Half upright, Luella leaned into the bars, cheek pressed against the side, and blinked down at her surroundings.
Marbled stone walls arched above in a shape she knew. A crest in the shape of a moon was set nearly eye level with her, jutting out from the stone wall. It was not quite close enough to touch.
Recognition struck her.
The moon crest.
Below would be a grand throne, made for a false King.
Nearby would be pools of thick red blood, lapping against the stone.
Luella scrambled away from the moon crest, crawling across the rocking floor to the other side of the gilded bars.
She wassuspendedabove the throne room. In a cage.
And there was that smell. Worse somehow now that she was held aloft, above it all. A whisper of rot and decay.
The stench of freedom, a far-fetched ideal now that she was once more caged.
She touched the collar at her throat, finding the skin of her arms scrubbed clean. A soft fabric slipped over her shoulder. She had been changed while unconscious. She now wore a gown of pure white silk, like moonlight wrapped around her flesh. Her wings were tucked at her back, trembling in latent fear.
Laughter cut through the room—thenscreams.
"Please. I’m sorry! I did what you asked!" A feminine voice.
The throne room came into focus. The Tenebrae stood before the line of heads on spikes. He held an empty stone spike, its tip sharp and pointed. He ran his thumb over the edge and smiled, eyes casting over the room. They briefly lingered on someone just out of Luella’s sight before rising to meet where she was suspended in the cage over his false throne.
"You are awake!" The Tenebrae projected his voice. The female screamed again, and his eyes lowered as he spat, "Silence her!"
The female screamed no more.
The Umbra turned to stare up at Luella.
She wondered what she looked like, caged, staring down at them all.
"Just in time, my bride. You nearly slept through your first wedding gift."
The crowd laughed, a marriage of unsettled chitters from the ones who were not Umbra, compared to the deep, hearty sounds emitted from the possessed.
Bride? Wedding gift?
Even from a distance, he could see the confusion in her eyes.
"Think of this as the first in a long line of gifts to come—to prove what I can do for you," he announced.
What went unspoken was what she could do for him.
His dark hair curled around his temples like fine-spun silk. His form was draped in a strange echo of her satiny dress, but his was a dark mirror. Shadows curled around his neck and jaw, dripping beneath the high collar of his jeweled dark coat.
A circlet was perched atop his head. White stone with a shimmering jewel set between his brows as the end dipped to a sharp point at the center of his forehead. It was different than a normal crown. Vale’s had risen high above his head in towers of gold, inlaid with jewels; whereas this one did the opposite. Instead of reaching high, it dipped low, giving the impression that it was adhered to his skull.
The Tenebrae stared at something out of her sight. "Bring her forward."
At first, Luella feared he meant her, but as a chained female was dragged over the marbled floor toward the Tenebrae, she realized who it was that had been pleading with him.
Floris was shoved to her knees before the Tenebrae, wrists manacled and covered in bruises and blood. Her eyes were filled with tears, spilling over her bloody cheeks. She raised her head, trembling visibly, and as she did so, she looked beyond the god standing before her, straight toward where Luella peered down at them all.
Luella swallowed.
