Chapter 79 Birdcage
BIRDCAGE
LUELLA
Blood dripped over the edge of the birdcage, falling in tiny raindrop patterns to the pool of blood below.
Luella’s throat was dry. She shivered, but she wasn’t cold. She was empty.
Bereft of everything she never even knew she wanted, ripped away from her by a blade. Pure white feathers, the ends matted with blood, were pinned to the wall above the throne, taunting her.
The birdcage hovered farther from the throne now, its shadow darkening the thick pool of blood below. Blood leaked constantly from the wound on her back. It was on her arms, on her silk gown, on the rocking floor of the cage beneath her…
She felt like it was in her lungs, in her throat, choking her.
It was a pain of spirit and flesh. It felt like her very soul had been cleaved in two.
She was broken, no longer whole. Her right wing was tucked tightly against her, the edges of the feathers brushing her cheek and chin.
She rubbed her face against them, a cut sob ripping its way out of her mouth and echoing around.
Drip, drip, drip.
A burning sensation washed over her, jolting her awake.
"Hold her down." The Tenebrae’s calm voice pierced the sound of screams.
It was her screams. The spikes cut into her throat as she cried. She couldn’t move.
Disorientation mingled with the fiery pain until she felt sick.
She heard the crackle of fire at her back. Suddenly, the pain made sense.
"Don’t—no fire," Luella whispered weakly, trying to move her hands to make it all stop.
The fingertips of her left hand brushed the dancing edges of the flame, and she didn’t jolt from the lick of heat. It was pleasant, in a way, like coming home. She tried to reach out for it again, but it was held away from her.
"You truly are broken, then, trying to touch fire. What, do you wish to burn yourself alive?" the Tenebrae taunted, tone crisp and low.
She heard no traces of anger, but she felt the evidence of his savage passion in her very marrow. In the absence of her left wing.
"Leave me be," she rasped, each word drawn out in dwindling anguish as the fiery pain receded.
The ground beneath her was stable. Had the birdcage been lowered?
The Tenebrae crouched by her shaking form. The green in his eyes was vivid, like emeralds. "You will never be rid of me. You can try to carve me out, but I am inside you now." He reached for the collar at her throat and ran his index finger over the edge.
When he got to the center, he applied pressure, and the spikes dug into the front of her throat. She felt the skin give way—it was already bruised and thin, so it didn’t take much force to break it—and thin streams of blood dripped from beneath.
"You bleed so easily for me," he said. There was movement at his back as an Umbra left. Luella saw he carried a bloodied sword in his hand, the end still sizzling from the heat of the flame. She shifted and felt her back pull, blood falling lazily.
"All I am is blood now," she said softly, eyes unfocusing as he continued to stroke over the collar. "I will bleed"—a ragged breath—"but I will not die."
He withdrew his hand as she began the laborious journey of sitting up. She felt more blood on her back, a testament to her words. Her sanity slipped through her bloodied fingers, dripping from her body. It was outside of her now, in the blood pool, settling on the bottom, too heavy to float.
When Luella sat up fully, leaning to the right from the strange weight of only having one wing, she stared deeply into the Tenebrae’s eyes, searching for hints of Caliban. She was not afraid, as she said, "I am what you made me. And I will make you… regret ever making me into this."
His black hair rustled from an invisible breeze, his porcelain skin clouded by tendrils of shadows.
"I look forward to it, flightless bird. But don’t try too soon, you’ll strain yourself.
" His hand moved from the collar to her back.
All it took was one whisper of touch against the throbbing, burned cut, and she gasped, falling back into nothingness.
Laughter echoed from below as the birdcage swung, suspended above the blood pool.
The cauterized wound on her back was itchy. It was nothing more than a stump of bone, where the blade had not quite cleaved her wing away at the root.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. Hours, days… An eternity.
She slipped into sleep and awoke on occasion to the sound of the Umbra’s revels.
Shifting, she peered through the bars below, her right hand spasming as she tried to grab the bars.
She nearly forgot about its ruined state, with the far more pressing state of her wing, or lack thereof.
Her first few fingers didn’t even twitch when she tried to move them; her thumb worked rather well, and her pinkie curled at her will.
Was that what she had been reduced to? A half-broken pile of bones, more blood on the outside of her than the inside?
Her white hair fell over her shoulder, curls falling through the bars and swaying. It drew the attention of a few nearby Umbra, and they looked up with glee in their shadowed eyes. Pointing and laughing at her misery.
Her blood had congealed on the floor of the birdcage, but sluggishly, droplets still fell below. As if their slow fall was evidence of her dwindling will to—
Live.
She let her eyes close, leaning against the bars as the cage swayed dangerously to the side. What would happen if the thread keeping it held aloft snapped?
