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PHYSIENTS WILL ALWAYS OFFERS BEST STORIES AND LIVE STREAMING ALL TIME
Chapter 96 Enough
The princess subconsciously stepped back as Alex continued walking closer to her, glaring into her eyes like he was piercing through her soul. The danger in his eyes turned uncontrollable and she instantly felt as if he was almost going to do something brutal.
But before Alexander could reach her, the Queen suddenly stood between them.
"Alex, please calm down," Queen Leah urged, her face filled with worry.
However, Alex just let out a menacing laugh.
"Hahaha. Calm down? How could I calm down when my little lamb is nowhere to be found?" he asked. He still looked relatively calm but everyone knew that the volcano would soon erupt if they didn't do anything. They had to find this girl or else something worse than their worst nightmare might happen.
"Alex, we will help you look for her." The queen did her best to coax him but Alexander was a solid, unwavering glacier that no fire could melt.
"Oh, help me, huh? Of course you should…" he told her before his gaze flew back to the princess. "Now, step back. I have business with your daughter," he coldly and heartlessly said, causing the queen to feel terrified.
She looked at Princess Mira with millions of questions in her eyes. She knew that Alex was targeting the princess but what could her daughter have done to earn this treatment?
"Alex, wait please. What do you mean –"
Before the queen could complete her statement, Alex already walked past her towards Princess Mira. However, before he could reach the princess, the king finally moved and stood between Alex and his daughter.
"Alexander…" King Livius pulled Princess Mira behind him and stood before Alex, his expression now looking very grave.
"King Livius, step aside. This has nothing to do with you," Alex uttered as his eyes blazed coldly at the man.
The queen was about to approach them again because she was afraid that a fight might explode between the two but the King stopped her with his next words.
"Leah, stop! Do not interfere anymore," the king said without averting his gaze away from Alex. Vigilance and intense alertness were flooding in his eyes.
"Move, King Livius." Alexander's patience had long reached its limit and the warning in his voice this time was tinged with the highest form of danger.
"Alexander, you think my daughter is the one behind that girl's disappearance, right? Let me handle her so stay put," the King calmly said. Gone was the man who let out that loud, thundering sound earlier as he became incredibly calm and careful.
The king could not let Alexander start a fight in this place with all his family here. He knew that if a fight broke out, that would be disastrous. This problem needed to be solved as fast as possible. They needed to find that girl very quickly or Alex might really do something even worse than what he imagined.
Without waiting for Alex's reaction, the king turned towards the princess, grabbed her by the shoulders and he cornered her by the wall.
"Mira, where is she?" the king immediately asked the girl.
He looked at the girl's expression and he knew right then why Alex had targeted her. Mira may have hid her intentions very well and managed to fool everyone with the innocent and noble look on her face but there was no way she could fool him nor Alex. Her words and expressions were enough for him to deduce that she was hiding something so of course, Alex would pick up immediately on that. He knew that Alex wasn't wrong and that this daughter of his had something to do with the girl's disappearance. There was also one more incriminating thing that he knew about this daughter of his and that was the fact that Mira had been in love with Alex for a very long time.
Even though the princess wasn't the only one who may have wanted to be with Alex, this daughter of his was the only one who would be foolish enough to do something like this right under Alex's nose! She was the only one who would act rashly like this, not thinking about the consequences of her actions. There was no one he could suspect but her.
The King's jaws clenched hard as he glared at his foolish daughter. "Mira, if you still want to live, spit it out," he threatened. "Now!" he demanded but the girl just shook her head.
"I don't know anything! Father, please believe me! I was with Mother the entire time, how could I kidnap someone?" the princess started tearing up.
"That's right, Livius, Alex. Mira was with me the entire time. Stop suspecting her like that!" The queen stepped in.
"Father, what evidence do you have to suspect that I am the one behind this? Please, I never did anything wrong! I don't know what you are talking about!"
"Livius, listen to your daughter. She's telling the truth," Queen Leah urged her husband but the man was unswerving in his certainty about Alex's accusation. He hated to be like this towards his daughter but he knew Alex well and he had never been wrong about things like this.
