𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐈𝐋
.ೃ࿐ᴿⁱˢᵉ ᵘⁿᵗⁱˡ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵉᵃᵛᵉⁿˢ ᵇᵉᶜᵒᵐᵉ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵖˡᵃʸᵍʳᵒᵘⁿᵈ.
Gaze clear of pain, she finally realised that her creature was no monster, but a man with burning eyes of mischief—a man that had locked her pact with a night of desires. Every blemishing kiss told her what she truly wanted. Every touch of delicacy told her who she truly wanted. Every hour of respite contaminating the child short from her gullible heart.— Palace of Ulric labyrinths, Elvira Crest.
|Aftermath|
SHE HELD no sense of time as her consciousness flickered on and off with the scratching sound of gravel under her dragging body. The heat slapped against her unprotected skin, pain exploding in parts of her that laid hot against the rubbing grains.
It was hot. Burning. Cuts pulsed as her body skidded against the ground with the redundant tugs from her asleep legs. The searing impression of sand digging into her open wounds made her cringe and her insides screw with disgust. The pain made her sick. It made her feel as if all the intolerable burns were at the end of her throat, lingering as they prepared to launch out of her mouth as an agonizing shout or wail.
Had death finally come to claim her?
She was a prisoner in her own body, struggling against an unarming blackout. Whoever or whatever was pulling her along did not seem to care for the shrieking warnings the girl's body sent out as cooling red blood moved to ooze down her calves and torso, imprinting a grim circuit in the sand.
Huffs and grunts fell from just above her head, taut arms sewing under her armpits as the person proceeded to carry the half-conscious woman with them.
Slicing open her eyelids the best she could, her vision gave her nothing but white lights. Her mind was dining in a dimension of torment. Her body stood in another of suffering. Her head twirled uncontrollably as her semi-drooped eyes ate up a blue sky view. She was beginning to despise the colour blue just as much as she despised the colour red.
Her head fell weightless again, eyes subsiding to the dripping crimson that left a rich track after them. To her left, opposite to where the sun pierced the side of her head, a shadow stamped into the sandy ground beside her. It wasn't hers, she could tell by how the standing outline leaned over a taller sagged figure that she knew was hers.
Ache. Exhaustion. She felt so depleted.
"I'm going to be ok." A smooth voice carved a way from above and through the bleeding of her ears, words strangled into sobs. "Everything is going to be alright. I-I’m ok."
Her sight began to fog again as it shook in and out of colour, her senses whirling with collapse until her head lulled to the side in defeat.
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|Eastern Cazar—March 18, 7426|
|Pandora's Palace|
SÉRAPH WAS dead inside but a reluctant little light of passion refused to flicker off.
Needles. It felt like pungent needles slowly and sadistically trailing up the skull of her head. If you tore away the shabby violet skin her hugged onto the sore muscles and bones of his body, you'd see her organs; all uniquely beating her time to vitality. Every tiny vessel and fissure split her, making so that from afar, the scene of her fractured person would regale you. That's what she was. Fractured. Split. Ruined. So many words that her state could and couldn't afford as hundreds of harsh and gnarled terms danced on her picture.
Her soul was so disunited that she no longer counted herself as one, but as many unfortunates.
Everything about the girl hurt. Cerise trickled, pricking at the cold roots of her hair and slant of her jaw. Her lips were slacked and tainted with their palate of mystery. The thought of her state could've had her rolling around in a giggling mess if it wasn't for the sting by her lower rib cage, warning of danger as a whistled sigh escaped her. What a mess. The buzz of an old lightbulb rang with the desolate poem of the room she woke up in. Her wound was patched up with a taut bandage, abridging whatever blood spillage that had ruined the white sheets beneath her.
"The Morvoren family is by far one of the most adored in the 12 realms," the smug monologue of a man whizzed from the turned-on TV set up before her. "You'd be a fool to discredit such a talented family." The ceiling bulbs flickered again, the tanned outline of its glow greeting the woman’s crimes of red under her, condemning them with a wicked gleam of its advertising as she limply propped herself up against the bed's headboard with the electrical clusters of television reproducing within her eyes of discarded pain.
