This was one of the most difficult chapters I've written for this story. TRIGGER WARNING PTSD, mental and physical abuse

Bellamy

It was a shit show. Clarke and Roan told us what happened at the lab. Damn you, Abby.

Then Echo spoke up. "So we inject someone and when Praimfaya comes send them out. If they don't return in a certain amount of time, then we know it doesn't work. But if they do, then we all don't have to rot in that damn hole!"

"No!" Clarke shouted as if Echo's suggestion was absurd. It wasn't, it was far from it, but Clarke knew that. She just didn't like Echo. And that annoyed me for some reason. I could see Echo tensing and I reached out to grab her arm to reassure her I guess. She looked at me and my heart began thumping so wildly I thought it might burst from my chest. She relaxed at last, taking calming breaths.

"I don't mean playing Russian Roulette with a random person. I'm not that heartless." Damn it, Echo! Now wasn't the time to try to get a rise out of Clarke. The blonde was already in a fiery mood. "A volunteer," Echo snapped. "Someone who volunteers to be injected and go into the storm. Someone who knows the risks and the potential consequences."

"And who would volunteer? When they learned of Praimfaya, more than half your army took off home and a decent chunk of the remaining army was slaughtered by Trikru. And there's no way Trikru would volunteer, especially if they hear Azgeda wouldn't. And I will not risk my people!" Clarke's voice rose with each word. "Our volunteer system sucks. So please, Echo, find me a volunteer."

"You want me to find a volunteer?" she asked, standing. Clarke stood across from her and I was standing automatically, ready to either restrain her or throw myself in front of her. I never thought I'd see the day when I sided with someone against Clarke.

"Yeah, I do," Clarke replied in a snarky tone.

"Fine," Echo straightened her back. "I volunteer."

Fear, desperation, sadness, anger. I'd never felt more emotions at once for anyone besides Octavia.

"No. Absolutely not." Roan was shaking his head. He wouldn't even let Echo explain herself. And I was secretly glad. I didn't want her to be a guinea pig especially when there was a fifty-fifty shot of a painful and gruesome death.

"Ai Haihefa, we need someone. I can do that."

"I said no, Echo."

"But—"

"You're not expendable, Echo. You're needed."

"Don't lie to me!" she screamed at her king and I held my breath.

"I'm not lying!" he raised his voice. "I am your king, you're a spy. You have no right to yell at me, girl!"

She relaxed, which terrified me. "That's more like it."

And she walked away.

I looked at Roan and he looked completely defeated. "What just happened?"

"My mother is tormenting that girl from the grave."

"What do you mean?"

He rubbed his forehead wearily. "It's not my story to tell." I turned from them and ran after Echo, hoping she hadn't gotten far. I ignored the elevator, claiming down the shaft down as fast as humanly possible. I found her exiting the building.

"Echo!" She either didn't hear me or she was ignoring me. My guess is the latter one. "Echo, wait!"

With a loud groan, she swung around, an unamused look on her always-serious face. "What do you want, Sky Boy?" Sky Boy. She only used that when she was trying to be detached.

"Talk to me."

It's all I wanted from her. I just wanted to talk, to find out what made her so cold and detached.

"I've got things to do."

"Liar." I grabbed her arm and dragged her—literally—to an empty room on the ground floor. She didn't put up much of a fight though. I shut the door and sat on the bed, hoping she'd follow suit.

She did.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"The queen."

Echo

Horror. That's all I felt when I heard his answer. The Queen. He wanted to know about Nia. How did he—Roan.

I swallowed hard. "What about her?"

"Your past with her."

"I don't know where to start," I admitted.

He squeezed my hand. "From the beginning."

I took a deep breath. "I was four when Nia acquired me. I don't remember any of it, but Roan does. He told me what happened one day when I asked. My family, my parents apparently had three kids and one on the way. Many families in Northern Azgeda weren't as lucky to have more than one or two child, let alone four healthy children. It's so cold, the hunting is scarcer than other clans because of the ice and snow. My family was struggling, with three children and a pregnant woman. My father couldn't hunt enough food to feed us and didn't have anything to trade.

Nia, she heard of me. At four, I loved to play spy. I've always been good at it—hiding and appearing out of nowhere. Disappearing too. I was a holy terror according to Roan, loving to scare travelers. She herself went to my family home, took Roan with her to portray a loving family. Offered enough meat to last my family the entire winter and enough pelts to be able to trade for years and to make blankets from. All she wanted in exchange was me. Roan said my parents cried when they handed me over, and that I held his hand the entire ride home.

I try to picture my parents sometimes. Try to picture what my mother and father look like, what my older brother and younger sister and the baby look like. In my imagination, sometimes the baby is a boy, sometimes it's a girl. I wish I could remember them. I kept saying that one day, I'd go find them. I'd go to northern Azgeda and ask around. I know my siblings names, I'd ask people and they'd tell me where they were and we'd be reunited and happy. I told myself for years I would. But I never did."

I sniffed and fought the tears. This was so freaking hard!

