My Forever Immortal by J.M. Hurley (popular ebook readers txt) 📕

At first, I just stared at Faith, my mind taking comfort in the blanket of haze that settled itself around my mind. I was frozen in place, my limbs tingling with disbelief, and then the haze just broke. I nearly sprang forward, my muscles contracting from the adrenaline as I leapt towards my phone. But before my feet even left the ground I felt a strong hand grasp my shoulder from behind. Thinking it was Ashton; I gasped and whipped around only to find Phantom staring back at me. As soon as his skin made contact with mine, I felt my heart rate slowing down, my thoughts instantly becoming more focused and clearer, and I saw an amused smile playing on his lips.

I didn’t like it when Phantom, or anyone else for that matter, intervened with my feelings, and it especially ticked me off that he thought this was funny. Sensing my rising irritation, Faith lightly touched the top of Phantoms pale hand and he seemed to take this as a sign and silently removed his hand.

“What did he say, exactly,” I needed details, oh boy did I need them, but I realized that right now wasn’t the time, there were bigger questions to be asked.

“Never mind that,” I said after slight hesitation, “how long till he arrives?” I asked and Faith bit her lip, something I know she only does when she’s nervous, I sighed.

“What’s wrong, Faith?” trying to sound sympathetic, though I felt agitation rising in me, I needed to see Ashton, or to at least hear confirmation that I would be seeing his angelic face soon.

“Well, yes he did say he was coming, but…It’s just not that easy, Skye!” she said, her voice distraught and I saw Phantom shift uncomfortably and glance towards the door.

“What do you mean?” I snapped and I instantly felt a pang of guilt, it wasn’t Faith’s fault that we lived cooped up, or even that she was scared, I couldn’t blame her. “I just don’t understand…” I tried again, this time a bit more comforting and I heard Phantom snort from behind me, again making my aggravation flare up again.

“He obviously can’t just arrive and say, ‘I’m home!’” Phantoms voice was cold and lifeless, but there was also a hint of bitterness that I sensed, he most likely was thinking of Ruth, when she had tried to escape. Ruth, Phantom’s love of his life, had been torn away from him, which was mostly what I blamed for his negative attitudes. Ruth had tried to escape, she’d almost succeeded to, but at the last minute, she’d hesitated, not wanting to leave her love behind, and that hesitation had a cost, her life. “He’d get swarmed by security as soon as he arrived; he’d be dead before we could blink!” Phantom shouted and Faith reached out a hand to calm him down but he shoved her away.

“I’m sorry-” I began but he cut me off with a glare so full of hate I shuddered.

“I don’t need any of your damn sympathy; I just need your help in making just it doesn’t happen again!” Even though Phantom’s shouting was mostly the center of my senses, my hearing extended a tad farther and alerted me off footsteps coming down the hallway. Feeling panicked I threw a hand over Phantom’s mouth.

“Do you want to get us killed?” I hissed sharply and I saw his eyes widen as he grasped my words.
A knock on the door was all we needed, we sprang into action, Phantom sprinting to the bathroom to most likely hide in the shower curtains, Faith jumping back up onto her bed, pretending as if she’d just been awake, and I myself, sitting down in a chair opposite the door. The door opened itself; no doubt the intruder had used an ultimate room key. In fact, once the door was open and the woman was standing in my room blinding me with a flashlight, I had no doubt that she was a figure of authority.

“Miss Mitraw, your presence has been requested by the royal highness herself,” Sylvia, a older, gray haired security guard gave me a half hearted smile then turned to face Faith, which
definitely surprised us both.

“She’ll need to see you also dear.”
Noticing she’d dropped the respective title of ‘Miss’ for Faith, I frowned slightly, but gave Sylvia an encouraging nod, “We’ll be right out.”

“Dress nice,” Sylvia called over her shoulder as she shut the door and locked it behind her.

“You don’t think she heard about Ashton, do you?” Faith asked in a soft voice and Phantom reappeared from the bathroom.

“No, Ash is smarter than that, there’s no way he’d let his plan get out.” For once, I felt in total agreement with Phantom, there was no way this was about Ash, but that of course didn’t mean it was going to be pleasant. Sighing, I pulled out a green Burberry sweater dress and slipped on my navy Jimmy Cho’s, then turned to face Faith. As usual, she looked stunning, even without the flowing, flawless red mane of hair she sported, she had an amazing body and that dress definitely played it up. Her bright green eyes flashed at mine and I caught an approving smile on her lips.

