Return of the Queen

Chapter 6

~Felix's POV~

---Flashback---

I let Pan sneak over to the clearing the lost girls had taken up as campsite while I tried to find Hailey.

'If you really want to prove your loyalty to me, you have to get rid of her.'

I held my axe in my hands and tried to suppress the shaking of my fingers. This was just another one of Pan's tests. This time I was afraid the price would be too much to bear. I tried to calm the nerves bundled up in my stomach and reminded myself that this was just a means to an end to earn pan's trust.

I edged closer towards one of the larger oak trees surrounding the clearing and stood still as a figure loomed closer.

No, it couldn't be. Not yet.

'You have to kill her. She's messing with your mind and you know it.'

I approached Hailey slowly and quietly making sure that she wouldn't notice me. When I was barely a foot away, I hesitated. Pan's voice kept resonating in my head, but I pushed it away. I slowly stretched out my hand towards her. Just one last time, I thought. I just wanted to touch her for one last time. Just as my hand was about to make contact with her luscious brown locks and her soft porcelain skin, an ear-piercing scream shot through the air.

Hailey jumped, and, finally sensing my presence, she turned around and glanced at me furtively. I stood there frozen under her stare, but I could tell that she knew what I had done. She seemed to want to speak but decided against it and ran off towards the clearing.

At a moment's notice I followed behind her.

She stood with her mouth ajar staring at the few corpses in front of her and the rest of the lost girls who were fighting Pan off.

I grabbed onto her arm and turned her around to face me, "Hailey,-"

"Don't. Just don't, Felix. I am done listen-"

She suddenly stopped, and her face was contorted in a mix of shock and pain.

It was only when I noticed the blood spreading through her shirt that I realized what had happened.

'If you fail, I'll do it myself and make you watch.'

As if to confirm my thoughts, when Hailey's body crumbled to the ground, Pan's figure appeared behind her, a bloodied dagger in his hand.

He did nothing else but returned to his previous fight with the other lost girls.

As I glanced back at Hailey's body, a sudden thought struck me. I thought of the only person who could've saved her and how it was my fault that that person was gone.

In the end, all I did that day was watch.

---End of Flashback---

I thrust up in my bed and tried to steady my uneven breathing. Wiping away the beads of sweat on my forehead, I looked warily around and took a deep breath.

Another nightmare.

The fourth one this week.

Thorn's return had triggered back an avalanche of dreaded memories that I had suppressed for years.

It was a curious thing what happened to me when I met Thorn again. All I saw when I beheld her for the first time in decades was a reminder that I could've saved Hailey.

But I reminded myself, as I stepped out of my tent, that those were weak thoughts. Thoughts which belonged to a Felix who died long ago and who vowed never to be weak again.