"The first few years were okay. I had Roan and Ontari. The best year was when I was ten. Nia had to travel a lot due to new alliances and, even though she didn't get along with them, she sent the three of us to Trikru for the summer. Anya and Indra were known as some of the best warriors and Nia knew they would keep us in shape. If Roan would be king one day, if I would be a great spy one day, if Ontari would be Commander one day, we had to know more than just the icy Azgeda. She said we needed skills for other clans—whether it be for traveling, war, spying. We needed to move through the forest silently, be able to climb tree, be able to swim, be able to fight, be able to get a read of other people's ways.

That summer, Roan was twelve, I was ten, and Ontari was six. That was before Nia corrupted her. Ontari was one of the sweetest, most innocent children in the world and Nia ruined her. Watching Ontari break when she grew up was the beginning of the end, I just didn't know it then. But I'm getting ahead of myself. That summer, we had the time of our lives. We made four best friends—Nyko and Lincoln who were both twelve, and Lexa and Costia who were both nine. Ontari latched herself onto Lexa and I became good friends with both Costia and Lincoln. We learned to run silently through the woods, to climb and jump tree to tree, to swim above and under water, to make fires and hunt with a bow and arrow, to fight and eat dirt for the first time.

Nia came and took us back. I guess it didn't go well, because she was crueler than before. We never saw those four again. I remember one time Nia was in the worse mood and locked us in our rooms for an entire week. She let us out and Ontari was a bundle of energy and was running around and playing with a staff. Nia had some weird animal head—I think she called it a dragon—made of clay on the wall, and Ontari hit it, knocking it down and it shattered. I heard the shatter and ran to see what happened. She was crying and begging me to help her. She was six years old and crying because she didn't want to get a beating, it took everything in me to calm her down and tell her to stop crying—Nia hated weakness and would give us beatings if we cried, and if we cried during a beating she wouldn't stop until we stopped. Nia and two guards came and asked—no, demanded—what happened. I was terrified what Nia would do to that little girl, she was my sister and I needed to protect her. So I told the Ice Bitch that I did it. I knew when her icy blue eyes didn't leave mine and through gritted teeth she told Ontari to go play outside that I was in so much trouble. She didn't want to leave me, but we both knew if she told Nia she did it than we'd both get a beating—her for doing it and me for trying to take the blame. Nia dragged me to the room that us kids named 'the torture room' since our blood decorated the floor."

Bellamy

Tears began rolling down her cheeks and I knew we had just got to a really emotional part of the story. She let me pull her onto my lap and cradle her. It took her a while to calm enough to continue her story.

"It was the most physically painful day of my childhood. I'm not gonna tell you the gory details, it's too painful to think about. One moment I was in excruciating pain, and the next it was nighttime and I woke up in my bed, too sore to move, throat raw from screaming and begging, and face rough from all the tears. Ontari was curled up against my front, her face tearstained.

When I turned fourteen, Nia really cracked down on training. I stopped my frequent walks and sparring with Roan, I stopped spending all my time with Ontari. I was too tired to tell her stories before bed. That's the thing I regret most. If I had been there for her, then maybe—just maybe—she shouldn't have been turned into a heartless murderer. If I had been there for her, she would be alive right now. I began training more and more—sparring, traveling through all twelve clans, spying. I became her secret weapon. That's what I was, a weapon.

When I was seventeen, she sent me on my last real mission. She wanted me to spy on the mountain."

I closed my eyes. I knew where this was going.

"Roan and Ontari begged her not to make me go. They told her that it was too dangerous. She just looked at me, her cold, heartless eyes, and told me 'you're just a spy, dear, you're expendable. If I need to I can get a new you.' I took my bow and arrow and went. They came out of nowhere, five of them. I took out three before they shot something in my neck that knocked me right out. I woke up in the cage inside the mountain. I tried for days to get out. After the first time they bled me, I gave up. I was in the mountain for nearly two years. And then I met you. And you know the rest. How you escaped and came back for me, how three months later, Nia made me lead you from Mount Weather to start a war. The City of Light, your sister, and Praimfaya."

She looked up at me, for the first time since I met her complete trust in those beautiful brown eyes. "You wanted my story, and now you know it. The story of how the Ice Queen turned a four year old girl into a cold blooded killer. But I think it's time I make a new story—for me to become someone other than the Queen's spy. Don't you?"

I was stunned. It was so much to take in, so much to process.

And it hit me all at once. This wasn't just a scary story.

It was Echo's life.

"Echo?"

"Hmm?"

"Let's do it."

She turned to me, a puzzled look on her face. "Do what?"

"Find your family."

"No, I…Bellamy, I can't!"

Can't? Or won't?

"There's five days left, this might be your last chance. We can find them and bring them back with us! You can have a family again!"

"Bellamy…what if they don't remember me? I don't remember them."

"They didn't go through what you did, they wouldn't forget their child. I'll bet they regretted giving you away the moment they did."

She nodded slowly. "Okay. Let's do it."

I smiled and stood, pulling her up with me. "What's your sibling's names?"

"Donovan and Lily. Donovan would be twenty-one and Lily would be seventeen."

I had a purpose right now. I will find Echo's family, and I will reunite her with them. And if finding them causes her to leave me completely to be with them? Then that was a price I'm willing to pay for her happiness.