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Silence prevailed.
His chest heaved, up and down, rythmic yet irregular in intensity, like the rise and fall of the tide.
Somewhere, somehow, he knew he should have been scared-angry, concerned, worried, for his life and hers. But the blood in his veins moved sluggishly, his eyelids drooping behind the cloth that covered them, head lolling slightly to the side under the effect of a drug.
He wasn't stupid. He was just too out of his senses to save anyone.
The rope cut into his wrists that were tied together behind his back, the arms of the chair pressed closely enough into his forearms to bruise the skin around them. When he heard the unhurried footsteps, his heart cried, the adrenaline rushed to dilute the liquid his veins, but didn't prove effective against whatever drug they had injected him with.
A cold hand found his face, ripping off the cloth over his eyes with a force that made him jerk forward. The only light came from a dim torch somewhere behind the person who had just taken off the blindfold, but it was enough for him to the see the outines of captor's features.
A sharp but strong jaw, shoulders broad and well-muscled under a straining shirt, sleeves rolled up to his forearms. The man in the chair made a noise at the back of his throat, but it was scarcely any help. His vision was blurry, whatever sense was left in his brain struggled to keep afloat above the haze that threatened to pull all of him under.
What use was he to her then?
Another, choked noise sounded in the otherwise empty room, though not from him. The prisoner's panic spiked, and he struggled half-awake against his binds, knowing that she was right next to him, that if he didn't move, she was going to die.
The man who was standing before him laughed, a cold, high sound that would've sent shivers through him had he been fully conscious. He could hear her spasm and jerk against her chains, screaming as much as she could through the fabric that was pulled tight across her mouth, even though she couldn't see him.
Be safe, he thought, the only coherent words his muddled brain could conjure in the depths of desperation.
"Say goodbye, little girl," the man called out to her tauntingly, pressing something hard and cold against his forehead. A gun. It was forceful enough to draw blood, but he couldn't seem to wince, he couldn't seem to do anything at all.
Though he couldn't see her, he could hear her desperate screams against the gag. There was defiance in them, defiance and brokenness and an abysmal depair that told him he was not going to make it out alive.
His captor savoured the moment, and when he tilted his head, the light on his features cast a sharp shadow like angles and shapes over the rest of his face. Despite his drugged state, he could tell that this was what power looked like-the insane passion in his eyes, the smile that was torn into his pale face resembling a ripped, unpainted canvas.
For a moment, the prisoner was awake, the thousand voices crying out a single name in his mind rising to a steady tempo. Him. Him. Him. The thoughts were an orchestra inside his head, reaching a climax, an amalgamation of all the clues coming together like a haphazard pattern which somehow made sense.
This was the heir. This was the man who had sworn to kill him the moment he had taken over.
He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her who it was that she couldn't see and he had failed to recognize. Besafe.
