LUELLA
Alone, Luella walked back inside.
Hurt, hurt, hurt—a terrifying sort of pain swelled within her lungs. Would she ever be free of it? This anguish? In innocence, she had trusted, and in truth, it had been broken. She wasn’t shocked.
It hurt so badly she felt like she couldn’tbreathe. Air was stolen from her, ripped from her lungs, leaving them hollowed husks.
Gasping for breath, Luella stumbled into the room of the Fallen. They saw her and quickly moved away. Some curious, some angry.
She wanted the anger. Wanted a reaction. Wanted something to distract her from this mass of hurt boiling inside her.
Her vision blurred, and she reached up to touch her cheeks, fingers coming away damp with tears. She cried over him.
And she hated that she gave him that power over her.
In her desperation to flee, she didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to get away from the forest, the cliffside, and the male she had left kneeling beside it.
Trying to stifle her sobs, she pressed the back of her hand over her mouth.
She turned to stare out at the floor of joyously twirling bodies, her watery eyes envious. Her chest bumped into something hard and strong. Arms caught her.
Luella turned back to stare at what she’d bumped into, and when she peered up at curving horns, soft amber eyes, and frowning lips…
She broke.
"Az," Luella sobbed softly.
The downturned tilt to Az’s lips grew more pronounced, as did the furrow between his brows. "What did he do to you, angel?" the demon asked.
Her hands curled in the front of his shirt. "Can you t-take me somewhere?Alone?" she stressed.
Az’s large, warm hands slipped down from her shoulders to her wrists, taking them delicately as he tugged her into his side. He led her through the mass of feathered beings, their stares growing even more overt. Then, came the whispers.
"An angel… and a demon?"
"What is the Queen thinking?"
"Together? That demonholdsher hand."
Most of them were about Az, not her—this time.
Her demon showed no sign that the words hurt, but she knew the power a carefully crafted word could hold. Words hurt. They healed. But in her experience, they mostly deepened her insecurities.
She shouldn’t be here. She was nothing and no one. And no one would ever want her.
The barbed words distracted her from her pain. Her fingers twitched against his wrist, smoothing over the inside of it. He stared down at her and smiled, just for the two of them.
He led her outside, and her feet dug into the stone ground. When she saw no trees, just the sea, a sigh of relief fell from her pained lungs.
Giving her a questioning stare, Az stopped near a private spot outside, the sea crashing against the rocks below. It wasn’t a sharp cliffside, but a soft slope downward. Pebbles underfoot, she stepped carefully with her bare feet.
He shielded her with his body, but beyond him, she still saw the celebration inside.
"Is this okay?" Az touched her cheek.
Luella nodded, staring at the bruise beneath his eye—already fading. "My protector," she said, a tremor of concern in her voice.
He gave her a small, reassuring smile. "It’s nothing."
