Shadows curled around his face, lifting his hair around him, as he stared at her.
"I didn’t think you had it in you to flee. I tempted you with the idea of it, and"—he took a step closer as the shadows tightened around her chest—"you fell for it. You fucking fool.You fool!" he roared. "All I have done for you. I have waited for you for so long, and when you were born, I didn’t take what I wanted. I sent you away. I let you grow without my influence. I let you have that as a gift. And you still run from me?"
She waited for the shadows to crush her chest and let her organs seep out like split berries.
The shadows forced her upright until her toes dangled over the ground, and she was right before the Tenebrae’s face.
He took her jaw, fingers digging in harshly. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
"That I wish I had been able to escape before you found me—" Her breaths were ragged and pained; the shadows didn’t let her get much air. "I wish y-you’d found an empty cell, with no trace of me anywhere, so the idea of me and what you lost could haunt you forever."
"You are a fool," he repeated. "You have no idea still how I’ve played you."
Luella was done with being scared, as if the madness in her body didn’t allow for any emotion other than an answering echo to the rage in his eyes. "What do you mean?"
The Tenebrae got so close to her that the tip of his nose nearly brushed hers. She wanted to spit in his face.
"Another way to break you. Give you a friend, and let that friend give you false hope. Instruct them to show you kindness, then you will trust every word that falls from their lips."
Luella gasped. "Desara!"
She’d been played. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted the female.
The Tenebrae cocked his head, still holding her face with one hand as the other rose to brush her dirty hair away from her cheeks. His fingers trembled as if the rage he was trying to hold back threatened to break through the carefully crafted show he was putting on.
"Not her. The other one," he whispered. "Floris."
Her body went cold with shock. "Floris? She—she tricked me?"
"It was easy. She had someone she loved, and I only threatened them to get her to comply with my demand—befriend you so you would trust her, then let your hope die when you discover that she never cared, that she was only obeying a master that had forced her hand. I never anticipated the other to help you escape. But that doesn’t matter, because I’ve taken care of her."
She couldn’t…Couldn’t.
The healer’s words came back to her as she floated there, held by the shadows before the Tenebrae’s form. Floris had tricked her to keep her sister safe.
"The way the light leaves your eyes is so magnificent." The Tenebrae stroked over Luella’s cheeks like he adored her in her naivety, like she was a misbehaving pet he needed to correct. It was so demeaning. "If you behave like a babe, then I will punish you like one."
Luella could scarcely feel fear, for soon after he said it, the shadows tightened, her chest constricted, desperate for air, and everything went dark.
77
DUPLICITOUS
LUELLA
There was a steady sloshing noise, like water against rocks. For one brief moment, before true lucidity gripped her, Luella fell into waves of disorientation.
Eyes still closed, her lips formed the weak shape of a name:
"Graves?"
She waited for a warm breeze, expecting to open her eyes to billowing curtains. She could almostfeelfingers against her cheek, a soft pillow beneath her head, and blankets tucked around her. Her lips curved faintly, and she opened her eyes?—
Gilded white stone bars filled her vision. The area beyond swayed, as if she were on a hammock.
She tried to pick out shapes through her blurry vision, tried to make sense of where that strange watery lapping sound was coming from. Blue lights glimmered.
Luella moved her head, her cheek brushing against a cold stone floor. Her fingers twitched as she reached for the bars. They were smooth as glass; weakly, she gripped them, trying to pull her sore body into a sitting position. Her right hand screamed in pain, and the very ground beneath her rocked. She grew very still, trying to force the rocking to settle. It did not. Thetumultuous feeling—it was reminiscent of being on a small boat, adrift in the ocean.