The bleeding puzzle was a hallowed machine pushing against the gravity of the planet. Every turn of her head made as she analysed the motel room that absorbed her ignited a fresh storm of aches. She was supposed to be strong. At this juncture, she was a chick laid out for a predator who took a prospering amount of elation in toying with her. Tied to the biting metal of a motel bed with grinding rope. The only concern that spiralled in her brain: Where was Intari? The girl who had watched her life turn to muck. The girl who the unknown man nearly murdered her for. Where was Intari? Séraph expected herself to be tough, and yet only weakness coloured her in the filthy motel compartment. The strong do not get scared. The strong do not cry. How pathetic. The abysmal orange that shone in her irises covered as her eyes dripped and stooped. So very pathetic.
If you stay in this place, a devilish murmur of a man called against her dextral cheek. The smell of imaginary sweet bakes teased at her senses. If she wasn't mad before, Séraph was pissed off now. You will only be gifted with deficiency and death.
The shades outside blinked as a gust of wind tore through the open windows, exposing the playground of endless sand. The far shapes of parked vehicles were stationed at the near what Séraph assumed to be the motel entrance, loitering for their owners within. The beams of heat touched on every expiring weight. It made Séraph feel even weaker, but also made her want to drive until the abundance of dunes were no longer in the picture.
Far and breaching dunes rolled outside like unbalanced and tilt young trees left to spurt incorrectly, they brushed each other as they formed horrible cocoons over the illicit desert that had taken many traveller lives. The stench of the defiled motel room was grating against her nostrils as dust left by lack of care huddled against the lean wall of near-failures.
Even under the wasting roof, the air was hot. The sheets of the decrepit bed messaged against her wounded body as if the blistering atmosphere upon her took the courtesy in disparaging her with every painful contact she'd make with the senescent material of the bed frame. The heat made her wish she'd gotten misplaced in the shallow tails of the planet just to feel the slight condolence of gelidity.
A quick burst of knocks on the door stilled her, Séraph ears straining for any clue as to who was outside the door. "It's me," Intari's voice mumbled nervously behind the door. It creaked open with a safe force as the girl carefully strode in with two plastic bags in her grip.
Séraph sat up the best her injuries would allow her, only now realising the weak rope that held her hands in place. She eyed Intari as she rummaged through the two bags without saying or addressing anything. "Pardon my Garzabellien, but where the fuck am I?"
Intari uneasily set the sacks down, twisting back towards the woman who still didn't fail to frighten her. "We're in a motel in the east of Cazar called Pandora's fortress. I dragged you halfway, the other half I managed to get help from a friend of mine who lives nearby the city."
Pain. Exhaustion. She felt so drowsy.
You need to leave, the man’s whisper called through the macrocosm of a fairytale. You need to leave now or you'll both be in more danger.
She needed a rest. Just a little rest.
Her body crumbled under the words of the television presenters, vision clouding as her eyelids became heavy with lawlessness her mind believed was long terminated. Those short seconds of hopelessness made her desperate for death.
"Celine?" A panicked voice carved a way through the bleeding of her ears. "Celine!"
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࿐SÉRAPH࿐
|???|
"You," a mellow call gave out an echo into the dark abyss.
Those words played a nice trick of gloom, the once faint glares of desert lights fading away into the grey clouds of her mind—it would've scared her if she didn't feel a weird familiarity with the dull place. Glints swirled around her, forming chunks of pictures.
Chills spread through her body, the low temperate of murky water tugging her from the waist down. Her heart raced as she did her best to twirl around, eyes trying to catch anything that moved out of rhythm with the deathly still body of water.
The vicious chuckle of a man replenished the atmosphere. "Are scared," the familiar voice whispered, words marinated in a suffocating amount of condescend.
Suddenly, the dirty brown that surrounded her hurled to crimson, although this time she knew it wasn't water. It was blood. She had no time to react as biting fingers fastened around her ankles, yanking her harshly into the Hell marked liquid that quickly plagued her lungs.
The smell of iron ravaged the air as her body fell endlessly, whimpering air slashing passed her with stabs of bitter kisses that made her body quiver. Her back crashed with the ashy floor that pulled into colour around her. A sick sight met her, mangled bodies covering the fumed ground of hellfire. She didn't need to know where she was to know that evil lurked in every corner of this place. She'd just trespassed on the devil's playground and she wasn't sure he'd be so happy.
"Absolutely terrified," His voice rose frigid from behind the lowered woman. "It’s almost criminal."
