenneth. But the guards were making it difficult for her to focus when she was already having difficulty in doing so because of fear that she was going to be too late to save Kenneth.

So she turned her head back in anger and screamed at those stupid guards, "I'm trying to save him! Don't interfere if you don't want him to die!"

Ariel's voice echoed throughout the room and even the corridors and the staircase of the keep. She sounded so terrifying that the guards backed off and didn't even dare to raise their heads.

Ariel was about to go back to healing Kenneth, but Ramon looked at Ariel in horror and said, "Damien's pulse rate is too low. And he is barely breathing."

Ariel was now conflicted. She looked at both the boys while holding her head with her hands. Both of them were in critical condition. And it looked like if she was to choose one to heal first, the other would most likely die, or at the very least the other would fall into a prolonged coma because of the extreme damage caused by the poison.

Who was she going to choose? She didn't have the luxury to play favorites. Both of them were important to her.

"Ariel! What are you doing? Can't you heal them both at once?" Zach suddenly stepped forward and asked in a trembling voice.

Suddenly, a brilliant idea came into Ariel's mind.

She touched both Damien and Kenneth on their chests. And she vanished from the common room without saying a word. She didn't have any time to spare.

The guards looked at Ramon and Zach in fear. And one of the guards asked while stuttering, "W-Where did she t-take our Crown Prince? What is she going to do to him?"

Ramon glanced at the guards and replied, "Wherever she took them, you can rest assured that he will return alive and well."

The guards were very skeptical though. How were they going to believe Ramon's words at face value when they had seen what looked like the dead body of their Crown Prince just a while ago?

So one of the guards ran to inform the King about what they had seen.

Seeing that guard running away, Zach also tried to run after him to stop him. He could tell that the situation would take a worse turn if the King was to hear that guard's version of explanation.

However, the other guards surrounded both the Princes of the foreign nation. And they pointed their swords at them.

One of the guards, who looked like the leader of the squad spoke, "We cannot let the two of you go anywhere until we know our Crown Prince is okay, and until we know where the Princess took him."

Ramon raised his hands in the air and tried to calmly talk with that guard, "Look, you all saw that she didn't say anything before teleporting away. But I can assure you that she took them somewhere so that she could heal them. Maybe she took them back to Wyverndale. We have a coven of witches living in the Palace. Maybe she took them there so that they can help her to heal them."

"How do we know that she isn't going to harm our Crown Prince?" That leader didn't seem to believe in Ramon's story. He kept on glaring at Ramon as if he would use his sword at any minute now.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Zach sighed in frustration and then tried to reason with that guard, "We are your Crown Prince's friends. Why would we try to kill him? Besides, if we wanted to kill him then why would we do it here when he stayed back in Wyverndale for weeks?"

"Then tell me what happened to our Crown Prince? He looked like…" The leader couldn't even bring himself to say what his Crown Prince looked like.

Ramon heaved a quiet sigh of relief because that guard was finally asking some sensible question rather than blatantly accusing them of trying to assassinate their Crown Prince.

He then calmly informed the guards, "We were having a duel session in the fighting arena. Kenneth was fighting with Damien. And unfortunately, both of them took the duel a little too seriously and hurt each other. And when we found them here, they were already unconscious and were lying on the floor. Ariel was trying to heal them.

But since both of them had very faint pulses, maybe she went to get some more help."

Just when Ramon had thought that he had lightened the situation a bit, he heard some commotion coming from the corridor.

Ramon and Zach looked at each other in extreme horror because they saw the King heading towards them in anger. He was surrounded by a lot of Royal Guards. And it looked like Ramon and Zach were the ones who would have to give the explanation again and make the King believe that they hadn't just murdered his son.