Was she going crazy?
"That is how I break you. I told you there were steps. I leave you alone, let you grow desperate, then you seek any touch you can find. Whether it is good or bad, gentle or rough. When someone is alone for so long, they begin to crave any sort of company they can find." Caliban’s expression bordered on wistful. "It is a weakness, but for me, your weakness can be used to my benefit." He held her eyes, his dark gaze raking over her; her wings were crushed beneath her, but she barely felt the pain anymore. "There is no being rescued."
The same words Az had said to her. It already felt so distant. But if she had any reservations, those words shattered them. Az, Bastian, Graves—they had been a trick, sent by Caliban to soften her up and force her to give in.
Luella wondered why the shadows never took the form of Tharen or Vale. Was Caliban afraid to conjure a likeness of his half-brother? Or had he simply not had the chance to?
"I won’t break for you," she uttered, eyes going out of focus. His form became a dark blot behind the slats of the bars.
"You will." Caliban turned and left, taking his shadows with him.
In the quiet, she felt her tears dry and stick to her cheeks and temples. She had no tears left to cry.
Luella felt so undone, so tired, as she lay there on the floor, skin pebbled with chill from the memory of the shadows. The stone was hard beneath her back and wings. Not moving, she closed her eyes to chase sleep, but dreamed only of melting flesh and hollowed pits where deep blue eyes once were.
69
BETTER CAUTION THAN REGRET
LUELLA
"Here. Take this."
The tiny glass elixir bottle was pressed to Luella’s lips. She turned her head away.
"If you succumb to your fever here, he will just bring you back."
Floris knelt before Luella, where she lay on the hard ground of the cell. The healer’s silver hair was nearly blue from the glimmering lights above them. Desara was mixing another potion after having pressed her hand to Luella’s forehead. She’d made a disgruntled sound, checked Luella’s eyes with an enchanted white-flamed torch, then began to unpack her large leather satchel.
The floor of the cell was littered with smoking liquids, empty glass bottles, and objects Luella didn’t want to look at too closely. She had seen Desara use metal tongs to remove a red, fleshy mass from a large glass bottle filled with a viscous liquid, and then promptly turned her head away. She’d rather not know what the healers put in the elixirs she was forced to drink.
Floris’s words made Luella’s tired brows scrunch in confusion.
"Bring me back?" Luella questioned. Her words were low in her exhaustion.
Her mind ached as much as her fevered body. She’d slept fitfully after Caliban had left. Her nightmares clung to her. She kept remembering the way Graves’s face had melted and dripped onto her flesh. She shivered.
It wasn’t Graves,Luella reminded herself.
But a trick—a shadow.
It hadn’t been real.
Though, in a way, it had.
A shadow wearing the face of Graves had touched her, forced her into the ground, fit its body atop hers. Touched between her thighs.
Luella felt ill. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shut out the unrest settling inside her. Would she ever feel okay again?
She wondered if the shadows still lingered just out of reach, watching her.
A cloth soaked in something cool and sweet-smelling was laid atop Luella’s brow. It dampened her hair, droplets trickling from the edges of the rough cloth and sliding down the sides of her face.
"How do you think the… heads in the throne room stay there for so long without rotting away? He puts his shadows inside them to keep them from decomposing. They can still see. Their eyes are always watching—not allowed to rest, even in such a horrible death. If I ever met such a fate, I would want to be burned. I’d rather die in anguish than have my body used after my soul had departed."
Disgust filled Luella at Floris’s words. She hadn’t seen the eyes move, but she remembered how relatively untouched the head had appeared. Grey with death, but the flesh was still there.
"He would do that to me?" she whispered, eyes still closed.
