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☽
She wakes no longer in her usual cell. This one is colder, ice to her skin. It is windowless, dark and silent. The only light is a ray of moonlight, passing through the crack of the stone wall. She tries to push herself up, but she's weak, broken. A scream is lodged in her throat.
The metal gates swing open. She expects the two vampires assigned to guard her to come – Vlad and Nero. But it is not them.
Instead, it is him – the fixture of both her nightmares and dreams.
His name plays at the tip of her tongue, until it finally passes as a low, weak whisper.
"Tristas."
It's him. She remembers the faint, blurred images of his dark tousled hair, of the eyes that looked painfully into hers and told her to forget. His is the face she clings onto for dear life.
He presses a finger to his lips, warning for silence. And she watches him slip silently pass the gate. He is swiftly beside her now, bending as he strokes the hair from her face and tucks it behind her ear. He scans her, and she hears him mutter curses as his eyes fixate on her newly embedded wounds.
His eyes travel up to meet hers and she sees in them distant guilt. He reaches for her hand, testing boundaries – to see if she flinches, to see if she is scared of him. And when she doesn't recoil, he leans in further.
His arms loop around her small frame, lifting her tenderly and carefully. He makes sure not to touch her wounds, from fear that he damages her more then he already has. He holds her close to him, with utmost care, as if she is too fragile to be handled with anything that resembles strength. She knew he was trying. She had been handled with brutality for too long that she's forgotten what gentle feels like.
"I'm going to get you out of here," he swears, "and they won't hurt you again."
She manages a weak nod. If it is a dream, then so be it. But the comfort of his voice, and everything else of him are perfectly safe and impossible to resist. For one moment, she feels safe. And if she wakes to find herself still trapped, then so be it. She is too tired to resist the shutting of her eyes, as he carries her from peril to safety.
