He placed his hand on the bars and pushed them open, revealing a small cell with a smooth, bowl-like floor. No windows, no anything. It was barren.
"Well, come in, look around. I’m sure it may not compare to your cell at Serpentis, but I’ll try to make up for the lack in other ways."
The shadows yanked her forward, and as she passed him, his hands drifted over the tip of her wings.
It was so dark, she could barely see her own hand in front of her. She trembled as she felt him at her back.
He made a low tutting sound. "The darkness can be welcome. Shadows work best when there’s a little light." He snapped his fingers, and soft blue orbs began to gleam on the ceiling above, casting everything in a haze of blue.
He was right.
Light made it all worse.
She saw the shifting shadows seeping over the walls like spilled ink. The stains on the floor, brown and old.
"Enjoy your stay, my future bride. It is only until you come to heel. Eventually, you will warm my bed. It must happen. It must. There is no other way.No—" Caliban’s words turned lowat the end. He pressed his palms against his eyes, drew in an angry-sounding breath, then faced her fully, shadows darkening his eyes and curling over his neck.
For just one moment, his tone had dropped the harsh echo it held and turned soft and pleading.
She took a step back, ankle twinging in pain.
He blocked the cell’s doorway.
She was alone. He could hurt her—he could do anything to her, but the words came regardless:
"I will never be your anything. You can imprison me—you can—break me. But I won’t give you anything of myself. That remains solely mine."
"You are so naive and hopeful. I wonder if your Vincire ever grew tired of it."
Her mangled hand twitched where she cradled it against her chest. He knew the others were her Vincire—of course, he did. She wondered what else he knew. Did he know everything? The prophecy, too? She wouldn’t be surprised at all if he did.
"They won’t come for you. It would be their demise. Your captors are many things, but stupid is not one—mostly, at least. They know if they come for you, they’ll be killed, and then no one will be able to stop me, and no one will be able to save you. Do not hold out hope; better to let it die now."
He may as well have struck her. The pain was the same.
Caliban shut the door and left, the blue lights flickering overhead.
Luella sank to her knees, and in the utter silence, she wept.
She found herself lying down, curled into the tightest of balls, despondent and still, as if awaiting death’s blow—like a prisonerbefore an execution, wondering if the blade’s kiss at the back of her neck would hurt when it came.
It could have been mere minutes or a day when she realized she no longer wore the dream amulet Tharen had given her, or the bracelet she’d stolen from Vale’s hoard.
Her hand had journeyed up to her chest to touch the stone for comfort, but her fingers had felt nothing but skin. She’d sat up, a gasp caught in her throat, afraid to make a sound lest she wake the shadowed monsters hovering beyond the cell in the dark.
"No," she whispered, unable to hold the words back as her hand patted along her chest, then up to her neck. No chain. No stone. "No, no?—"
Her wrist rubbed against her chest, and it felt bare, too.
She forced her stiff fingers to uncurl as she twisted her ruined hand. Nothing.
The bracelet was gone.
There would be no Bastian to bring her tarts and help her bathe, no Az to keep her company from the other side of the iron bars, and no Graves, watching her from the darkened halls.
She was alone.
Utterly, horribly alone.