The unfamiliar man towered over her, not so silently studying her features as she did the same with his. Black curls fell past his jaw and below the nape of his neck, a fluttering curtain along his forehead in the form of refined white tides keen to drown. Precarious green softly took in the details of her face. His skin melded perfectly with the fading setting around them, lips a fair pink that deviated from her bronzed ones, detailed and callous lips that in some fiendish way, were so brilliantly crafted. He looked younger than what Séraph had expected from his voice, although a predatory gleam still presented brutality in his appearance, the benign glint casting through his eyes neglectful. He looked more harmonized with the grandeur of unimaginable control. That's what Séraph knew he had as the world around her wobbled as if she were intoxicated.
"How you'd let an innocent person die, mulling over whatever simple error they had made."
Her teeth clenched as she shook her head at the man's words. Her life was crumbling in his grip like pitifully soaked sand. Her life was inside his light as a ghastly portrait. It wasn't her fault. She was just obeying. She was just doing her job...She didn't have a choice.
"Is that self-pity I sense?" Sèraph could hear the bite of his smile, the bottomless spiral of his rasped voice failed to hide it.
Séraph jumped back up on her feet again, stumbling back as she fought to leave the nightmare packed rabbit hole. Her legs felt like suction cups with every mild step she made. Backing away, she hardly comprehended her surroundings, only the man before her—at least that was until a hard bump called to the woman by her foot.
Her ruby crested dagger hovered just above the wet floor, pearls glowing cosmetically as it ordered to be held in her hands. She thought she had lost it.Quickly dropping to pick it up, an electric sting pulled her away from it. She watched on in horror as her dagger began to crack like disassembled glass, evaporating into a storm of blueish dust right before her eyes.
"You like my little trick?" His world swirled into another as darkness seeped from her existence. Veering up, the mysterious man was now crouched before Séraph, eyes prowling as he towered over her with his indecipherable smile of profusion. "You know I will blight you, Alchemy. I always do."
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Paralysing.
Suffocating. Breathless. Dying. It felt like she was dying.
And like a delirious varmint, overwhelmed by the barbarity of dying, she did all her mind could think to do in such a stark moment of vulnerability.
Lunged.
----------------------------------------
She was hurting. Burning.
Hands. Gripping, pressing.
“Stop!” Intari didn't know why she thought begging would work. “I can't-- Stop! Please!” Then came her tugging, the desperate scratching, the muffled withering as the weight of her attacker smothered her, a winking expectancy that with just enough resistance, she could pry the woman on top of her off. “I can't,” the words were wheezed. “I can't-- I can't... Breathe!”
Now she knew exactly where the phrase ‘life flashing before your eyes’ came from. Monsters like the one pinning her down with an uncaring grip to her throat. She knew this feeling, the bottomless of such a fright. She had been strangled before. Hassled by pesky drunks and by the occasional rageous. But why was this so much worse?
“Some-” Celine’s hold tightened. “Help!—Please, I can’t--please!” She was stronger than Intari. So much larger...So so much terrifying.
Intari didn't want to die here. She didn't want to die by hands that had killed so many others. In her wallowing, she couldn't do much but wonder...how many people had the woman shadowing her strangled to their end? How many people in the afterlife would the story of Intari's death replicate?
“Die,” the whisper coiled violet and the rupture from her chokes made Intari tear up even more. Celine’s words were a reminder more than they were a threat. A disclosure that the person above Intari, unfazed by her attempts of tossing and turning, was very much alive and more than just a machine, a heart pumping. She was alive. “Die.” And if she was any bit quieter, Intari believed she would’ve missed the words that buzzed against the ring of her ears. “Why won't you just die?”
Grip hiking, pain spiking, air waning.
She was dying.
“Who do you think you are?” Celine’s question was whimpered, riled, an immersing mad as she watched the shrinking girl below her. “Hm?”
Intari parted her lips, lingering for the smallest hair of air to find its way past her constricted windpipe, just enough that she could heave out a misplaced sob that espoused the hot tears that hiked down her cheeks. But nothing would come.
Air.
Blood trickled into Intari’s open eye, blinding her in the crimson wrath that had overwhelmed her seconds before as everything wavered. All she could do was watch, take in the predicament which had flipped on its stomach as Celine slipped off Intari’s front and crashed to the ground near her side with a thump.
“Fuck,” The familiar voice rushed, all to customary hold pulling her away from the build of red, from Celine. “Are you alright?”
