The world went black and then white and then gray, the same gray as the stone steps beneath her. She sucked in a breath and clawed at the wall trying to stand, still not processing what had just happened.
She's still so dizzy but now her brain has been rattled in her skull and the pounding is too painful to think beyond. Her body burning hot between the drumming in her head. The two taking turns with her attention, alternating between which dominated her senses. Naseua coiled in her stomach working its way up and out of her. Only to be interrupted by a boot crushing into her ribs.
Right. Someone was hurting her, attacking her, picking her up off the floor and slinging her over their shoulder and moving deeper into the passageway.
Della might have groaned, but she undoubtedly coughed up blood. The movement painful, and still more blood filled her mouth, her throat and her lungs, she wanted to scream but she was choking unable to think past her choking.
She could make her captor choke too.
Della flung her magic out wildly, uncontrollably, ripping the air from her own lungs in the process, but it did the trick and he dumped her back on the floor while he clutched at his throat desperate for air. She did the same and reeled her magic in trying to recover, but he recovered first. He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her limp body and pinning her up against the wall.
"You stupid whore!" he seethed. He squeezed tighter and tighter around her neck seeking immediate revenge from her panicked attempt to thwart him. Della's sight faded, the blackness at the edges of her vision taking up more and more of her vision. She clawed at him, desperate. She could see nothing now, his hand so tight around her throat she thought that even if he released her she still wouldn't be able to summon air. Her limbs felt heavy, and the darkness in her vision began to spread to her mind.
"Marco!" a voice shouted, penetrating the darkness. "Hurry the hell up!"
The hand finally released her throat only to relocate to her hair and he dragged her behind him towards the stairs on their left. Della sucked in air, then sucked in more desperate to make up for the breaths she'd lost. But each breath burned, everything burned so badly. Her blood and bones molten in her body. Again her suffering saved her as she remembered her gift of ice.
He was dragging her down the stairs now, still pulling her by the hair, she half crawled, half limped behind him. She hoped he'd release her hair when he fell that he'd prioritize breaking the fall rather than drag her down with him but she was wrong.
She blasted ice at the steps just before his feet. The blast still uncontrolled in her terror but he fell tumbling head over heels down the flight of steps, and again, she did the same, falling right after him, her bones crying out in pain, her skin splitting open in each place she met those unforgiving stone steps.
They two of them crashed into the third man at the bottom of the steps. Their fall so quick and furious he'd been unable to get out of the way fast enough.
She laid there on her stomach yet again staring at those cruel, gray stones. In too much pain to even groan or scream. They though were not. They groaned loudly and cursed even louder. Calling her all kinds of horrible, vile names and then, yet again, they recovered first. She could hear them standing, whining, moaning and howling their pain, all the while calling her insults she'd never even fathomed. But then the sound sound of chains clinking interrupted their vile words and that chain was so much worse than anything they'd said.
Della pressed her hands to the floor; tried to summon the strength to get up, to run, tried to summon her magic but her vision went black to white to gray again. And cold iron bit into one wrist and she looked up to see Marco reaching for her other wrist but white flashed across her vision and now Marco was no longer in front of her but left of her and she could hear him screaming and now red was bleeding into the gray stones below her. She looked left and the white was actually a white wolf and he had Marco pinned beneath him blood dripping from his maw. She looked forward to see the other man turning to run away only to be stopped by a wall of fire. She looked right and Rowan was crouched beside her, reaching for her, Aelin behind him with guards behind her.
Her vision faded black, but she could hear Fenrys snarling on her left, she could hear Aelin in front of her shouting to Fenrys to leave them alive despite them not deserving it, she could hear the flames crackling and the other man already begging, already telling her how sorry he is. Whether he's speaking to Della or Aelin she couldn't tell. To her right she could hear Rowan demanding for the key.
What key? She thought to herself. But then a moment later the biting cold in her wrist shifted to the same burning sensation in the rest of her body.
She blinked her eyes open, trying to force away the darkness. And above her now is her father, he's blurry, fading into the background behind him but she knows it's him. Can scent him, that comforting snow and pine. It enveloped her like a cool hug comforting away the burning inside her, it brushes against the skin on the back of her neck and fills her lungs. She realized that he's willing his wind into her lungs, realized that he's carrying her, that he's rushing that the background behind him is racing past. She realized that he's talking to her.
"Hold on Della." he pleads. "Just one more second and then the healers can stop the poison."
He glanced down at her, or at least she thinks he does. But now he's shouting about how they have to hurry, how he needs the antidote.
The abyss narrows to a coolness pressed to her lips.
"Drink it Della, you have to drink it," her father still, "it will stop the burning." His tone is calm but yet, it's not. Still she obeys, taking one pitiful, painful swallow then stops. It hurts too much, drinking, breathing even thinking all hurts too much.
"Again" he urges his hand coming behind her head, propping her up so that she might drink more. So she drinks once more and then again and then coolness sweeps through her body as darkness sweeps through her mind.
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Hi all! I finished this chapter early so I decided to go ahead and post it early. That being said I am not sure if I am crazy or not but I feel like the verb tenses I use at times are wrong or that I am switching between them or something. Parts of it read weird to me but I am unsure of how to fix it. So if any of you notice the same feel free to comment any suggestions of how to fix it lol. I hope you all have had a great week!
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Heir of Deception
FanfictionDella has been quietly living in the mountains surrounding Doranelle. But with Maeve's death she now has the freedom to go and find her father, Rowan Whitethorn. The infamous Fae male doesn't know that she is alive, and he now resides in a new cou...
