I thought about shoving this in Jillian’s and Driscoll’s faces, but then Jasper swung himself up in front of me, standing atthe bars, his feet balancing on the thin stone ledge that jutted out. I wanted to reach through the bars and pull down the cloth covering his face, to yank down the hood covering his dark hair.
“Jasper, you came for me.” I choked back a sob. “I’ve missed you so much.”
It was too dark to see his eyes, to see anything but the shadows all around. Something groaned, a loud sound that seemed to bellow from the depths of the earth.
“Nope, don’t like that,” Driscoll said.
“Jasper, do you have a plan for getting the princess out of here?” Jillian asked.
His head turned in my friend’s direction, but he said nothing.
The ground shook again, and behind Jasper vines rose, twisting and turning, threading together.
“That looks like a monster,” Driscoll said.
The vines formed a head, then a gaping mouth filled with thorns, then shoulders, two arms, and a torso that stretched down to the ground.
“Okay, yes, definitely a monster. Now is the time to break us free.” Driscoll’s voice grew frantic. “That is the plan, right? Jasper?”
I waited for him to say something, for me to hear his beautiful rich voice that I’d spent night after night dreaming of. But instead, he said nothing.
“Oh, fuck it all. He doesn’t have a plan,” Driscoll said.
“Well, that’s more like the Jasper we know,” Jillian said.
“Will you two shut up?” I snapped. “Jasper, tell them you have a plan.”
The vine monster roared behind him, and the force of it shot out a gusty wind that pushed me a few steps back. The monster stretched back its thick, twisted arm, poised like a snake, ready to strike.
“You are so getting haunted,” Driscoll said, presumably to me. But maybe also to Jasper.
“It’s going to strike. Duck!” Jillian screeched as the monster’s vine arm shot forward.
Jasper jumped up and disappeared from my view just as the vine broke the bars of my prison. Stone and iron exploded everywhere, and I heard the faint cries of my friends, but I had no time to think. Dust filled my prison cell, so thick I could barely see. Coughs sputtered out of my lungs, and a hand grabbed my arm, tugging me forward. Jasper. He’d finally rescued me. Just like I knew he would. His friends, the ones in the trees, would rescue Driscoll and Jillian. Jasper would never leave them behind, not when he knew how much they meant to me.
“Where are we going?” I shouted, but he didn’t answer.
Instead, he continued to pull me toward the edge of my cell as another roar shook the ground below us. The queen hadn’t appeared yet. But of course she hadn’t. She never did the dirty work. She left that for her monsters. I had no doubt she was watching, though. Always watching.
“Jump.”
The voice startled me from my thoughts. He spoke. It wasn’t exactly the first words I’d expected to hear. Was it really that hard to say “I love you, Liliath!” or “You’re stunning, even in rags and when you haven’t combed your hair in two years!” But we had time for that, I supposed.
Then his words sank in. “Jump?” I repeated. “Jump where?”
No response. Okay, this was starting to get on my nerves.
“Jasper, where are we jumping to?”
“Count of three,” he said, his voice deeper, gruffer than I remembered.
“Wait, you can’t be serious?—”
“One.”
“No, Jasper?—”
“Two.”
