"Just leave me alone." Tears filled the one eye Aurelia could still open, spilling over the swollen, bruised skin of the other.
"I didn't want to get between you and him. I didn't want to like the one that bought me... I'm sorry that I ended up loving him...that monster. I'm trying to hate him..." She struggled backwards, her legs scraping weakly against the cold stone floor, her one good arm trembling as it tried to push her away.
"Your trying to hate him? And how does that concern me? Why should I care?" Camilla's voice was a low, venomous hiss. She leapt closer, her silhouette blocking the flickering torchlight. "I am the crown princess. His soon-to-be wife. I am killing you, and all you can say is you love him?" She took another step, her shadow falling fully over Aurelia's bleeding form.
Aurelia flinched, bracing for another blow, her body curling in on itself. She shut her eye, waiting for the pain.
But the blow never came.
Instead, a sound broke the tense silence—a choked, ragged sob.
Aurelia forced her eye open.
Camilla was standing over her, but she was no longer looming with fury. Her shoulders were shaking. Tears streamed down her cheeks, cutting through the fine dust of the floor and the remnants of her cold composure. She cried not with the quiet grace of a princess, but with the raw, unrestrained grief of a child who has lost everything—a broken, gasping sound that filled the room.
She wasn't looking at Aurelia with hatred anymore. She was looking through her, as if Aurelia were merely a mirror reflecting her own profound, devastating loss.
"I can't do this."
The words fell from Camilla's lips, quiet and fractured, as if pulled from a place deeper than pride or rage. The attendants holding Sorana froze, looking to their princess for direction. But Camilla didn't give it. She didn't even look at them.
She simply turned and walked away, her steps unsteady, her once-impeccable gown trailing through the dust and blood on the stone. The door hung open behind her, and then she was gone—swallowed by the shadows of the corridor.
The two attendants exchanged a glance of confusion and unease. Without their mistress's command, their purpose dissolved. After a silent, tense moment, they released Sorana and followed Camilla out, their footsteps fading quickly into silence.
Sorana scrambled to her feet, wiping blood from her own split lip, and rushed to Aurelia's side.
"Oh my, you have to be brought to a healer immediately. Tenebrarum will surely make her pay, I bet." She helped Aurelia to the bed, her movements urgent as she gathered a cloak and scanned the room for anything they could use to stem the bleeding.
Then Aurelia's voice came, low and rasping through swollen lips.
"I do not need that."
She was still bleeding, her cheek and eye grotesquely swollen, her skin a tapestry of bruises and torn flesh. The bandage around her wrist was now a soaked crimson rag, blood dripping in a steady rhythm onto the floor. She struggled to even form the words.
"What did you just say, my lady? Do you want to die?" Sorana tried to lift her again, but Aurelia's body was dead weight, limp and uncooperative.
"We should have a treatment box here, right?" Aurelia's good eye—the one not swollen shut—fixed on Sorana with a startling clarity amidst the pain.
"I cannot clean this, my lady. You're bleeding too much." Sorana's eyes were wide with disbelief. This wasn't stubbornness—this was something else. Something like fear.
A cold, quiet dread settled in Sorana's chest.
"I do not want Tenebrarum to find out."
"Find out what?" Sorana's voice rose, frustration and concern tangling together. "She hit you! She should pay!"
Aurelia's gaze held hers, violet and intense even through the haze of pain.
"Just clean whatever you can. I'll manage."
Sorana stood shocked. She didn't want to do this—she knew this wound needed more than a box of herbs and linen. But this was Aurelia's order, spoken with a brittle resolve that left no room for argument.
With a slow, reluctant nod, Sorana moved to the carved wooden dresser near the wall. She caught her own reflection in the mirror above it—her face smeared with blood, her expression tight with worry. For a moment, she just stared, as if searching for the right thing to do in her own frightened eyes.
Then she pulled open a small drawer and lifted out a polished oak box, its surface inlaid with faded silver runes. A healer's kit—not enough for this, but all they had.
She carried it to the bedside, setting it gently beside Aurelia's bleeding hand. As she lifted the lid, the scent of dried yarrow and moss filled the space between them—small, fragile defenses against the damage Camilla had wrought.
Sorana's hands trembled as she reached for a clean cloth and a vial of cleansing tincture.
She did not speak. Neither did Aurelia.
She slowly used a towel to clean the blood from Aurelia's body, dipping and wringing it over and over until the water in the bowl turned a deep, murky red.
She looked at Aurelia, her heart sinking. This was a waste of time. No matter how gently she dabbed or how many herbal poultices she applied, the wounds refused to be hidden. The swollen mask of bruises around Aurelia's eye was a livid, violent purple. The mottled marks around her neck stood out like a necklace of shadow. The split lip, the scraped cheekbone, the raw lines on her wrist—all of it screamed violence.
Sorana sat back on her heels, her hands stained pink. She was no healer, and even if she were, some things could not be washed away with water and herbs.
Tenebrarum would take one look at Aurelia and know. In a single glance. Sorana was sure of that.
When she was done, she helped Aurelia settle onto the bed, easing her head onto the pillow. Every touch of the linen against Aurelia's bruised skin was brutally painful, making her shift stiffly or bite back a whimper.
Sorana slowly covered her with a light blanket, then gently brushed a few stray strands of blood-touched white hair away from her forehead.
She sank onto a low couch nearby, watching Aurelia with the weary vigilance of someone tending a sick child.
Aurelia lay still, awash in pain. Her back ached, her legs throbbed, her vision swam when she moved her head. On the floor near the foot of the bed, the torn undergarment lay forgotten, a small, shameful secret in the dim light.
No one had noticed.
Perhaps I'm a fool, she thought, her mind drifting through the haze of hurt.
But what is the need of causing more trouble? Of running to Tenebrarum when my escape is so near? Let them have each other. Let Camilla stand by his side. I'll be gone soon.
A colder, clearer thought surfaced beneath the pain, sharp as a shard of ice.
I'll bring the bad news to my people. They have to know about Velmara's betrayal.
Her eyelids grew heavy, the ache in her body pulling her toward a restless, wounded sleep. But in that half-dreaming state, a resolve hardened—not of vengeance, but of duty. She would carry the truth home, even if home was a memory, and the truth was a wound of its own.
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To be continued...