Beloved Beast

Chapter Thirty-Five

Wakefulness hauled her to pain, and as her eyes fluttered open, a distressed moan stemmed from her throat. Blinking rapidly against a sickening, horrendous throbbing in her skull, her awareness was slow to focus on anything other than the incessant hammering in her head.

A fire could be heard snapping nearby, tossing a delicate glow of light across a ceiling of ... stone?

For a suspended moment, Elle could do no more than gape at the rocky surface above her, all the while, feeling the cold, uncompromising earth beneath her.

Another strangled sound of pain swelled from her throat as she propped herself onto her elbows, instantly regretting her decision as an unbearable stabbing panned an agonizing path through her head, her stomach churning as she shifted into an upright position.

There was a heavy pressure in her head and terrible ringing in her ears, and as she dabbed tentatively at the tenderness at the back of her skull, she could feel her hair matted with dry blood.

It was then that everything came flooding back to her in frightening detail, that vital source leaching from her face as her heart lurched with panic against her breast.

The four men on horseback. Prudence had led them into a trap. Solomon striding towards her, an explosion of pain, and then it all went dark.

He had struck her. Hard.

The thought had her softly touching the back of her head once more, grimacing as her fingers brushed over a large knot.

"Elle?" quavered a familiar, terror-stricken voice from her left.

Tremendous relief swept through her as her eyes collided with Esme's, but that solace was short-lived for she realized that her sister had not escaped and was sitting adjacent to her, currently bound at the wrists.

Elle was surprised to discover that she was not bound in a similar fashion. Indeed, she was not bound at all.

Why would they not restrain her?

A meager fire waned between them, the piddling flames suppressed by a gust of icy wind as it howled through their solid enclosure.

Elle trembled within her cloak; the threadbare material not fit to withstand the freezing elements for long.

"Elle," Esme rasped, tearful eyes steeped with equal parts despair and enormous relief, "I thought you were dead."

Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes as she gingerly crawled to where her sister sat, propped against the stone wall. Throwing her arms around Esme's quivering frame, she squeezed gently, saying in a voice painfully dry and in desperate need of water, "I'm sorry. Are you hurt at all?"

Esme shook her head, sniffling as Elle pulled away to sit back on her haunches, "This is all my fault."

She clenched her eyes against a bout of dizziness, saying, "Don't think like that, you couldn't have possibly known this was going to happen."

Wide pools of blue stared back at her, her face ashen, "You said to wait – you tried to tell me, and I wouldn't listen!"

Reaching out, she gripped Esme's shoulder, her tone consoling and meant to reassure, "We're alive, and that's what matters right now."

"But for how long?" her sister croaked, dread shuddering through her body, "And you don't look so good, Elle."

She didn't feel good, but the last thing she wanted to do was inflate her sister's hysteria.