Ignoring his wife's plea, the King returned his gaze to his daughter.
"Mira, I'm only going to ask you one last time. Where is the girl?! This is your last chance to save yourself. If you cross Alexander, you will regret it," the king said in a stern and threatening tone. He was extremely worried for his daughter but he needed to let her know the gravity of the situation because he knew what Alex was capable of.
"Father, how could you not believe your own daughter?" she uttered in disbelief.
"Because I know that Alex is right," was all he replied.
The girl gritted her teeth and shook her head, denying her involvement in any of this. The queen forced her way between them and held her daughter.
"Stop this now, Livius! I am not going to let you treat my daughter like this!" The queen was now angry but more than that, she was extremely worried. They were becoming so emotional that they didn't notice Alex's disappearance.
"Enough with this nonsense!" Alex's words boomed in the great hall as he walked back inside. He was dragging a dead soldier's body with his hand and when he reached the trio, he dropped it on the floor, right before the princess.
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Chapter 97 Disastrous
An hour ago, while everyone was searching the palace, the first thing Alex fixed his eyes on were the royal guards. He knew that if he wanted to get any clues, he must investigate every single one of them. These royal guards were the only ones who were able to move around the palace freely without question and without garnering much attention. The people who were behind Abigail's disappearance would almost certainly use the soldiers to do the dirty job or at least be in league with a few of them to be able to escape unnoticed.
During the search, Alex's keen senses noticed a faint scent from one of the soldiers which was unusual. When Abigail was with Alex, he noticed that the girl wasn't fond of perfume so he couldn't tell if the scent he smelled was from Abigail. However, the scent was feminine and that scent was enough of a clue for Alex to interrogate that soldier because it was strange for any soldier to have a scent like that.
Alex immediately took the soldier aside to ask him a few questions. Alex was expecting him to tell tales such as he had a secret meeting with his lover or some such thing but before Alex could even say a word, the soldier killed himself by biting and swallowing a poison pill. This act was one of the things that the kingdom had kept in place from the ancient times to prevent them from spilling any secrets or classified information about the royal family if they were suddenly captured and tortured.
So, the fact that the soldier did this the moment he was about to question him was enough answer for Alex. This kind of loyalty would only be reserved for the members of the royal family. These royal guards had absolute loyalty to their masters, so if one did this kind of thing, Alex was certain that the one he was working with was a member of the royal family. These soldiers wouldn't willingly die just for anyone.
"Princess… This is the soldier you worked with, right? Now don't waste any more of my time or else…" Alexander left the sentence hanging because his intentions were very clear as his gaze locked onto the princess's eyes. Princess Mira knew that he was very serious. She knew that he wouldn't hesitate to kill her, like he did to her guard.
The princess' lips began to tremble in fear. She knew that Alexander wasn't someone she could mess with. In fact, nobody would dare to mess with him, not even her father, who was King of this kingdom. However, she never thought that that woman would bring out this kind of reaction out of Alex.
She thought that her plan was flawless and that nobody would be able to get any evidence incriminating her, even if they suspected her. Unfortunately, she didn't count on Alex's reaction. This was far more extreme than what she had seen before that even her parents couldn't do anything. Fear ran through her entire body and she knew what she had to do.
Before she knew it, she fell down on the floor as she clung to her mother as if her strength suddenly left her. Her reaction made everyone finally understand that she indeed knew something even if she may not be the mastermind of the whole thing.
"She… she's in the underground dungeon," she finally whispered.
Everyone was utterly shocked. Alex's eyes darkened as if the faint light of life in them had entirely disappeared.
Everyone knew that that dungeon was the most dangerous place in the palace. In ancient times, the dungeon was where they left the traitors and enemies to let them rot inside. The dark dungeon was a large maze filled with many traps that would cut and or maim or wound at every turn and this was a place where no one ever escaped from. Worse yet, many rodents and poisonous insects also made their home in the darkness as they waited for their next meal. It was created to torture anyone who entered it before eventually dying at a dead end, because there was no way out.
