All Ugegbe could hear was the pounding of her heart in her mouth, chest, ears. She wanted to throw up. Bile rose, pressing up against her constricted nasal passage. It was blocking her windpipe, ramming against the walls of her throat. She smelt its vileness, readied to taste it as she bent over and retched.

On all fours, she dry-heaved repeatedly. No relief came. The feeling of nausea was relentless. It was impossible to escape it. Ugegbe shut her eyes after another violent hurl that left her temporarily wheezing. She waited for something to come up from her clenched stomach. Anything. She desperately wanted to rid the sickness whirling in her guts.

It hung tightly—in likeness to a cat that had pounced on a rat and had no intentions of letting go of its prey—wickedly clawing at her. The tears started afresh. They rampaged down her cheeks, raining bullets on her dress soiled with salty cascades.

There was no blood on her. Not on her hands or on her gown. But she could not shrug off the impression of filth tainting her. What had she done? What have I done? She could not answer. There was no one to answer her. All she heard was her heart. It was raging a storm in her head, reminding her that she'd heard solitary silence instead of a heartbeat in his chest. That his heart did not continuously lurch with fervency as hers presently did when she'd laid an ear down on his breast, crossing over to the lower part of his shoulder.

Her eyes watered as the reality of her situation dawned on her again. And again. And again. Terror clamped around her neck, forcing her to wheeze frantically, her head whipping upwards as she gasped for air. "No! What have I done? What have I done?" Her cries were sorrowful, heavy with stifling grief and numbing guilt. What would she do? What could she do?

What had she done?

She clamped her trembling hands over her mouth as the panic turned into a bout of hysterics. Her thoughts exploded in thousands of splinters, each shard puncturing a hole in her mind and slicing through her sanity. There was no escaping the agony.

It hurt. Her chest burned like there was a fire lit in between her breasts. A cascade of excruciating warnings indicating that her body was on the verge of completely shutting down followed. Skeltering sounds and silence melded into a myriad of torments. She could not feel or see or hear. Her body was overheating, dilapidating into a vestige.

She should go up to the body—the prince—and check one last time. Make sure she was sure. She should feel for a pulse again, check if his body still demanded oxygen as hers did, inquire if he really could not move or respond to any stimulus from her. But she could not. She could not bring herself to move a muscle in the direction of the still body. She'd checked once, and that was enough for her.

With the steady, merciless dread pitching her into desolate bleakness, Ugegbe was not certain that she could stand being in the room anymore. She could not keep losing her acumen, ignoring the reality that she was sharing the same space with a lifeless vessel that was nothing of the man who'd been talking to her only scant moments ago.

She hated that she was struggling to see the corpse as anything more than a dead body. It was daunting, and she, particularly, did not want to refer to the body as the crown prince. She deemed him gone and could not see herself according to him the respect she had done initially.

After all, she had lost all respect for him the moment he tried to ruin her. She'd asked God to save her from him, to give her the strength to extricate herself from such a situation with her dignity still intact. He answered her. He gave her the strength she'd asked for. He did not refuse her request.

Consequently, she'd conquered her enemy. But at what cost? She'd taken him down to never rise again. But at what cost? She'd protected herself and her honour. But at what cost? Now, she was a murderer. She'd murdered a royal. And not just any, the heir apparent. The most important man in the village after the king.

They would not forgive her. Conventionally, killing a human was an unforgivable offence, punishable by death. It was so much worse in her case as it was a noble from whom she had extinguished the precious force of life. She would not be able to evade her fate. She would be killed without a second thought.

"Lord, is this what you want?" Ugegbe lamented, choking as she burst into another crude session of tears and gutwrenching cries. "Is this what is to be my fate? Am I to die without saving my father from his debts? Without achieving any of my dreams? Without becoming a free woman? Lord, is this your plan for me?" She whimpered, curling into a shell of herself.

Frost permeated her bones, eating into the structures, causing her to shiver. Except she was not cold. She was afraid. It was fear that happened to be the phenomenon plaguing her. It kept her frozen in place, her limbs stiff, unmoving. Nonetheless, her head was gyrating in endless circles, as were her thoughts.

She had to do something, and quick. Soon, the guards would notice something was wrong since the prince would most certainly not be emerging from the hole of a room he'd called her into. The urge to take control of her situation was strong and forceful, but it was of no use when she could not come up with a solid plan.

Had God abandoned her? She wondered, her eyes flicking to the ceiling looming overhead her. In his preachings, the pale priest had declared that their Lord and Saviour had His throne up above. There, he reigned and watched over all present on the earth. He saw every single thing, and thus, nothing was hidden from His sight.

