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CAMILA FELT LIKE HER WHOLE BODY WAS TURNING INSIDE OUT.
It was as though her heart was beating inside her head, the throbbing rhythmic and steady but pain-inducing. She'd already thrown up twice since she'd shown up at the Salvatore Mansion - the first time all of the food she'd been eating during the day to get back on track thus erasing her progress and the second time just liquids she'd been ingesting with her pills - and now she sat, dizzy and dehydrated, trying to think of anything other than Kai's expression as he left. She'd never quite seen fury like that on his face before. She'd seen his steady rage, the kind he used to threaten people that was calm and calculated, his fearful rage the day he thought she might leave the prison world without him and even his hurt rage after Luke's prison world visit, when he had thought there was a chance Camila may never see him as a person worth trying for. But this was something else entirely. It was pure rage. And it was directed at her.
Now she sat on the couch, head in her hands, flittering in and out of consciousness, aware of the presence of someone faintly around her.
Luke had never seen her like this. Tangled hair, shaking hands, chapped lips, sallow skin and eyes red, brimming with tears. When she'd stumbled into the Salvatore Mansion, barely able to stand, her body so weak from what he could only assume was emotional and physical fatigue, he was already waiting for her. She'd blacked out soon after, at which point he helped her body to the couch, taking off her coat and making her comfortable but she quickly awoke again with the urge to vomit so he guided her to a toilet and held her hair back whilst she puked. And now as he stood watching her figure, almost crumpled in on itself, he was so distressed he visibly winced.
"Camila...?"
Camila zoned back in at the sound of Luke's voice. Luke huffed, knowing she must not have heard anything he'd been saying to her, but there was clear sympathy written all over his face. She tried to return a kind of grateful upturn of lips, only firmly aware of how he'd helped her, but she found herself physically incapable. Her face couldn't seem to express any emotions in the range of happiness right now so she once again shut her eyes, pressing her face into her hands for some kind of relief from the black spots in her vision.
"I know Kai found out..." Luke began and Camila's attention immediately honed in on him, staring up at him with her watery eyes. "We were the ones that told him..."
Camila found herself wordless. She didn't know what she felt. Rage? Disappointment? Hurt? After all this was the consequence of her own actions, almost the misfortune she was destined to have. But as she looked at the man, the one she once considered her friend, standing in front of her she felt her stomach stir with something she could not control.
"We just thought..." he continued, nervously now as he observed Camila's hardened expression. "We needed to weaken him for Jo to stand a chance tomorrow, okay? We wanted to mess with him mentally...emotionally-"
