Beloved Beast

Chapter Forty-Eight

Elle gripped the soft bedding tightly to her heaving breast, her pulse beating a deafening tempo in her ears as her wide eyes flitted about the room. Disoriented and frightened, she briefly mistook the roaming shadows for creatures crawling across the walls, but after several crashing heartbeats, she quickly realized that it was simply the oscillating firelight feigning horrors that weren't there.

However, there was a clear distinction between the shrouding darkness that engulfed the chambers -- and the solid outline of a man.

She saw none of the furnishings and failed to place her surroundings as her gazed locked on that dark silhouette dominating the corner.

Come here, little bird.

A tremor quivered down the column of her spine; her sharp inhale clipping the unnerving quiet as her abiding fear escalated to terror and panic. Her stomach dipped with a sickening feeling, certain with every thunderous heartbeat that a large man with dark, colorless eyes reclined in the seat across from her.

Because in her mind, she was still being stalked by faceless figures, and the idea that Solomon could be sitting there, watching her intently, taunting her with his prolonged silence, incited a strong impulse within her to run. But with her secured arm and wounded side, attempting to flee would be pointless. He would be on her before she even made it to the door.

The silence was tortuous, the man neither moving nor making a sound, just rooted like an ominous fixture, likely waiting for her to make her move.

With that thought in mind, her eyes darted anxiously around the poorly lit space, hardly seeing any of the interior in her growing alarm, her gaze often flicking warily to the shadowy corner.

A small fire burned in the hearth, the light too weak to effectively illuminate the room or descry a weapon, and what objects she could see were either too far out of reach, or too heavy for her to confidently grasp with one hand, much less wield to inflict sustainable force against a man of Solomon's size.

Elle felt helpless, and that feeling made her chest constrict with pain.

In the uneasy calm that permeated the air, where the man's presence was larger-than-life, her horrifying nightmares loomed to the forefront of her emotionally overwrought brain, fanning the flames of her anxiety – no, not nightmares, she realized, but harrowing memories.

They were too real to be anything else.

She bit back a cry as a string of horrific flashbacks flooded her mind, cramming it with visions of a roaring sea and a blinding wall of flames. Elle could still feel the scorching heat against her icy skin, and that feeling of abject terror when the ground had quaked beneath her sodden feet, that steep rock seconds from breaking apart. She could still feel the sting of the rain despite the unbearable blaze, each element set in motion by a powerful mage fighting for control. The remembrance of pain and terror – of Abby's gruesome death – surged in vivid detail, the visual input almost too much for her to stomach.

Elle squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly nauseous, wanting to evade the images, but even behind closed eyelids, she wasn't spared.

The dark mage beamed from ear to ear, those sinister eyes as black as the agitated sea, gleaming with triumphant glee as she palmed the dagger.

"At last, you are mine," Sera declared with a harsh, exulted laugh.

The witch's dagger flashed before her eyes, and when she opened them, a similar flash seemed to glint back at her from the darkness of the room, from that forbidding corner.