Does He see me?

She blinked incessantly yet futilely to wave off the never-ending waters pooling in her eyes that threatened to roll down her cheeks. Her pulse began racing again but for a different reason: the God she'd recently embraced was not a being who tolerated one killing his or her brethren. Ugegbe knew because the Father had hammered on this specific point severally.

Does He see what I've done?

"You shall not kill." It was one of the ten somethings. She could not remember what he called it because it was in the foreigners' language; no word directly translated to the exact term in her tongue.

Does He hate me for what I've done?

In the deepest of her heart, she was convinced that He did. He must hate her. She was not sure she could face Him after committing so grave a sin. He was so good, so faultless, so perfect. And she, she was a sinner—one who had taken the life of a man.

How could she reconcile herself to who she had become? Would she ever? If she could not forgive herself, how much more a being far greater than any to exist? He probably did not want anything to do with her again. She supposed she would be deceiving herself if she thought she was still one of those He deemed His children.

Looking back, murdering a human had to be one of those sins that were unforgivable. She had no concrete knowledge of what they were as the father was yet to preach about them, but he did and had conceded days ago that they existed. She'd ended the existence of a creature of God, and she was honestly mortified.

Disgusted she was by herself and who her actions had turned her into. Nonetheless, she was clear on one thing; her mind was not fogged over by the creeping gloom when she declared to herself that she wanted to live.

So, maybe, and entirely possibly, she'd fallen out of favour with God. Maybe, He would not forgive her for so grave a transgression. But she knew who would. She knew who would accept her all the same and think of her safety before passing judgement on what she had done. And she had to go to him as soon as possible. He would know what to do. He would know what she should do. Yes, she had to return to him, her father.

"Nnam, a na m alọta ulo." Even though he could not hear her from his house ten farms away from the palace, Ugegbe tendered the phrase that she was coming home under her breath.

With her resolution made, she found the power to strengthen her limbs, preparing them for the task ahead. She was to escape before she was found out. She would not let herself be caught and would make sure that she sought her father's counsel before anything else. She would then listen to what he had to say.

But in the most genuine of her thoughts, Ugegbe knew that no matter what her father advised, her first choice would be to run away. To escape from this trap that she had landed herself in. But first, she had to leave the king's compound. Immediately.

The door gave way easily, and the frightened girl stepped out into the dark hallway. She could barely see the next step she was to take. But it didn't matter. She forged ahead, fumbling, stumbling and eventually toppling over the uneven, unlevelled mud floors.

Ugegbe risked a backward glance at the closed door barring the man—whose life's clock she'd halted—from the rest of the world. It was still sealed. No one had come for him yet. Or her, for that matter. Her ribcage throbbed with the exertion she was placing on her body, and she winced in painful discomfort.

In between bursts of aimless runnings, she expected a pair of strong hands belonging to the guard who had brought her to the crown prince to clamp on her shoulders. The terrifying expectation pressed her onwards. She ran blindly without a clue of where she was to be.

Never had she been in the prince's abode until today. All around her was dark. She had no torch with her. And even if she did, it would be useless as she could not remember the passages she had taken before. Could not tell which led out of the cursed building.

It was like tremors overhauling her, the sobs that wracked her body as she struggled to gain her bearings when her sorrow had hijacked her being. Truly, it was almost impossible to run when her eyes were coated with sheets of water. Her crashing fall came as no surprise.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, hurrying her up to her feet. Whatever pains her body had to cope with were forgotten as she wiped her tears and drew in the most profound breath she had ever pulled into her lungs.

Each time she tripped, Ugegbe let her hands feel the walls to keep her path straight. The walls grew warmer to the touch of her finger pads, each one than the previous ones as she advanced even further. She let out a tiny gasp as her brain worked into overdrive. Warm walls meant she was closer to the utmost source of heat, the sun, and farther from the concealed halls of the prince's palace.

She could make it. She would make it. She had to. Her lips quivered as the path ahead of her lightened with the sun's glory. Ugegbe hastened, racing for the brook of light that would lead her to her escape.

Her determination soared until the silhouette of a man, sauntering from a hallway to the right of her and just a few metres away, appeared. Her legs took upon themselves thrice her weight. She could not cause them to nudge an inch as terror settled in her stomach like a stirred boulder rolling to a stay.

Run! Her mind yelled. Run! It screeched at her, pleaded with her. Yet, nothing happened. Ugegbe could see it as fine as the brightness of day: there was nothing she could do. She could not move. But that wasn't the only problem. The man ahead of her was doing what she was supposed to do. He was running. Running at her.

