"Luella. There you are.Fuck. We’ve been looking for you."
She knew that voice.
"Tharen," she mumbled lazily.
Her head lolled against the wall, the wood brushing uncomfortably against her wings, but she was too cozy to move. She wished she always felt like this.
Something tapped against her cheek. "Luella, did you fall asleep? Why are you in here? Let’s get you to a bed."
Hands fit against her shoulders, poised to move her, and she waved them away. "Leave me alone."
The hands stilled. "Open your eyes, darling."
That was Vale. She felt him before she saw him. Embers.
"I don’t want to. I want to stay in the dark. Just leave me be. Please, Vale?" she whispered, slurring slightly.
It was that slur that made the two voices near her curse.
"You’re drunk?" Tharen lightly tapped her cheek.
Luella grumbled, finally opening her eyes. "Maybe." She covered the empty glass bottle in her lap with her hands.
Through bleary eyes, she saw Vale and Tharen both kneeling before her in the dark. Thin strips of amber light from the hall illuminated their backs, making them both appear angelic. Sheraised a hand and traced the shadows surrounding them. "You look like me."
Vale’s hand moved from her shoulder to the side of her neck, gripping it. "You drank yourself into a stupor so you would not have to deal with your emotions?"
With how he held her head, she couldn’t look away. The liquor was stronger than any she had had before, and she wasn’t sure how many bottles she had indulged in, but it had been enough to make everything hazy and her lips loose.
Sadness clawed inside her, the magic she had called back roaring to life. The darkness, the way Tharen loomed by her side, his hand still hovering in the air before her, made her recallthatday—when her whole life had changed. The nightmare clung to her. Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
"You know, I realized why this whole time, I’ve been struggling to understand you when you say you won’t f-force me," she started, feeling their confusion. "It’s because I remembered. And Ikeepremembering."
"Darling, are you well?" Vale’s voice shivered over her flesh.
"No," she sobbed. "I’m not."
Tharen sighed, and she watched his icy eyes in the dark, throat tightening as it brought more memories to the surface of her dazed mind. "How much did you drink?" He grabbed the bottle from her lap, tilting it to see that it was empty. The ship rocked, and another bottle rolled, hitting her hip. Tharen took that one, too. "Do you know how strong this is? What were you thinking?" Concern laced his words.
"Don’t pretend to worry about me. You know you don’t care," she hiccuped.
Tharen’s hands tightened around the neck of the bottle. "You want to know something, Luella?" He said her name like a curse, like he hated the feel of it in his mouth and wanted to spit it out. "I do care about you. I care about you so much it makes mefucking sick, and I wish I didn’t." He shifted until his face was all she could see, even with Vale’s hand on her neck. It was too much like her time in the Temples, with both of them crowding her. Her body filled with heat. "But I can’t stop. So don’t make me try, and for the love of the gods, don’t question it."
Her heart stuttered in her chest. "I wish… I didn’t remember any of it." Because then maybe his words wouldn’t feel so hollow.
Tharen searched her eyes, but it was Vale who quietly asked, "Remember what?"
"That night, when Tharen came for me." She shuddered, staring right into the eyes of the male himself as she spoke. "When you dragged me through the halls, and it was dark, but I could still see flashes of images. Females on the ground with b-blood on their bodies and torn gowns." Tears blurred her vision as she looked at Vale, finding his brows low, etched with sorrow. "Your soldiers r-raped them."
She exhaled raggedly, the words filling the room, unable to be ignored.
It had taken her a while to remember. She had endured so much in such little time. The horrors she had faced had stacked on top of each other, compounding until it was one thick mass, and she couldn’t discern one nightmare from the next. But the liquor made it easier to wade through the broken pieces of her soul.
"That is what you think happened?" Vale asked her, his hand still on her neck, trapping her.
Luella nodded, unable to speak. All of her words had been used up.
She wanted to press closer to the fire inside of Vale. Even drunk, she knew it would burn her. Maybe she wanted to be burned.