Intari couldn’t respond, she was too busy gulping in the missing atmosphere, consuming every particle of air her body could store. But if she could muster a response, past the hoarseness she knew Celine’s vile grip had banished her voice to, all she could ever gather would be a yes. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t alright.
Something had gone wrong…why would Celine try to kill her after what had happened in Solomon's office?
Had Intari misread their situation?
“Help...” grunted a man’s voice. “Help me cuff her to the bed before she wakes up and decides to continue her creative arts project on your neck.”
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࿐SÉRAPH࿐
|East of Cazar|
|Kaqiop|
THE WORLD revived itself with a ring that rumbled the eardrums of the awakening woman. Her eyes felt as if they were going to roll out of their sockets as she opened them.
A shuddering exhale pried from her lips, the harsh movement of her chest causing new waves of stabs to her shackled wrists. The renounced pain impelled her to disclose a suffering swear that came out as more of an unsteady, dry-gravelled sound.
"— with the tragic murder of Queen Valle Rollovo of Rollovo, it has been decided that a national memorial will not be held in the favour of her family’s security—"
An ugly-looking door sat adjacent to the bed she was strapped to, verdant and black tangoing into mould. From the other side of the ajar door, the polished speech of a news presenter crept, poorly stifled with the wailing pitch of opera singing booming from a breaking radio. Around all the clatter, Séraph could just make sense of the shaggy-haired man whose brassy off-rhythm hum pursued.
" —With the reign of Rollovo's pearl now ended, will the mutiny of the Ignatius regime harm the betterment of our democracy?—"
Flicking up his drooping glasses frames, the man shuffled about the small space of the hotel room, hands smothered in flour as he did—the tiles and walls of the room all cracked with undying stories. A squealing tinkle bounced about the looming room, ordering for his notoriety.
"— The oldest of the Rollovo children, Mania Ballerini, has announced the capture of her mother’s murderer at the hands of Sevgi’s leading defence unit, Ise. She was last sighted at the Arcadian Castle, accompanied by her younger brother—"
His eyes zeroed on the active glare of the turned-on stove, its timer buzzing with pleas. Pulling out the steaming tray within, the sweet aroma of baked goods invaded the room and countered his sharp bleach scent. The singing woman on the radio became short as rolls of thunder cooled his ears.
"— An Ignatius attack? A Than incursion? Perhaps Theron’s rebels have taken a step back on their treaty of truce. The unidentified man was concealed by Ise as he was transported to Hadak. Sevgi’s princess was also capture conversing with the royals in place of her father this evening—"
A soft yet alarming crash from the back of the room grabbed him from the cooking oven, his head whipping back to take in the struggling figure of the woman he had helped drag across Cazar's dunes, dark and dampened waves trickling along her face. The woman he had caught strangling his friend close to death. An assassin, his young rebel friend had rushed to him in a warning. The second they had secured her to the bed, the only thing they both could do was watch her, blacked out and thrashing against sleep. Still, the absolute terror of his friend beside him was too audible to oust. Too spooked to even step a hair away from the protection of her own shadow. A proficient murderer. What would be left of her now if he had not intruded at the second he had?
"Celine, right?" The syllables of the name sat deftly with rigid trouble.
A contentious twitch shot through the injured woman as she whipped her head ahead, eyes expending away the shape of her unknown captor.
"You," She spoke, seeth mandating as she effortlessly tossed into a more comfortable position of her cuffs, eyeing the man from under her furrowed brows like a creature that had not seen daylight in decades. Red ingested the pale sheets below her. "You hit me."
Freeman Dante flicked up the dropping frames of his glasses as he bitterly scrunched his nose at the woman's statement. Her glare made him wish he had done more than just hit her. "Celine Pyxis, right? That's what I was told your name was," he finished, yanking an old blanket off of the lightly whizzing heater and tossing it near the ends of her feet. "Pretty gutsy for a Pyxis to parade through Cazar alone, if you ask me." His eyes ran about the dishevelled appearance of the woman, assessing her for any hidden agenda. "But by the looks of you and all I've been told and have seen, you sure know how to handle yourself."
Their unified watch was combating.
"Celine, huh?" Freeman interrogated agitated, once again poking at his glasses. He did not like her. "Be honest with me, is that really your name?"
