Each jarring jolt made her right hand throb, and the spikes cut into her neck, but she held onto the pain—until Floris was left far behind her and the hall opened into a wide space. A cavern.
Pure white moonlight filtered in through a wide hole in the ceiling above, casting its glorious rays onto the towering pile of dead bodies resting in the center of the room like a throne. An amalgamation of joy and sorrow, twisted into one entity.
The smell sent her staggering back, until her wings brushed a wall that was dripping with the ichor wafting from the decomposing bodies. She tried not to look at them too closely. Some were in further stages than others.
She took a step closer, her bare toes squelching on something wet. She looked down and found her foot had gone straightthrough a chest cavity, the flesh and bone caving beneath the lightest touch.
Bile rose so fiercely in the back of her throat, it burned its way up. She swallowed, the spikes digging into her throat and helping to force it back down. She couldn’t be sick—not yet. She would flee, find the others, and only then would she let herself fall.
Let herself break.
Luella stepped over bodies, trampling their flesh. Everything within her narrowed onto the sight of the moonlight high above. Her fingers curled into rotting flesh, bits of skin easily coming loose and sticking beneath her nails. She ignored it—she ignored it all. There was a thrum to the air, in her bones, in her very blood. She knew nothing but the want for freedom, gory and rotting as it may appear; it was her last hope. To crawl atop the stacks of bodies to reach the light above.
Moonlight filtered down, rays tingling as they hit the back of her reaching hands.
She might have sobbed, but could hear nothing of the roaring of her blood as it rushed through her veins. Her heart beat an incessant drumming pattern.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Terrified, she wasterrifiedthat this was all an illusion, a dream. That she’d wake up any moment and find herself back in the cell, smiling at the walls and pretending the blue gleam of the lights on the ceiling was actually moonlight.
She was mad, after all. Had to be. For who willingly crawled atop a throne of bodies to reach the light?
Pieces of flesh stuck to her hair, her skin. The putrid scent of freedom was all around her, deep inside her.
Almost there?—
Her legs scrambled, searching for a solid hold as she stretched and reached with all her might for the opening. Thebodies rose high, nearly brushing the stone ledge surrounding the hole in the ceiling. Wavering, she balanced on her knees, feeling flesh give way under her. Then, she stood, holding her breath, arms held out to keep her balance.
Luella’s fingers curled around the edge of the stone; the fingers of her ruined right hand were forced to bend to the shape of it. She gasped at the pain, but the pain of being stuck here was far greater than any momentary hurt of the body. She pushed through it and?—
Hoisted herself up.
Fresh air.
It was her first breath of fresh air.
She greedily drank it in, tipping her head back to soak up the moonlight. She was only halfway out, her lower body was still below, raised on her tiptoes, weight shifting between the balance on the tower of bodies below and the grip of her weak fingers on the stone ledge. Desperation made her strong, however.
She would not give in to the weariness consuming her. A little further, and she could rest.
A frigid force coiled around her ankles and legs, her eyes widened, and she was ripped from the edge of freedom.
Dragged down the tower of bodies.
Her arms lashed out, grabbing at anything in her reach. Her fingers curled around bone, but it was jerked away. She tried to grab a leg, but it came free from its body with a squelch.
Her throat hurt. She was screaming.
She did not stop screaming, not even as she fell onto the ground and was rolled onto her back by the frigid thing holding her.
Shadowed eyes, hot with rage, peered down at her with a haughty sort of tempestuousness that could only come from a god.
"You tried to run from me," the Tenebrae said as he stared down at her gore-covered form. "You actually tried to leave me."
Not even when he had found Ambrose atop her in the cell had she heard such rage.
Luella swallowed, but the shadows cut her off, wrapping around her legs, surging upward, and tangling around her chest like a vise.
