Chapter 76 The Edge of Freedom #2
Floris pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, shoulders quivering as she spoke. "I cannot leave. I have a sister." Her hand fell away. "She needs me. I’ve done so much for her, and I can’t just leave her here with him."
Through a fog of confusion, Luella remembered that Floris had already told her of her sister.
Every line of the healer’s body was poised forward, as if to flee at this very moment and follow Luella, yet she was held back by duty and love.
"I understand." Luella’s breath hitched with a welling sob as she took Floris’s hands. "I swear it to you, I will return and save you all."
"Save yourself first, Princess." Floris forcibly ripped her hands away from Luella’s, stepping back toward the direction Luella had come from, away from the stench of freedom. "Run."
Luella held her eyes, then nodded, turning toward hope as she walked on. The healer’s parting word echoed off the marbled stone, making her pick up her pace until her bare feet were numb from slapping against the stone.
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 straight through 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 was terrified that 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.
The bodies 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.
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.