CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“My king, please wake up,” I called him hesitantly, quaking his body in a bid to wake him up if he was actually asleep. I didn’t get a response, nor the slightest sound to show that he was still alive.

“My king, it’s me, Rosia.” I told him, anxiously expecting the moment his eyes would be lifted to see me, but none of that happened.

Now, my heart began to hammer painfully behind my chest. I couldn’t get myself again as my entire body started to tremble.

“My king!” I wept, taking his body into my arms.

I lost Irene today. Is this how I am also going to lose him? Since I became a lady, he is the only man who has expressed an interest in me.

Most men of our kingdom despised me simply because I am my father's illegitimate daughter.

Agitatedly, I closely listened to his heart beat but completely heard nothing. He seemed to have lost his breath.

Could it be that he’s truly dead?

Ah! No, he’s not dead as it seems. What am I saying? How can I be wishing him death?

Where do I even go from here? I don’t know any other place in the world except for the palace and some parts of the village market.

The situation was almost becoming more helpless for me until a thought flashed through my mind. Looking at the height of the cliff we had fallen from, I realized that he must be passing through a temporal moment of breath loss.

It could happen to anyone at anytime, especially when you slam your body against a hard surface with a certain level of force. This must be his case right now.

Before Irene got killed, she knew so much about the human body. She taught me how to identify herbs and use them for treatment. And also, how to save situations like this.

According to her, when the victim enters such a critical condition. “You weigh your hands on the chest for a consecutive number of times until he or she wakes up." Irene had explained to me.

Performing that on the young king, he didn’t wake up nor move his body. I became more frantic, distressed and devastated.

“What if the victim fails wake up?” I could remember asking Irene the question.

She smiled as she looked at me. “You are left with the other option, my princess,” she said.

“Which other option is that?" I had asked, curiously. I enjoyed most of her teachings.

“You have to blow air into the person’s lungs,” she responded.

"How on earth is that even possible?"

“Through the mouth, my princess,” she answered, demonstratively.

“The mouth?! What if it’s a man?" This was my question to her. If she wasn’t bending her eyes over the cloth that she was knitting at that time, I am sure she would have seen the shock that went into my eyes.

“Would you rather prefer him dead? You have to do so to save him.”

Yes, I have to do so to save the young king. It feels as if Irene knew that a day like this would certainly come someday. Perhaps, she must’ve known because she had the ability to see into the future.

Desperately, I couldn’t wait to see the young king back on his feet again. His lips looked thin, soft, and clean, so I wouldn’t mind performing the process of resuscitation on him.

Before I could get my mouth around his to blow oxygen into his lungs, the worst kind of shock met me as I heard strong screaming from afar.

My eyes were confronted with a multifold number of the soldiers of Baldamon, still over the top of the cliff, yet to reach us.

Another group again?

“There she is.” A voice alerted.

“We found her” another said.

“Get her for me!” A stronger voice yelled.

“No, Kill her. She deserves to die," another said raucously and bitterly.

Kill her? Me? The thought of running away pushed me from inside, but I refused to. Since I have at least a glimmer of hope, I can’t possibly leave the young king behind, or else they would eventually kill him.

All I need to do now is to return his breath, to save him just like he had saved me. This is the moment he needs me as his woman of interest and I should act as one.

Positioning his head, I placed my mouth around his mouth, then blew air several times into it. His succulent lips under mind could have sent me overboard, but this was not the time for pleasure. Pleasure, they say, comes after pressure.

While in the process, his body made a movement, but a different normal movement, strange and odd. It seemed as if the bones in his body had begun to crack and twist.

I pulled my mouth away, then stared at him horrified, petrified and scared stiff. He started to cry over a likeningly unending pain. His veins looked like they had surfaced against his skin.

I couldn’t get the courage to look at his face again as his face started to transform into something else, something strange and terrifying, his eyes turning into a deeper fiery red.

Suddenly he stopped making the outcries. The pains in his body seemed to have subsided, so he stood up.

Inquisitive to see what changed, I saw that he now had animal-like hands, furs and paws instead of a normal human skin and feat. He looked exactly like the creature I had seen in my dream some days ago.

I had thought I was behind the darkness of my own imagination until the real darkness took over my eyes.