He was almost by her when she shot off in the opposite direction, back to where she had come from. She would not let herself be killed. Today was not the day for her death. Her calves burned from overexertion. Her muscles trembled from fatigue. Her chest was bathed in flames as she begged for one breath after the other.

"Gegbe!" The man's bass voice stopped her in her tracks. He knew her name. How? And not just her name, he knew her sobriquet. Not everyone called her that or knew her by such a moniker. Unless... Was it Prince Uzochi?

She whirled around and waited. He was quite close, and she did not have to linger for too protracted a moment. She was catching the last of her breath when he reached her. Before she could behold his face, he bent over to his side to cough. Then she noticed that the build, though similar to the second prince's, was not the same. It was larger and burlier.

What a mistake she had made. Her body vibrated violently as she realised her error. Why was she this prone to making mistakes? Had she offended someone in a past life? Why? Why? She turned to shoot off again but had her chance snuffed out. His huge palm was slapped over her elbow in a devilish clamp.

"It is you, is it not? You are Gegbe." He asked, and she, while making certain to avoid his direct gaze, swivelled on her good foot to answer. Now that she was not in active flight for her life, her body was crashing down on her, unleashing a torrent of pain. She had to bite on her tongue to hold back from screeching at the ache in her foot.

"I am Gegbe. Ugegbe" She did not notice she was weeping until she had to speak. There was nowhere to run to. He had her captured. He would take her to the council after discovering the prince's death. He would lead her to her doom and destruction soon after. There was nothing she could do.

"Why do you cry?"

"What?" She gaped at the floor, swimming before her eyes, then finally heaved her head to behold him. He was familiar. Even though he was not the prince, she knew him. He was Zelunjo's fiance. Debare.

"Do you cry—" he dropped her arm abruptly like it were a pot just transferred off a pile of glowing firewood. "—because I held you roughly? I am sorry." His previously cryptic face bore an apologetic expression. "I was sent to find you, and I had to stop you when I saw you were headed for the private dwelling of the crown prince."

"You..." she started, doing her best not to crumble at the mention of the crown prince, a man she was aware was no more. "Who...sent...you to...find me?"

"Zelu did. She was worried something would happen." Something did happen. The mournful remark was entirely to herself as the only soul who knew what she had done.

But what a great friend she had. She cried even harder as she pondered on the reality that Zelunjo had cared and worried enough to send her betrothed for her. At her weeping, the man appeared to be horrified. He flailed his arms, stretching them forward then retracting them, unsure of what to do. Ugegbe would have chuckled if she weren't in a life or death circumstance.

"I am sorry," he apologised again for what he obviously was not responsible for or had an inkling of.

"You need not apologise. You have done nothing...wrong." She laboured through her sentence like one who was learning to talk. "I am the one who has committed a grave sin against the crown prince."

His forehead furrowed, but he did not ask her what she meant by her words. "Go down the passage on your left and take the second right turn that you see. After following it straight down, make another left. It will lead you to a secret way to the queen's palace. I take it that you need to leave now, do you not?"

"Yes... Why do you—"

"Why do I help you?" Debare smiled, an act that softened the planes of his chiselled face, revealing a dimpled cheek that made his tough physique appear more endearing. "You are someone who means a lot to a woman I deeply respect."

"Thank you," she whispered, a shadow of herself as she tottered, nearly gracing the floor face first and immediately earning a concerned look from her audience.

"You should leave now if you must leave this place. From your words, I am certain you have to. Follow my instructions, and you will be out of here in no time. Shall I repeat the directions for you again?"

Ugegbe nodded her head, feeling too weak to utter a reply. But she had missed most of his guide and had no doubt she would get lost if it was not restated.

"Alright then. Take the passage on your left. Then go down the second hall on your right. Go straight down, then bend to your left. The secret way to the queen's palace is on the end of the path, behind logs of woods. So remember, left, second right, left, and the passageway to the palace. Do you understand now?"

"Yes," she nodded again. She understood. Left, second right, left and the route to the queen's palace. There she would make a break for it without any eyes settling on her so that she was miles from the royal family as soon as was possible. "Thank you."

"It is alright. Now, go! I will take care of the crown prince."

His back was already turned to her by the time she gained the confidence to pronounce the outcome of what she had done. "The prince is dead."
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A/N: What are your thoughts on this chapter, loves? I hope you all enjoyed the double-unedited-update. Do stay safe, everyone!