Chapter 63
TINY THREADS OF RED
LUELLA
When Luella awoke, all she felt was pain.
She lay on something hard. She tried to move her head, but could not. She couldn’t even open her eyes. It hurt to try, as if her lids were stuck together.
Sensations came slowly, rising over the pain. It was too much to sift through—the pain and agony, all over her body. Her wings were crushed beneath her. Then came a touch at her right wrist. She thought she screamed. Her jaw cracked from the force of it.
The sound was distant, however, like it wasn’t really her screaming.
This was all a dream.
It had to be.
She was in bed with Az, curled up.
She was still—in Solis, getting ready for her lessons with her tutor.
She wasn’t truly here.
The pain in her wrist returned. It was lifted, turned. Something snapped. She was able to feel more now.
She wished for the darkness to return.
More pain in her ankle. She still couldn’t open her eyes—why?
She wanted to see what was being done to her. But did she really?
The pain went on for so long she grew numb to it.
In the space of hands on her body, prodding and palpating, and the aches abating from her overexposure to such consuming pain, she felt her lids loosen. Slowly, she cracked her eyes open with great effort.
She blinked up at the ceiling. Her vision was blurry with tears. Even the darkness was too much light for her pounding head.
Voices trickled in, like water over stone, falling, falling—
"She’s awake…"
"Shall we get the master?"
A pause.
"No, not yet," a shaky voice replied. "She is not… fully healed."
"Very well."
Shapes took form above her, and she tried to shrink away but could not move her body.
It was leaden, limp, moved only by the hands on her.
Turning her head, lifting her eyelid, and shining a bright torch of white fire into her eye, leaving speckled darkness consuming her vision when it was pulled away.
"What are you—doing to m-me…" Luella’s lips wouldn’t work.
She moaned weakly as her arm was lifted again. Her head was tilted, her chin brushing her shoulder. She tried to widen her eyes to look at what was being done to her arm.
She wished she hadn’t.
Her wrist was cut open, tendons and nerves spilling out, along with a flash of white bone, broken and jagged. Tiny threads of red and delicate lines. She saw the bones in the back of her hand where the flesh was peeled away.
She gagged but couldn’t turn her head to expel the sickness rushing up the back of her throat.
She choked on the vile taste of her own vomit.
A hand was forced beneath her shoulders, lifting her and turning her until she was half leaned over the side of the table she lay on.
She was sick all over the floor. It clung to her hair, which stuck to her mouth and sweaty temples.
When she was done and her stomach was empty, throat burning, she was laid back down.
She went in and out of consciousness—each moment in darkness was like a blessing. She could stay there in that darkness forever, and it still wouldn’t be long enough.
She awoke again to pain, but it was dulled.
No more hands on her body. No more crushing, suffocating numbness.
She turned her head weakly, staring into the dark room she was in.
Her vision was still blurry, eyes dry. She tried to make out shapes. The walls were made of white stone, marbled with dark grey. A stone table set nearby, lined with tonics, vials, metal instruments, and gauze, some dirty with blood and others fresh.
She shifted and gasped as it tugged on her leg. Her ankle—
It came rushing back.
The flight. The Umbra. The netting.
Her fall.
The pain in her ankle as it slammed against the rocks, her twisted, mangled hand from her fall to the ground.
Her wings throbbed behind her on the table as she twisted, tendons in her neck straining as she lifted her head. The action took a lot out of her. She panted as she stared down at her body.
A thin white sheet was draped over her, the edges slipping from her chest with every ragged, gasping breath. She was nude beneath. And so, so cold.
Every time she blinked, she remembered, and that made her breathing grow more erratic. Her lungs felt tight, as if they were empty, could pop from her chest and drift away at any moment.
She was gasping, wheezing. Chest cracking.
The sheet slipped free as she twisted on the table, and she fell to the ground with a hollow thud. It jarred her entire left side, sending pain up through her shoulder. She couldn’t move, couldn’t move.
She curled her legs to her chest as best as she could, crying.
"H-help," she tried to say, but her voice broke.
Footsteps approached.
Shadows on the ground.
She wheezed, still unable to get a breath, as firm hands took her shoulders and lifted her.
She sagged between two bodies, chin dipping to her chest. It felt like bags of grain were tethered to her wings and head, forcing her whole body to droop.
She couldn’t walk, so they dragged her and helped her back onto the table.
She saw now that it was a large slab of white stone, raised high in the center of the room. The sheet was pooled on the floor.
Luella was nude, exposed.
She trembled as she lifted her head, staring at the two who held her—two females, wearing plain grey gowns and fitted caps over their hair, plaited into tight buns.
They wouldn’t look her in the eye.
Their ears were pointed, features delicate. Fae.
She was laid back on the table, the sheet tucked over her, once more.
Her entire body throbbed with lingering aches, as if she’d been flayed and put back together all wrong—
A female’s face hovered before her. Luella tried to focus on her features. Hard eyes, pale blue. Hair that was threaded with white and black. Like the marbled walls.
"W-where—am I?" Luella slurred.
