Chapter eight

Ariah's POV

“Are you going to kill me? Is that what the quiet place is for?” I asked the guard beside me.

I had the little confidence to speak now because he wasn’t handling me roughly, his face wasn’t so stoned and he allowed me some breathing space. Despite all this, I still felt like a sheep being led to its slaughter. I thought he wasn’t even going to bother answering, but he did.

He shook his head and said, “No, the quiet place isn’t a place of death, it’s just a place.”

Just a place? How was that supposed to help me clear my doubts? We were under what seemed like a gigantic tunnel but I didn’t see the light at the end of it yet, if I was going to see it at all, that is. We walked on for another five minutes and out of nowhere, we burst into an opening of fantastic greenery. The grass was so green and well-trimmed, I could lie on it and feel more comfortable than in any place I’d rested my head over the past few days.

There was a wooden…house? It looked like a house but also l