Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 121153 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121153 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Her beautiful voice rolled over me like a balm. I closed my eyes so I could hear it more clearly. When she spoke I felt like I had a friend. When I spoke to her, I felt it was the only time in my life I had ever spoken the truth.
I was me, whoever that man may be.
“Those people,” I asked and lay back on the floor, placing my mouth near the gap in the stone. My chest was to the ground. It was uncomfortable, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear her soft voice. “Did they share our faith?” Harmony did not say anything. “I ask because I . . . I think I have lost faith in what we believe here in The Order. I think I have lost faith in the people that reside here too.” My eyes squeezed shut. It was the first time I had let myself speak those thoughts, feel their truth. I, Prophet Cain, had begun to doubt everything I was raised to be.
Months in solitude ensured you did nothing but think, day and night. Think of every little thing you had done in your life, of every action, every thought—good or bad. It was a torment that burned from within. Wondering if you were wrong or right . . . wondering if you were on the side of good, as you believed, or whether you had blindly embraced the darkness.
If there was a God, I didn’t feel him with me now. I prayed it wasn’t the devil polluting my soul as Judah had declared. I still believed that evil was real. I just wasn’t sure if I was that evil.
“Yes,” Harmony said cautiously, bringing me back to the question I had asked. “The people I love are from here too. Though they do not embrace the acts that hurt people . . . hurt innocent little girls . . . and boys.” I froze. Little boys were hurt too? “They are kind in their souls,” Harmony went on. “They selflessly gave me hope when all that I loved was lost to me, my light snubbed out by the stark cruelty of men.”
I stared at the tiny gap in the wall and wished more than anything that I could see Harmony’s face. The more she spoke, the more I wanted to know her. Her voice, since she had arrived, was my savior. I wanted to look into her eyes and see the fire that she harbored inside. These past few months I had been perpetually cold in my heart. I wondered if she could melt its ice. Silence the loud screams of doubt in my head.
“What are you thinking?” Harmony asked, gently soothing some of the pain within.
My lip twitched. She had read my silence for exactly what it was—worry. “I was thinking that I would like to see you. I . . . ” My stomach flipped. “I like speaking to you, Harmony. More than you could ever know. I like that you are here beside me.” I glanced down at the gray stone. “You arrived when I needed a friend most. Someone to trust, when I believed there was no one out there that I could ever let in again.”
Harmony sucked in a sharp breath, but replied, “Rider . . . I am here for you.”
The twitch on my lip morphed into a small smile. I rolled awkwardly onto my back, to relieve the ache in my joints, to find a moment of reprieve from the uncomfortable position on the floor. As I did, I caught sight of the white tallies on my wall. My eyes dropped to the sharp rock that I had used to mark the stone. An idea came to my head.
I reached out and clutched the stone, its jagged edges rough in my palm. “Harmony, I’m going to try something.”
I brought the sharpest edge of the rock to the patchy cement that kept the brick below our gap in place. Using my uninjured hand, I began working the pointed tip along the crumbling crack. My heart raced when the cement began to fall away. Flickers of light beyond the stone began coming into view.
Light from Harmony’s cell.
“My tray of food is still in my room,” Harmony said. “There is a knife. It is blunt, but it may work.” I heard the sounds of Harmony’s feet on the floor, moving away then coming back, then the sound of scraping on the other side of the brick.
I smiled, and worked the cement harder. When the cement above the brick was eradicated, I caught a glimpse of blue beyond the wall. “Harmony,” I whispered, the heat of excitement building in my chest. She stilled, and I saw a flash of what looked like blond hair. “Work the sides,” I directed and began moving the tip of the rock against the broken cement on the right. Harmony worked on the left, and after several minutes warm, humid air passed freely between the gaps.