The female canted her head, a hand pressing on Luella’s lower stomach as she started to palpate the area under her navel, then traveled up to her chest, out to each shoulder, and down her forearms. When she got to Luella’s right wrist, Luella screamed, back bowing off the stone.
The fae’s hands stilled. "You are still hurt." Her voice was soft, slightly scratchy, as if she didn’t talk a lot. She pulled away.
Luella heard the soft tinkling of glass and the crackling of a small fire. She dozed, then woke up when a hand touched her chin and jaw, thumb digging into the side under her ear until her mouth was forced to open from the pressure.
She gave a gasping moan as the female held her mouth open, then poured a glass vial down her throat. It sloshed over her tongue and hit the back of her throat; she gagged, forced to swallow.
The taste was unlike anything she’d experienced before—iron and meaty, with a sludge-like texture.
The females spoke to each other. Luella tried to hang onto their words.
"Not long now," said the one with the raspy voice.
"Shall I call the m-master?" answered the other.
"Yes. I am sure he’s impatient."
Shuffling footsteps faded.
The taste of the elixir bubbled in Luella’s empty, nauseous stomach.
She tried to keep it down, but started to gag again, and the fae female touched her brow, hands waving over her nose and mouth, and offering a soothing peppermint scent from the oils clinging to her fingers.
"Do not throw it up." She spoke softly. "He is almost here. "
A heaviness suddenly hung about the room, taking the chill in her bones and forcing it down into an oppressive sort of iciness.
"She does not look well." Caliban’s voice filled the room, quiet and deadly.
Luella trembled.
"Master, she is as well as she can be. We—did the best we could."
Luella tried to speak, to question where she was, but all that came out was a low groan.
Caliban’s profile was distorted from the shadows; they clung to the air around him like smoke.
He stood before the female, a hand coming to rest on the table by Luella’s hip.
He stared down at her momentarily, expression unreadable.
"The best you can do is offer her to me, half-broken and incoherent? " he asked lowly.
Luella would have flinched, but everything was still hurting. She only watched.
"Apologies, Master. We will endeavor to do better." The female’s scratchy voice caught.
"See that you do. I expect this will not be the last time you heal her injuries." Caliban clapped his hands together suddenly. "Tell me, what is it you have done to her. In detail."
His every word was measured, as if not many lived inside him, so he had to carefully pick and choose which to string together to form the perfect sentence. The line of his shoulders was loose, but he carried himself guarded, on edge, eyes constantly shifting.
The female touched Luella’s right shoulder. Luella felt her fingers trembling against her. "Her hand was ruined. Crushed. We cut open the skin just above the joints and fused the broken bones. A few—nerves were damaged. I do not believe they will ever be able to be repaired fully."
Caliban made a low growl. He moved, and the female made a sound of protest, quelled by the violent look in his eyes.
Luella felt his touch at her wrist, and a pained whimper was torn from within her. He prodded the bones in the back of her hand, then down to her fingertips.
She stopped feeling him halfway down her palm, then it came back as he touched the middle of her pointer finger, only for sensations to fizzle away as he pressed down on the pads of her fingers.
She saw him as he did so, but could not feel it.
The places she did feel, however, caused immense pain. It felt like her bones were bruised.
When he was done, she exhaled in relief as he let her go.
The maid gestured to Luella’s ankle. "Her ankle was sprained. We applied a cooling salve for the swelling."
"Can she walk?" Caliban wanted to know.
"Yes."
He hummed, then placed his hand by Luella’s head on the stone, looming over her. Her breaths stuttered from her aching lungs. His eyes were ripe with shadows.
"Get up."
Luella didn’t move.
"Help her." He didn’t raise his voice—he didn’t need to.
The females placed their hands under her shoulders and helped her sit up. It hurt.
The sheet slipped down to pool at her waist, revealing her nude upper half. She couldn’t even move her arm properly to straighten it. She felt his stare—it was less hungry and more appraising, like one might look at a fresh cut of meat.
Caliban’s eyes shifted to stare at her wings. Luella felt them at her back, tired and trembling. The strain of flying had worn her down until nothing was left of them but two lifeless, feathered husks.
"I heard about your little flight. I am surprised you were able to use them so deftly after getting them months ago.
What was it—the Winter Solstice when they first appeared?
The Summer Solstice edges closer. Strange, what time can do.
" He got closer. "The masquerade. Such a clever way to hide them in plain sight.
Tell me—who was it that came up with that idea? Was it you?"
Luella just stared at him. She felt disconnected from her body.
This wasn’t real. This was a dream, and she didn’t need to speak in dreams. Her voice wouldn’t work anyway.
When she didn’t reply, and the sound of the females shifting filled the room, Caliban tapped a long, pale finger against the stone table, so close to Luella’s thigh that she flinched from the spark of chill that radiated from him.
He turned his attention to the two females. One still held Luella upright.
"I will come to collect her in a few hours," said Caliban. "She must be lucid then. Or it is both of your heads, and your blood in the throne room pool. Do not disappoint me. I can find other healers. Your usefulness ends when she does."