Even the king looked like he was about to pass out when he heard her. Everybody was silent as they all started to realize how grave this situation was. The first thing the king did was look at Alex with intense alertness.
He saw how Alex looked like he had turned to a lifeless vessel and immediately knew how dire the situation was. This was extremely disastrous! When was the last time Alexander had ever looked like this? If that girl was dead… what would this man do?
"Come." Alex's voice had gone beyond terrifying. He sounded like he was ready to slaughter an entire clan.
He grabbed the princess by the arm and dragged her out of the throne room while everyone just watched in horror.
"Mother… Father... Please, save me!" the princess yelled but everyone just stood there frozen, even the queen.
The King ran his fingers through his hair. This was it. The worst case scenario. The possibility of that girl still being alive at this point was zero. Nobody had ever come out of that place alive since it was first built.
They couldn't believe that their esteemed princess had such a dark heart to plan on executing someone. Even the king never expected this. When did his daughter become this heartless?
"Livius! Please save your daughter! You're the King! Do something!"
King Livius looked at his wife's distraught face and he himself felt a deep despair for his daughter. He was a king, but he was getting old and he was not the same strong man he was when he was younger. His daughter had done the unforgivable and she had to face the consequences of her actions. He had never felt so powerless in his life.? In the end, he looked away without answering his wife and headed out of the hall to go after Alexander. Everyone finally snapped out of their shock and instantly followed him.
The tunnel towards the dungeon was dark and long. The princess continued begging Alex but the man didn't seem to hear her. He almost looked like the walking dead, devoid of any human emotion.
Once they stopped inside an ancient cave-like chamber, Alex dropped her on the floor, near the well-like hole covered with metal bars and chains.
"Open it," he ordered and the princess crawled in fear as she quickly unlocked the chains and moved the metal cover off it.
Once it was open, Alex took the chains and he chained the princess in a way that was impossible for anyone to unlock her.
Alexander glared down at her, a look that was enough to kill all her hopes of survival, because that one glance told her that if he didn't find Abigail alive, she would die an even more painful death than what Abigail would have gone through.
The next moment, as the King and others entered the chamber, Alex jumped down the hole.
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Chapter 98 I watched her fall
By the time the king and the others reached the dungeon's entrance, Alex was already gone. They heard noises coming from the hole as they approached it. King Livius gritted his teeth as he looked down the seemingly endless abyss.
"Abigail…" he heard Alex's voice echo as he called out for Abi.
On the edge of the room by the wall, the princess started begging for her life.
"Mother, Father, save me… Alex… he's going to kill me!"
The queen ran to her daughter and she started weeping as she approached her chained child.
"Oh my god, Mira, what have you done?" The queen was extremely distraught. The royal family had done their best not to anger Alex and to stay on good terms with him all these years and yet, in an instant, all their hard work was burnt to ashes because this child of hers did this.
Everyone was worried and terrified and shocked. They couldn't believe that Alexander didn't even hesitate to jump inside that abyss for that girl. Who was that girl that made Alex act like he was willing to search even the depths of hell just for her?
Even King Livius finally realized the extent of what Alex would be willing to do for that girl. Alexander was no longer the same. He wasn't the same Alex who wouldn't bat an eye even if his so-called lover at the time got killed accidentally or not. He wasn't the same man who would let all the royal family's every ridiculous action slide like he didn't care. He wasn't the same man who swore he wouldn't claim the life of any of the royal family no matter what happened. He had changed for that woman and what was even more ridiculous was that he had only been with her for a few days!
Looking at the chains around Mira's body, the Queen had already given up trying to save her. These chains were so thick and strong that it would take at least a few days to cut through it. It only had one key and that was down in the dungeon with Alex right now. She knew that Alex would never let her live if he was to find that girl was dead in that dungeon. All of them knew it. What was worse was that all of them were certain that the girl was already dead. There was no escaping that dungeon. Even if she stayed put and didn't trigger any of the hidden traps, all the poisonous creatures would've already gotten her or forced her to ran towards the traps. All of them knew that, and that was why the queen started to weep.
