Page 97 of The Devil In Blue
I needed him. I needed to feel him. To see him. To tell him all that I’d just witnessed. Whether they were memories or some twisted insecurities cooked up by my mad, scrambled mind, they existed and they had just torn my heart to shreds. I needed an anchor. A touch. A voice. Anything to pull me from that hell.
“Rune!” I screamed as Elanor’s image marched toward me and passed right through me like vapor. I fell backward, my hands hitting something hard. Stone. Brick. I didn’t know. “Rune!” I screamed again.
I rolled over onto my hands and knees and looked up to see a square room before me. There was only one window, barred and small, that let in dusky light. It shined down on a figure laying on a narrow bed. Her wrists and ankles were wrapped in leather cuffs and secured to the bedframe. Her face was turned away from me, but the shaved head was too familiar.
My golden locks had been shorn and I looked skinny, exactly how I remembered when I was in Southminster. Weeks of rebelling and denying food. Of fighting. Of wishing for death. It carved me down to a fraction of what I was. I was dressed in a white, cotton nightgown that was too thin to keep me warm. It was bunched up to my hips and my bare legs were spread while a man pumped himself between them.
“So beautiful,” Lucien chanted, running his fingers down the side of my vacant face.
I could feel every thrust like I was still there, strapped down and stripped of my freedom. The pain was hardly physical. It was mental. It tore my mind and soul to ribbons. Hot tears stung my eyes, blurring the image before me as I—the woman on the bed—turned my head and I saw death on the face staring back. Emptiness. Hopelessness.
I closed my eyes and sobbed, clutching my stomach as a wave of nausea churned within. Lucien had been there since the beginning, just as Father Eli confessed. I felt sick. The only man I’d ever trusted had lied from day one. He didn’t take me in as a kindness. They’d all groomed me to be quiet. To be beautiful. Still and compliant.
And I’d been broken enough to believe it all in the end.
Looking up, the room had changed. Instead of seeing myself strapped to the bed, I was curled upon it, my back against the wall. I was strapped tightly into a straitjacket, my chin-length hair unkempt and oily. Shadows pulled at the base of my eyes and I stared, void of anything. Joy. Anger. Sadness.
I was a piece of something that had once been whole and I wasn’t sure how I ever thought I could be more.
I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t keep looking. I collapsed on the cold ground and folded in on myself, holding my knees to my chest. The darkness devoured me like a hungry animal that had been waiting for me to enter its trap for a hundred years. And I finally had.
My madness had me in its clutches and it was eager to tear me apart from the inside out.
I carried Briar’s body out of the mist and into the courtyard. She was slight in my arms, her fingers loosely gripping the front of my tunic. Elanor, when I came into the courtyard, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Naeve was standing there, concern evident on her face.
“My king,” she said, eyeing Briar in my arms. “Is she—”
“She is alright. I’m taking her to my room. You will care for her.” Lura fluttered down in a drop of shadows, transforming from a raven to a woman in a blink. “Where is Elanor?”
Lura shrugged. “We went separate ways. I sensed distress so I came back from patrol.”
I didn’t care to waste time walking into the palace through the heavy front doors. Instead, I expanded my feathered wings and with one beat, I was on the balcony outside my chamber. I walked inside and set Briar down on my bed. Lura and Naeve were close in tow.
“My king, what’s going on?” Lura asked. “You’re scaring me.”
She was always so sensitive to my moods, often letting them dictate her behavior. Sometimes it was irritating, but my youngest raven couldn’t help herself. She was empathetic. With everyone, but understandably more with me.
And I was upset.
Briar sat up on the bed, eyes rounded with concern when she looked at me like she just realized where she was.
“Rune,” she gasped, her gaze finding me. I knelt by the bed as she swung her legs over to sit on the edge of the mattress. “I—I saw… I saw…”
I took her hands in mine and squeezed. “I know. I need you to stay here with Naeve and Lura.”
As I stood, she tugged on my hands, shaking her head. She knew fear well and yet this fear seemed difficult for her to process. She was shocked and overwhelmed.
“Lura and Naeve will take care of you. I need to do something.”
“Please,” she begged softly, but I couldn’t stay. I slowly slid my fingers from her grasp and marched back to the balcony.
“Rune?” Naeve said as I passed her.
“The palace will lock you in until I return,” I said.
I knew both my ravens were distressed. Without Elanor, who they’d always looked up to, my behavior must have seemed alarming, but the instructions were simple. Stay with Briar until I returned.
Once on the balcony, Naeve closed the doors behind me and I heard the lock click. Good girl.