"What do you think, tiny man?" Séraph spoke, condescend trailing in her admission, a contrast to the fluffy-headed man whose face twisted at the answer, a begrudging twitch marking his expression as her eyes followed him, figure retreating behind the open door. He definitely did not like her. Tiny man...Freeman was not tiny. A tad scrawny, perhaps; a lot of the people who lived down in Cazar’s dunes were just a step away from bones. The raging sun had a tendency to do such.
The door flung open and in came the graceful steps of a sand-soaked figure who was draped in maroon attire, the residue of a crystallised desert matting its way into the cracks of the mask that covered her lower face before she ripped it away to reveal the bruise eating at her necklace line. Fair locks dented her view as the girl sashayed passed the flickering hologram with the image of the Rollovo Queen and with much caution made her way towards the chair sat close to where Séraph laid.
Lightning put on a show of ego through the windows that failed to conceal its consecutive shouts of light that preached through the guts of shady grey clouds. Séraph's watch kept busy on the girl whose gaze now rendered itself weak on Séraph.
"I was wondering when you'd finally wake up," the girl spoke, afraid to move any step closer as she consciously massaged the bandages on her own arms, tilting her head towards Séraph. "If Freeman accidentally killed you, I would've been really sad that I wasted all my hard work dragging you here for nothing."
Séraph didn't say anything as she watched her.
"Mhm," Intari chimed awkwardly back to herself, wincing at the memory of hands twisting about her throat. The burning of palms against her flesh. The memory of twinkling stars flaring her vision just as Freeman made his way back into the room.
"Badamar."
No response.
"Intari," his displeased voice called for the woman. Intari's back slumped back in her seat as satiny hair registered to her, hard features rimmed by thin glass frames —a set of strict features she couldn't forget even if she desired to do so, now powdered in...flour?
"Freeman?" she rose a brow, lifting herself back upright from a slouched angle. "Why are you covered in flour?"
The man flicked up the dropping frames of his glasses as he irately scrunched his nose at her question. "No reason that you will benefit from, Badamar. I earned being selfish. I got us inside this motel, crawling myself close to heatstroke just from helping you drag her." His eyes ran about the chaotic picture of Séraph, analysing her as he spoke. "And for what? You nearly having your neck wrung by the psycho." He turned back to Intari, hissing, "Why didn't you just leave her out there? Why leave me here, huh? All alone and babysitting Cazar’s murderer!"
"Technically, it wasn't Solomon Cazar." Intari disregarded his fuss as she went for the mini-bar fridge tucked in the corner of the room, stringing out twin bottles of what looked like century-old untouched alcohol. Her neck still felt sore. "And he said it himself, Dante...sooner or later someone was going to kill him.”
"It’s the idea behind it." The bandaged girl glanced back to the scraggly man, his arms waving with dissent. "She planning on killing him, Badamar. Cutting him up and probably sending his dead body to whatever fucked up individual ordered her to do so!"
"I'm alive because of her, Freeman!” He wanted to scoff at that. Alive? Barely. Had they not witnessed the same brute onslaught at the hands of the woman retained to the bed before them? “And its because of her that you've found yourself 40 thousand richer." The weight of her work enrolled in the back pocket of her pants, the corner of her lips twisting into a puckish smirk as she dropped the bottles to snatch out the folded stack of grey notes and whacked it down on the low table to the side of her.
"Courtesy of me," she claimed, arms blowing open wide as her tooth grin sprinted between Freeman and the fat stack of money in faux applause. "Now, are you going to keep complaining?"
Freeman gave his brows an uncertain squeeze as his eyes ingested the discoloured currency that wagered something genial inside him. "On stolen goods? Yeah, don't think so. Who did you steal the money from, Badamar?"
"I don't steal, Dante."
Freeman nudged the sleeping frames of his glasses upright again, mind not enrolling the excess flour holding itself to his face with his actions. His gaze lowered to her feet, thick boots crusted in sticking sand that grated against the beige carpeting.
He let loose an irritated sigh as he drifted to her, his feet only coming to a stop when he stood directly opposite the girl, "Have I not advised about bringing dirt into the place you sleep? What if you got your friend, Celine, if that even is her name, sick?" The sharp redolence of his usual bitter antiseptic scent invaded her senses. Séraph couldn't help but perk up at the exotic inflexion of her false name in his mouth.
Sevgi accent...
Turning back to Freeman's still towering figure, Intari gave him a callous scoff as she began to stroll past him, her brows pinching a few inches when the man stuck out an arm, curbing her from going any further into the motel room. "Are you serious?"