King Livius' expression was serious as he sighed. No matter how he thought about it, the only way for Alexander to calm down after this was for Mira to pay using her own life. What could he do? How could he calm Alex down without him hurting his daughter?
Could he use force? No, that was futile.
Could he use reason? Alexander was beyond reasoning with. This was an entirely new Alexander that they were facing and where they might have been able to talk to Alex if he was his old self, this Alex would not be willing to hear them out.
He loved his daughter but love won't be able to save her from her fate. The only way to save her was if that girl was found alive.
"Father, please save me! That's right! Brother Zeke! Please call brother to come and save me! Please! He's the only one who can help me now!" Mira continued pleading as tears rolled down her face. Gone was the arrogant, self-assured demeanor as her body crouched down on the ground. She trembled as her fear settled deep in her bones. She knew she was done for. She shouldn't have done it. She now regretted doing what she did but it was too late for regrets. There was no way she would get out of this unscathed, if death wasn't waiting for her already.
"Livius, that's right, Ezekiel could do something!" Queen Leah begged in between her sobs. "Livius! We –"
"Leah!" King Livius' voice turned unbelievably cold. He too was now on edge. "That woman… that woman is the only person Alex had ever cared about like this. I have never seen him act this way about anyone before. This isn't a simple issue and you know that!" His deep voice echoed inside the darkness. "Please don't forget who Alex is and what he's capable of doing. Having Zeke and Alexander end up fighting against each other is the last thing we ever want to happen!"
King Livius' words made the queen kneel down as her mind reminded her about something and those thoughts crushed all her hopes.
Time passed by and Alex finally came out. His body was covered in scratches, cuts and wounds and blood flowed down his skin like small rivers.
He looked like the devil emerging from the depths of hell as his eyes burned red with killing intent. However, at that moment, there was also a glint of hope in his eyes.
"She's not inside," he said and everyone was shocked. Even the good as dead princess returned to life. "Where is she?"
Alex's deadly gaze fell on the girl as he mercilessly pinched her chin.
"A-alex… I watched her fall in the hole. There's no way that she's not inside," the princess said, haltingly between sobs.
"Mira, please tell the truth," the queen urged.
"I am telling the truth! She really fell inside. The dungeon only has one key. It isn't possible that someone else could have opened it to save her. Me and that guard both left after we locked the door!" she explained as she cried. "You saw the chains and the cover still on there when we got here. It's impossible for the girl to come out. It's impossible that she's not in there."
The queen turned towards Alex.
"Alex, are you sure she's not there?" she asked but Alex was so angry that it was now becoming out of control.
He unlocked the chains around the princess and everyone was surprised, as they all thought that Alex was letting her go because the girl wasn't inside.
However…
The next thing he did made everyone's eyes widen in horror.
Alexander suddenly lifted the princess up and held her over the hole.
"Go look for her yourself then," he said coldly, his eyes and heart devoid of any emotions, as if he had become a demon. Before the girl could even react, he flung her down into the dungeon as if he was throwing trash away into a rubbish bin, and a deafening scream echoed throughout the room.
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Chapter 99 The only choice
Hours ago…
Abi gasped as she woke up on a dusty floor in a very cold and dark room, or at least that was what she thought.
The last thing she remembered was having a conversation with Kelly before she was suddenly pulled behind a thick curtain near the veranda before she suddenly lost consciousness.
When Abi gained consciousness again, she thought that she was having a nightmare. The entire room was dark and even though her eyes were open, she could see nothing. Everything was pitch black that she couldn't even see her own hands!
Abi started to panic. Her breath became shallow and her heart sped up in fear. Where was she? Where was Kelly? What was going on? How was she going to get out of here?! Abi forced herself to calm down and think. She needed a clear mind to be able to get out of here.
She put her hands down on the ground as she tried to get up and found that she was lying on bare ground - not tiles or wood or concrete - just plain dirt. Was she inside a cave or something? She crawled until she hit a wall. She ran her hands along the wall and noticed that they were made of bricks which meant that this place was somehow built by men.