“Cute,” she whispered and absentmindedly picked at the seam in her own dress. Not being a royal, Faith wasn’t wearing a designer dress, in fact, I’m not sure she even owned anything as extravagant as my clothing. Of course being the friend that I am, I repeatedly offered to purchase a new wardrobe for her, but she refused, her pride winning over the prospect of a shopping spree. But even though she wasn’t dressed in royal apparel, she still looked stunning, she had a purple tunic that suited her pale skin tone perfectly, and her glowing red hair flowed over her shoulders.

I gave her an encouraging smile and yanked my hair up into a pony. To be completely honest, I didn’t really care about all the ‘designer dresses’ or the ‘weekly spa trips’ none of it mattered to me, it was just something I’d grown up with, and even though I didn’t like feeling materialistic, I was a royal, and this was the standards at their lowest. At their highest, I’d have protection 24-7, ride to and from places in limo’s, have maid’s and servant’s, have a say in the law, and maybe even get a classier room. But, as I’m sure you could tell, I’m not at all high up on the queen’s list of favorite people, and instead of the royal treatment I get a stuffy room, a forced engagement, lab experiments, and the occasional allowance of fresh air.

Still, it was more than Faith ever got, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking it for granted. I grabbed her wrist and hauled her towards to door, not wanting to keep the queen waiting and risk having Liam and I’s wedding date bumped up. “We’ll talk later,” Faith called back to Phantom, he nodded and plopped down onto my bed, giving us a casual wave. Once we made it out into the hall I felt Faith’s familiar presence in my mind, what do you think this is about?

I gave her a shrug and sighed, “I’m not sure, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

The queen’s living quarters were on the very far side of the building, even getting in to see her could take hours on end so we decided to put pep in our step as we made our way to her. Passing sanctions of all kinds, we tried to keep our heads down but once sanction #13 was in sight my steady pace came to a halt. The terrible memories came surfacing back, the experiments, the drugs, the isolation, the lack of warmth, social standards and sunlight, all of it slapping me in the face. Faith was even more caught off guard the me, I knew I’d had it bad but since I was royal, I couldn’t even bear to think what happened to non-royals, such as Faith. Apparently she couldn’t either because she buried her face in her hands and sent me a mental plea, please, can we just keep walking?

She’d done it again; she’d guessed my thoughts by plunging into my sub conscious mind. I rested my cold hand against Faith’s warm ones, making her look up at me, tears shinning in her emerald eyes. “I j-just can’t g-go b-b-back in there…” her voice trailed off and I suspected she was having a flashback of her stay here.

I gave her a warm nod, “No, of course not. Of course we aren’t going in there,” I assured her and I instantly felt her muscles relax under my friendly embrace, “Let’s just go the other way, that way you won’t even pass it.”

Faith gave me a smile that made my heart warm and brushed her eyes with her small, child-like
hands. “Thanks Skye, I just don’t think I’m ready to go back, I just can’t…” she didn’t need to continue, I got the picture yet there was something that was bothering me. My gut instincts told me to stop walking away, to go run back to sanction #13, to go search its premises because there was something very important there, but my caring heart told me to comfort my distraught friend and that the only thing that sanction #13 would bring me was more emotional scarring. So I kept walking, my hand lying comfortingly on Faith’s back and my instincts screaming at me, telling me I’d regret it, but I guess I’d pay the price later.


Chapter 3

Turns out taking the long way to avoid sanction #13 meant arriving late to our meeting and Queen Verona wasn’t very pleased by this. “Sit,” she ordered once we entered her office and I took it as a good sign, she could’ve made us kneel. “You’re late,” she said with a cluck of her tongue and held up a perfectly manicured hand when I tried to protest. “None the less, we have more important matters to discuss.” I felt Faith tense beside me and I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze, I didn’t like that Verona could scare Faith so very easily, fear wasn’t something Faith showed often.

Verona smiled pleasantly at us as she shuffled through the papers in her hands. Her gray, withered hair was curled in puffy lumps and her make-up was slathered on to where she almost resembled a clown. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing as I pictured a bright red clown nose on Verona. Next to me, Faith relaxed and smiled a bit as she picked up my visions of the circus version of Verona. Leaning forward suddenly, Verona’s face turned deadly serious and all thoughts of humor left my mind.

“Do you ladies know anything, and I mean anything at all, about the whereabouts of Ashton Michael Donaston?” her bird like eyes studied us, searching for any sign of weakness but I knew she wouldn’t find anything, we both knew as much as she did.

“As we’ve already told you, we know nothing,” I