"Take your shoes off Intari or you can get out and continue with your pickpocketing."
"I do not pickpocket!" Intari rectified him as she unzipped the scalding seals of her dusting boots. "I explore."
"Yes, of course," Freeman assiduously exhorted her words under his breath. "Explore the pockets on other people's clothes." He jerked his gliding frames up, watching as the girl tossed the dirty footwear aside and sauntered closer to the bed Séraph was chained to, not catching onto his words as a trail of light moist prints followed her from her negligibly sweat-soaked socks.
"Were you a normal kid, Freeman?" she jabbed jestingly as she dropped back down on the leather, winks of lightning adorning her delicate details as she playfully patted her lashes at him. "There's word going around that you bathed in bactericide. Is that true?"
Freeman's irked grumbles fed into the distant clamour of thunder, two deep notes becoming one as they both filled the air.
"Ah, he's not opposing," she pointed out, warily nudging her statement at the chained woman who paid no attention to Intari as she glanced back at Freeman who was pinching at the laces of her mucky boots. The lenses of his glasses shimmered a ghostly speck when he turned to the pair, intense browns solid with controversy.
"I'm not one to generally comment on the fatuity of others," Freeman retorted as he shifted out of the room to handle the ragged boots belonging to the blonde.
Intari gave him an amused huff, foreseeingly eyeing the door for the skinny figure of Freeman who momentarily appeared with yellow rubber gloves and a few surging cleaning supplies inside of a crimson bucket.
"Well, at least I know you're not an impostor in camouflage," Intari shrugged while inspecting Freeman begin to clean up the small imprints she had carved when she entered. "Only the real Freeman knows how to be so depressing."
"Pleased to know you're the real Intari," he shot back as he scrubbed at the stained floor. "Only the real Intari knows how to be so sloppy."
The woman scrunched her nose at his quick comeback, her thoughts fading to the trickle of red that slugged out of Séraph’s side, sluggish liquid drinking on her clothes with shifts that Intari didn't fail to miss. Although, something else had managed to slip Séraph from her pained trance, a discrete posh voice speaking from under the wailing nature outside.
"The recent attack in central Cazar has developed in the tragic loss of Solomon Cazar, lead magistrate to the 6th world. Uprising, unrest and many conflicts for protection and emancipation have prowled the young planet of Cazar in pursuit of the vicious assassination—"
Lies, a man’s whisper uttered vehemently. Lies for miles and miles.
Freeman drew back the dripping frames of his glasses, raven shag wobbling at his ears as he swivelled to Intari's abrupt break. Both women's stares were bound to the television hologram, green and blue distant with covert proficiency while browns were unfocused as the convulsive message of the presenter dent into their reality.
"It is acknowledged that Garzabel has pulled themselves out of the Pure peace deal not long after the loss of the Cazar's First Minister—Is this a path to autocracy? Dictatorship? Deduced division like many have contended?"
Intari was too expended in the words of the presenter that she hadn't noticed Freeman pluck off his gloves and pace to the zapping electric hologram, snipping it off as a streaked frown played his face.
"Don't burden yourself on something hundreds of miles away," Freeman spoke after a few seconds of silence, the clouds of her footprints on the rug no longer the citation of his trouble. "It won't affect us here. Nothing in the northern cities ever do."
Finally having enough courage to turn her way, Intari gave a Séraph a disclosed look.
"I promise to let you go after you tell me something," Intari spoke softly, her eyes shifting back on Séraph. Freeman withered at her offer. He didn't want her to let Celine out. God knows what would happen if silver fell from her wrists. What she would do to Intari...Turning away, he made his way towards the only window in the room, pretending to be preoccupied as the ticking of the burning oven ticked tender. “What did you do with it after I passed out?” her words were quiet.
“What did I do with what?”
A heavy recess filled the room, a tough tension as both women paused for the other to elaborate.
“Shit,” Freeman’s voice came from the other side of the room. His gaze smothered by the cooking heat as he took in something outside. “Shit! Shit!”
There was a worried query from Intari as the man fell to his knees, hyperventilating as he scanned the room with frantic eyes.
“We need to leave now! Now, now, now!”
Unfortunately for them, now the clatter of metal slamming against the ground was not a ruse of strayed metal scraps pinched by the storm outside.
But something much worse.