Ringing sounded in my ears as a piercing pain stabbed through my skull with each pounding beat of my heart. Each breath I took was laced with a taste of blood and had pain shooting through my side and my head.
My eyes clenched tightly at the spiking levels of pain making it difficult to concentrate. Pressure filled my head, making me feel as though it would explode at any given moment. I tried to crack my eyes open, but that proved to be even more painful than trying to move had been. Something I involuntarily ended up doing anyway when I flinched at the bright, white, lights had me feeling as though knives were being driven into my eyes. I tried to lift a hand to block what little light made it through my eyelids after slamming them shut, but it seemed as though there was a disconnect between my brain and my limbs making it so that all I could do was lift my hand a few centimeters off the floor before it dropped back down with a light slap that was covered by the conversation taking place.
"Try again. Either tell the truth or twist them better."
A groaned moan escaped my aching chest as the ringing in my ears died down a fraction, words piercings into my ears sounding too loud.
"I'm not lying, Ezekiel."
"And I'm not a fool, Elspeth. You know better than that."
I tried to roll from my back onto my side to press my clammy cheek to the cool marble beneath me as words entered through one ear to slip off my brain and out the other. No matter how hard I tried, they wouldn't register or stick long enough for me to make sense of what was going on. All I could understand was that the rasp of the deeper-sounding voice was easier for my ears to tolerate than the higher-pitched one.
"I was in no way suggesting you were-"
"Then what are you suggesting? That you weren't harboring the human while aware she was the one I was searching for?"
A soft sigh left my lips at the cooling press of marble against my cheek when I managed to turn my head. It soothed a fraction of the pain it cost to move, pain that discouraged me from moving any further.
Cracking my eyes open again, I blinked at the bright light that had the pain in my head increasing to the point of nausea. It had my stomach twisting and turning while acid burned the back of my throat.
"Ezekiel, She was glamoured as a fae when she arrived here. We wanted to confirm she was the human you were looking for before bothering you-"
"That is not what my reports revealed."
A pause sounded. "Reports?"
"Oh, Elspeth," a dark chuckle sounded, causing a shiver of unease to race down my spine and trigger small pains. "Did you think I trusted you enough to leave you to your own devices? Like I said, I'm not a fool. Contrary to what you may believe, I have never trusted you, Elspeth, not even when my parents made the mistake of doing so. And, as you've proven, I was right not to."
Blinking hard as my eyes adjusted to the light, my eyes wandered, moving sluggishly, my sight wavered in and out of focus while halos appeared around any bright light my eyes found and shied away from in pain.
"Aster!"
The booming call had me wincing as my eyes moved from the marble floor cooling my cheek to spot the backs of the figures just out of arm's reach in front of me. Either I was seeing doubles, or they were two sets of identical twins that mirrored each other completely. Down to their clothes and the way they were positioned on the floor.
Canceling out the two that seemed to waver with every move of my eyes, I focused on the ones that remained steady and appeared solid. One was kneeling, a woman with her head held high but shoulders that curved to give away her fear. The other larger body of a man lay limp at her side, seemingly lying where he had been dropped.
