Bluebirds Without Wings | Julie and the Phantoms

Veil

A/N: Another switch from Julie's POV to Luke's POV because I messed up my original plot line hehe. ALSO I updated twice on Monday so make sure you read both Ch 35 and 36 :)

Julie woke up in a cell, her back hurting from the flimsy mattress she was on. She sat up, hearing the steel bed creek. The walls were made of grey stone, and there were pieces of moss growing out from each of them. There was a draft coming in through the small window, but she was sweating. A headache was pulsing through her brain. She tried to slow down her heart rate as she thought, taking deep breaths.

Bobby was a traitor. He had someone inject her with something that put her to sleep. He kidnapped her. Julie heard a body of water in the distance and stood to look out the small window with steel bars. She recognized it as the lake surrounding the castle in the Kingdom of Malachite- where she was. Where Luke was from.

Luke was a traitor. Julie held her hand over her heart, trying to dig up anything that could make it seem like a lie. But it wasn't a lie. Luke had told her he was sorry. I'm sorry she had seen him whisper. Was he sorry? Was he sorry at all?

Julie sat back down and created a fist with her hand. She grazed her thumb over her ruby ring, thankful that it was still there. She was afraid. She looked outside the cell and didn't see anybody. She didn't know what they needed her for or much less what they were going to do to her. She needed someone there to tell her what was going on. And as much as she didn't want to, as much as she wanted to burn every time she thought of him, her mind went to Luke. She wanted him there, and she just wondered if he ever wanted her at all.

It started to make sense to her. All the secrets. The strange relationship with Bobby. Recognizing King Caleb's voice through a wall. The not talking about Silvone and not recognizing the area surrounding his supposed hometown. The hiding things so deeply from his best friends of years. Hurting Alex and Reggie just so that his secret wouldn't get out. Hurting her in the process. He didn't seem real. Luke was so fake to her now. Did she ever know him?

And as angry as she was, a part of him hoped that the Luke that held her hand and kissed her forehead and lips, the Luke she held as he cried, she hoped he was real. But she forced herself to shove those feelings into a dark pit. Obliterate them. She couldn't deal with them. Not when she was a prisoner of war and Luke was an accomplice to it.

She was up for a while, braiding her hair multiple times over until the young girl that injected her walked in. She was small and had light hair, and she carried herself tall as short as she was. Julie stared at her as she sat on the bed, the girl holding out a phone through the bars. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, the girl eventually shaking the phone.

"Do you want to talk to your dad or not?" she asked. Julie let the end of her unfinished braid go, and she walked over to grab the phone. She held it up to her face and walked over to the corner of the cell.

She didn't think she'd cry, but as she whispered, "Dad?" she did.

"Julie!" her dad exclaimed on the other line. "Are you okay? They haven't put hands on you?"

"They have me locked up," Julie told him, trying to straighten out her voice. She'd spare him the details.

"Look, mija," he said. "We need you to hold on a few days. We're coming to get you, and they're not going to win. We're not going to stop fighting for our people, okay?" Julie sniffled, wiping her tears with the corner of her sleeves.

"Okay," Julie said to him, nodding as if he were there in front of her.

"I love you very much, and we're not going to stop until you're back with us."