As the thought crossed her mind, Abi started to think that she may be in a dungeon under the palace. That was very possible because of the man-made wall built out of bricks. This wasn't a natural thing so she couldn't be in some cave. Dungeon seemed more plausible considering the fact that she was just inside a palace before she woke up in this place.
"H-hello?" Abi said out loud and when she heard her echo, this gave her more evidence that she might really be inside a dungeon.
Abi started to tremble despite her resolve to keep calm. Was this real? Was she really inside a dungeon?
Abi prayed and hoped that this was just a dream, a nightmare she could escape from if she just woke up.
Forcing herself to think that this was just a nightmare, Abi slowly stood up. She kept her hand on the wall as she took a few steps forward. However, she had only taken half a dozen steps when, on the last step, she heard the sound of metal hitting against metal. Abi jumped backwards as soon as she heard it but not before she felt something sharp cut her thigh.
"Ahh!" she yelped and she felt something warm flowing down her leg soon after. She knew that the liquid flowing down her leg was her own blood.
Abi was terrified and her knees began to weaken. She had a hunch that if she walked any further, she might die. Who knew what else was out there! Abi stood frozen as she pressed her back to the wall, close to where she woke up from, and tears began to fall from her eyes.
Why? Why was this happening to her? What was going on? Why was she here?
As she stood there, feeling the pain from her wound, she realized this was real. She wasn't dreaming.
"Hello?!" Abi forced herself to shout.
"Can anyone hear me? Help!!" she yelled again and again but no one answered; only her echo answered her desperate calls.
Was she going to die here? Was this the end?
Abi shook her head to desperately rid herself of those thoughts. She didn't want to die yet, not in a place like this. She hadn't said goodbye to her family, Kelly or Alex. Her wishes were still unfulfilled. She still had so many things left to do, to experience. How did things end up like this? What was she doing in this place?
Abi didn't know why but in that moment of despair, Alex's words suddenly rang in her head.
'This is just a little taste of hell, Abigail. I told you, you can't handle it.'
As those words echoed in her head, Abi felt her heart tear apart. She remembered Alex's face so clearly in her mind when he warned her and a realization dawned on her. Did this incident have something to do with Alex?
As she thought about it, she couldn't help but think that this incident might be related to him. The black dragons in the courtyard looked very similar to the dragon tattoo on his back. She also had a strange feeling of deja vu the instant she set foot in this country. This feeling reminded her of the cold aura that surrounded Alex like a shield. Of course she had shrugged it off at the start as just her imagination running wild but she couldn't shake this feeling now, especially the moment she saw those black dragons.
She didn't know how this place was connected to Alex. She really was clueless when it came to him. All she knew was that if this was the hell Alex was talking about, could she really allow herself to crumble down now? Could she really not handle this? Could she afford to do nothing but wait and die here? Was this the end? Was she really na?ve in thinking that she could handle the hell Alex was talking about?
Abi's tears stopped falling.
"No, I can't die here. This hell, I can handle this! I will get out of here!" she told herself.
She would not be a helpless little lamb just meekly walking towards the slaughterhouse. She was going to fight this and get out of here! If this was a part of Alex's hell, Abi was determined to face this head on and live. No matter what the result, no matter what was waiting for her, she would fight. That was the only choice she had left.
After all, she was the one who jumped into his life. She had to showz him that she could handle being part of his world.
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Chapter 100 Finding new hope
Abi took a few deep breaths to clear away the fog of negativity from her mind.
Not many people knew this about her but Abi actually had an exceptional sense of hearing. She had discovered when she was just a young child that she was able to hear things that other people couldn't. When she was at school, she would listen to the teacher but then at some point, she would hear sounds of animals running around in the forest and when she concentrated enough, she was able to follow the path of the animal as it ran along in the woods.
This was how she was able to narrowly avoid those sharp metal things that cut her thigh, because she heard the sound of them being triggered so she was able to jump out of the way. She had never really tried to hone this gift because she never needed to but in this situation, she was thankful that she at least had something she could use to her advantage. She knew that if she concentrated enough, she would be able to hear the slightest unusual noises and doing that, she might be able to find a way out of here.