"Give in, Luella. That’s all you have to do. Give in," Az whispered from her back, his hands on her shoulders. She flinched from his touch, not turning to stare back at him, afraid of what she’d see.
Would it be worse to see nothing, or to find his form actually there, taunting her with evil words?
The voice shifted into Bastian’s.
"If you give in, this will all go away."
Then Graves’s.
"It’s okay. I’m here now."
The rasping lilt to her feathered stalker’s tone made her tremble. She was scared of him the most. She remembered the way he touched her, cupped her throat and squeezed, then he had melted into shadows atop her.
"You’re not real," she whispered, staring down at the reveling Umbra, who danced and laughed and drank and hurt.
She felt his stubble graze her shoulder, saw the outline of his face in her periphery. The deep blue eyes, the tanned skin, the scar carved into the side of his face—she wanted to trace the shape of it, feel the slight ridges against the pads of her fingers.
"I’m as real as you are," Graves mumbled, lips against her shoulder.
Then, it must be Luella who wasn’t real.
She was mad, mad, mad—
She hadn’t realized she had muttered the word aloud until Graves’s body shook at her back with low, growling laughter. His fingers dug into the base of her spine, too close to her vulnerable wing stump. She swallowed, hating to give anyone her back anymore.
"If you’re mad, then what does that make me?"
She inhaled sharply. "It makes you a nightmare."
She didn’t look at him, didn’t look, didn’t let herself look. She was so scared to look.
And eventually, he left. When she no longer felt his frigid weight at her back, she turned to find the birdcage empty, the floor covered in her dried blood.
Letting sounds turn to nothingness, she drifted, and when everything came back into horrible focus, it was to a loud silence. So quiet, she could hear the faint splatter of her blood as congealed droplets sluggishly fell to the pool below her cage.
One arm was stretched out, her fingertips dangling over the edge, wrist bumping against the bars, while her other was cradled to her chest. Every breath made her fingers spasm; focusing on it made it worse.
Her fingers twitched uncontrollably. Yet, she found herself focusing on it because it was better than letting herself focus on the empty chasm in her back, where her left wing used to be.
Shadows slithered over the ground and tickled her ankles. Maybe if she stayed still enough, they’d mistake her for the cage—some ornamental thing.
The darkness coalesced into one entity, twisting before the bars until it formed an oval shape—like a mirror. She stared into the darkness, but didn’t see her reflection.
A face peered back at her.
The Tenebrae, wearing Caliban’s skin.
His hand ripped through the shadowy mirror, fingers reaching, until his arm followed, then his chest. He pulled his body through the portal of shadows until he knelt on the violently rocking floor of the suspended birdcage.
The shadows disintegrated, twisting until they wrapped around his wrists and twisted up his arms, as if they could not bear to part from his flesh long.
"Conquered Princess," the Tenebrae greeted. He stayed kneeling, staring down at her with dark, dark eyes, intent on her back. "What a sight you are. Wingless and wanting." He nearly growled the word.
Weak from blood loss and the pain in her body, she could do nothing but force out shallow breaths. The pain was so familiar to her now, she almost forgot what it felt like to not be hurting.
Surely this could kill me. Surely I could die from this, Luella thought.
The Tenebrae laughed. "You won’t die."
Her thoughts skipped, and her hand came to rest on the base of the collar. It was an instinctive action, a learned habit. Months reaching for the dream amulet at her neck, now twisted into a dark deformity.
His palms hovered over her shoulder, as if he were afraid to touch.
"I came here to tell you something, but I find my thoughts scattered by the exquisite pain on your face. I want to see you like this—always. You bend so well, break so well. It took time to figure out what would break you, but I’ve finally realized.
It is not in the silence, but in the loudness, the watching.
Your pain, put on display, for all to see.
You like to suffer in silence. As soon as I realized that, it became easy.
Let others see your suffering, and you finally shatter. "
He shook his head, as if to dispel the thoughts. She didn’t look at him, instead staring at his thighs, the dark fabric of his trousers pulled taut as he knelt, the jewel-encrusted belt cinched around his waist, and the way his chest rose and fell so normally with each breath.
"I came to tell you we are leaving."
The words finally broke through to her, and she tore her eyes up to meet his.
"Where?" One word, and it took everything inside Luella to force it out.
"I am taking you to the Lunar Temples, so we can be wed."
Her lips were dry. Her tongue poked out to wet them, but it only irritated her throat.
She fell into a coughing fit, each rattling sound forcing the spikes to dig in.
She suddenly realized: she hadn’t been given whatever elixir the—she couldn’t say their names—healers had mixed up, thus her bond sickness had slowly returned.
Let it consume her, then.