She couldn’t see their faces through her blurry vision. Her cheeks felt wet. Was she crying? She shifted and felt her thighs, damp and sticky, and sobbed harder. She tangled her fingers in her hair and screamed, tugging. She felt fiery pain lance up her right arm, but barely cared. She pulled and pulled on her hair. Her screams ripped from the very pit of her soul, scratching her throat.
Hands were on her, trying to get her to stop. She lashed out.
"Get away from me. Don’t touch me—don’t ever touch me!"
"You must stop, Princess," whispered harshly before her as fingers dug into the bones of her wrist, forcing her grip on her hair to loosen.
She cried as her hands were pulled away.
A touch stroked over Luella’s mangled palm, forcing her fingers to uncurl. The touch felt nice. She sighed brokenly, wetly. Felt desire kindle anew. Then cried out again.
"What happened to her? We must help her?"
"Look at the body—it is Ambrose. The master killed him," a scratchy voice said. "Look at this. Glass. From an elixir vial?" There was the sound of crunching glass.
"He drugged her," answered the other voice. "Oh no?—"
"Floris, pay attention and do your duty. Discover what is wrong with her. We must help her, we cannot… let her die. Master will kill us both."
Luella felt warm bodies hover over her. She wanted to lean into their touches yet crawl away.
A firm palm was placed on her lower stomach, palpating. It sent currents of need shooting throughout her body, to the very tips of her toes. Her back arched—in desperate, pained need.
Suffering. This was the pinnacle of it. To be a passenger in her body, to obey the whims forced upon it.
She didn’t want this.
Her shift was moved, and cool air rushed over her core, as if it too sought entry into her, to assuage the pain that could surely be aided by beingfull.
She felt so empty.
She might have called out, begged for something, but her lips didn’t work, and she heard no sounds other than those of their concerned voices, speaking of her symptoms. The one with the softer voice made a pained sound as she touched Luella’s thigh, finding smears of bloodied fingerprints on it. The hands traveled up as she whispered an apology, clinically ensuring she was unharmed there—between her thighs, in a place no one should ever touch except by permission.
She had nearly been raped.
Ambrose’s fingers had been a hair’s breadth away from her most private place, and she knew what would have come after that.
"We must move her. We cannot tend to her here."
"Help me lift her, then."
Hands were fit beneath Luella’s thighs and back, careful of her wings. She moaned at the touch, feeling like lightning raced under her skin—it reminded her of another time, in a forest with a blindfold over her eyes, the crackle of energy, the fall of a tree. She may as well be blindfolded now for all the light her eyes could see.
"Careful, careful. Do not jostle her so much."
Luella was lifted, then placed upon something flat and rather uncomfortable. It bent to the shape of her body, as if it were a taut sheet, keeping her held aloft. Then, that too was lifted. There was a weightlessness in her stomach, and her hand flopped to the side, falling off the thing that carried her; her other hand, the ruined one, throbbed as it rested on her lower stomach.
She stared up at nothing, seeing shifting glimmers of blue above her, then darkness as they left the dungeons.
She wanted that feeling to go away—she wanted itout. Whatever it was.
"Please," Luella cried weakly, head turning to the side.
She found Floris’s blue eyes were serious as they peered down at her. The healer was by Luella’s head. She lifted her head weakly, searching for… Desara, that was her name, and found the other healer at her feet, carrying the other end of the sheet Luella was lying upon.
"Be still," Desara whispered harshly.
And Luella fell back against the sheet, listless eyes watching the ceiling pass by.