So Abi closed her eyes and focused her senses on her heart until the only thing she could hear was her heartbeat and the sound of her quiet breaths. After a few more minutes, Abi was in that state of meditation and that was when she started to act.
She ripped a small strip of cloth from her dress and wrapped it around her wounded thigh to act as a tourniquet. She then bent down to pick up a handful of small stones from the ground to use as a guide and got up again before she threw a small stone right next to her foot and listened to the sound it made. It released a solid thump. That sound meant safety. It meant that there was nothing under it except for rocks and dirt.
Abi threw another small stone in front of her and heard the sound of rock hitting metal. It seemed that whatever had cut her was on the ground in front of her, blocking her path. The next thing she did was throw a stone as far and as hard as she could in front of her to determine if that was a pathway or a dead end. The stone hit a wall with a thud not too far away from her so she did the same thing again, throwing a stone to her left and then behind her.
The stone didn't hit anything to her left so she decided that that was the way to go. She turned to the left and threw stones in front of her before she followed it.
She had taken about twenty steps before she heard a different sound to the safe thud. It seemed to be the sound of an arrow being released from a bow and Abi immediately jumped back, causing her to yelp in pain as she twisted her ankle on the same leg that was wounded. In the next second, she felt the wind on her face as the arrow rushed out in front of her before hitting a wall with a loud crack.
Abi's heart accelerated! She gulped as fear and shock took over for a minute or two before she calmed herself down again. Abi was very afraid. She knew just how perilous this situation was so she couldn't afford to slip up!
She bent down and grabbed another handful of stones and continued to limp on.
Abi had no idea how long she had been walking for or how far away she was from where she started but she kept going, using the stones like a walking stick, feeling out what could be in front of her. She continued on, limping her way through the dark dungeon going to who knew where. But she was lucky because throughout that time, she only triggered 2 more traps, which she successfully avoided. It seemed to her that some of the traps had already been set off before.
Abi grew tired and her hopes began to dwindle as time passed. She leaned on a wall from fatigue and slid down to the ground. She didn't know how much longer she could concentrate like that. It took a lot of mental energy to constantly be on alert and to constantly be listening for every little sound. She was mentally exhausted. She had never had to concentrate this much before and Abi's stamina just wasn't up to it. Abi tried to shake the fatigue from her body but it didn't work. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch and all her energy had been used up.
Abi let her body relax and in the next second, she felt thick, warm liquid run down from her nose. From the texture and smell, Abi knew it was blood. She wiped it away using her arm and briefly wondered if this had triggered her illness.
As Abi sat in the darkness, her ears pricked at a very faint sound, one that didn't seem to be common in the dungeon. This sound had a melodic ring to it. Abi thought her mind was playing tricks with her but once she concentrated again, the sound became more solid. It wasn't in her imagination!
Abi immediately got up. She knew that sound needed an avenue to travel and it travelled faster on solid material than in air so she pressed her ear to the ground and tried to find where it was coming from. It seemed to be coming from ahead of her.
Finding new hope, she immediately picked up more stone and with more energy, she went through her process again. After a few minutes, she was stopped by a big wall in front of her. 'No!' she cried inwardly. She fell into a depression. The sound was coming from straight ahead but she couldn't go any further. This was it.
Suddenly, she cried out in frustration and threw the rest of the stones hard on the ground. She clenched her hands into tight fists and started hitting the wall in front of her. Rage and frustration and helplessness filled her soul and she released it on the wall in front of her.
But then, in the next second, she heard a loud, grinding noise and immediately went on alert. What was that? It sounded like something massive was moving somewhere to her right, akin to a large, old gate being opened after years of not being in use. It went on for a few seconds until it stopped and everything became silent again.
Abi picked up another stone and threw it to her right, expecting the stone to hit a wall, and when it didn't Abi was shocked! There was a wall there a few seconds ago! Did a wall really just move by itself?
Not stopping to think about it, she immediately worked her way towards the new path.
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