The Other Wayland

Experiments

Elizabeth POV

I laid on my narrow bed and let my thoughts drift to Joe. Valentine had returned with some foul smelling concoction which I had been forced to drink even though it made me feel sick. After that, he sent me to my cell saying he and Jace had matters which didn't concern me to talk about. So now I laid on my back staring up at the white brick ceiling imagining being back with Joe. I wished I could see him right now, I had so much I would say to him, I would tell him that I loved him more than anything, that I was sorry for all the pain I had caused him. That I would do anything to make sure we were never separated again. I would... I would just talk to him about anything and everything. I wished I had just fought harder that night, tried to resist Valentine, or if I had tried harder to escape before now. I just wanted to be back with him. I just missed him so much, I just wanted to see him again. I wanted to finally feel safe instead of this horrible unease I was constantly feeling. I wanted to see him smile and have his arms around me. I just wanted to go home.  I couldn't stay here anymore. I needed to get out.

The room had grown cold as the night drew in and but I felt hot, burning hot. I felt awful. It had started the moment I had taken it, I felt it burning its way through my body, then the sickness and then a headache and now a fever. My whole body was on fire and I ached all over. It felt like before in Vienna but worse, a hundred times worse. I felt like I was on fire. I hoped he hadn't added something extra to the tea, hoped he wasn't experimenting on me like the poor creatures I had seen during my stay with him but I wasn't dumb enough to put it past him. I knew that as soon as he had discovered my allergy that he would start scheming, trying to find out how he could use it to his advantage. I was in big trouble and I knew that this was it. 

I gasped as a wave of searing pain shot through me and tried to get up off the bed to reach the guard I knew was on the other side of the door but it felt so horrible, every muscle moved tugged painfully, my body was refusing to move. That was when I knew he was playing scientist with me. How could he just do that with me? He thought as me as his daughter, even if I had stopped thinking of him as my father, how could he just decide to try things out on me? 

"Help!" I cried as pain began ripping through my body. "Make it stop!" I screamed as a wave of agony passed through my body. It felt like my body was trying to turn itself inside out. My skin felt like stabbing pins wherever it touched the bed. "Daddy!" I screamed as loud as I  could manage but it sounded feeble.  The pain was dizzying, the room spun around me as the pain increased. Black spots began to flash in front of my eyes, the pain trying to push me into the darkness I knew was waiting for me but I also knew that if I went into that darkness, I wouldn't be able to come back from it. This would be the end of me, I just need to stop the darkness from taking over. I could do that. I just needed to fight it, I would survive this. 

So I fought, I fought to stand even though my legs shook with the effort, I fought my way to the door even though the world spun sickeningly around me. I knocked on the door, the noise like sharp daggers in my head. Nobody answered, there was no guard, part of his sick game probably. I heaved on the door but it didn't give.  I threw myself against the door, again and again, willing it to open for me but there was no movement in the metal door. I was losing the battle, my body ached as I pushed against the door again. I slumped defeated against the door grateful for the coolness against my back. The heat that flushed through me was like a fire. I gasped as another flame of pain licked through my body, it was getting worse, getting harder to fight the darkness threatening to take over. I tried to stop it. I willed it to stay back but it was all I could do to gasp out for help one last time before the wave of darkness crashed over me and I gave myself over to it, letting it consume me fully for that was better than living in this hell forever.

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Valentine looked down at his watch wondering whether his test would have had any effect yet. He simply was curious about his daughter, she had told him before all this that the demon blade had almost killed her before, yet he wanted to know whether pure demonic blood would have the same effect on her, he wasn't trying to kill her, no, that would be the downfall of his plan, he simply wanted to see what would happen if he played with the careful balance within her tiny delicate body. He was protecting her if anything if he knew exactly how both affected her then he could make sure that she was safe from both.  He rose from his chair, he should check on her, surely it would have been enough time for something to have happened. 

He walked to his daughter's room, a little small, he admitted but adequate enough for her simple needs, she was still a child after all even if it had been some six years since he last set sights on her and what a delight she was, everything he could have wished for in a daughter, a beautiful young women, smart, quick-witted, strong. The perfect mix of her two brothers, all the strengths of both but with none of the weaknesses except that awful wilfulness and that sarcasm. That was easily remedied though he reminded himself as he reached the metal door. He slipped the bolt across and swung open the door, on the floor in front of him lay his daughter, her skin devoid of all colour except for the black veins lacing across the paper looking skin. She looked so delicate laying like that on the ground those ghastly veins crossing her perfect skin. He dropped to his knees next to her searching for a pulse terrified that he had killed her but no, there it was a weak fluttering under his fingertips and he let out a breath. He picked her up and laid her on her bed, her very skin burning him. He did not know what to do after that, he had no idea how to help her. She grew paler or perhaps, the black veins snaking along her skin grew darker as she began to convulse violently for a few seconds before becoming still again, horribly still. He did not expect for her to react so badly to his experiment, and now he had no idea how to help her, so he simply sat next to her and watched until he was sure that the convulsions had stopped, until he was sure that she was not going to stop breathing because although she had not regained consciousness she was not dying. He left her then, lying there still on the bed and carried on with his day as if his daughter wasn't lying comatose in her room.