226- Five Seconds to Mercy
POV Aldren Valmorin:
Her blue eyes, which used to shine like the full moon, were dark as a somber eclipse. Her chin trembled, and tears streamed down her pale skin like an open faucet.
“Aldren… Hell!” She grabbed her hair again and clenched her teeth, her face twisted with rage. “I can’t! I CAN’T!” she screamed, choking on her own sobs.
“Then shove that fucking thing into my heart, Elowen! Go!”
She dropped to her knees and let the knife fall. She collapsed onto the rug and, with her hands covering her face, cried so hard that her entire body jerked with violent sobs.
“I can’t!” she screamed, clenching one hand into a fist and slamming it against the floor. “I don’t know why I can’t!”
In some kind of breakdown, she closed her other hand into a fist and began pounding the hard surface repeatedly, hard enough to break the skin. Spots of blood appeared between her fingers.
“Stop this shit! Now!” I was tied up by that wretch, but I couldn’t stand seeing her hurt herself. “Elowen, stop!” I snarled, until I remembered I could use my pheromones. I directed them at her, and as they took hold, she stopped mutilating herself and closed her eyes, gasping as if she couldn’t breathe. “Enough, damn it.”
I withdrew the pheromones, and she filled her lungs with air before lifting her gaze to me—the most desolate look I had ever seen in all my centuries of life.
“I… I can’t…” she said, carried by tears.
“I let you walk freely through the house and this is how you repay me?” I growled, consumed by disappointment.
“Aldren…” She sat back on her heels, devastated.
“What’s your damn plan? Wait for Nerin to find me like this and for my men to scatter so you can escape? You drugged me, damn it?”
Fury brought strength back into my body, hardening every muscle. If I wanted to, I could snap those ropes and reach that knife fast enough to drive it into the cursed heart of that bitch.
But Elowen didn’t know who she was dealing with. Before that, she would taste at least a fraction of my anguish and disappointment.
“I dripped… Nerin’s drops… into the wine…” she confessed in a whisper, averting her cowardly eyes.
I let out a bitter, furious laugh.
“What the fuck…” I shook my head again and again, unable to believe it. “So it was all just your plan to kill me, and I fell for it. Congratulations on the performance—it’s Oscar-worthy,” I spat bitterly.
“I wish it were just acting…” She picked up the knife from the floor and stared at it for several seconds in silence. All my senses went on high alert. “I can’t,” she decided, lifting her head to look at me with a face carved by defeat.
“Kill me. Now.”
“No…” she whimpered.
“Do it! Or I free myself and gut you. Not even your teeth will be left intact, Elowen. I’ll destroy everything.” Testing her, I released a threatening roar.
Staggering and crying in a way that hurt me to witness, Elowen stood up and bent over, placing the knife on the coffee table. Then she walked to me, stopping beside the bed, unable to keep looking at me.
“I already told you, Aldren… I can’t.” She took a deep breath, trying to control her choked sobs, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“I’m going to untie you, and you can punish me however you want.” She sighed, trembling, struggling with the knot.
“Look me in the fucking eyes, Elowen,” I demanded.
Blinking through tears and hunching her shoulders, she forced herself to meet my gaze.
“I have nothing left, Aldren. Death will be a gift. If you want revenge, I suggest you torture me,” she proposed with a coldness that left no doubt as to how lost she truly was.
I was pulled into a disturbing conflict.
As much as I despised her existence for the betrayal, I admired her courage and cunning in having orchestrated all of it. I no longer even recognized myself.
“Inside the bathroom cabinets, there’s a spray and a mask. I’ll tell you what it’s for—it’s for you to apply wherever you’re going to pass, so you can escape. Five seconds, and my men will be on the floor, unconscious for the next few hours. Super-concentrated Xenonyl. Take the fucking stolen knife and stab my chest, then run wherever you want.” His hand, which had been trying to undo the tight knot, froze. “Doubt it? Just go there and check. I’m a fucking neurotic and I have weapons hidden in every corner of this house.”
“The black one? I’ve seen it before, I just didn’t know what it was for…” She paused, fixing me with dull-shining blue eyes. “I won’t take the spray, Aldren, nor kill you.” She pressed her lips together, trying to hold back her tears, but failed every time. “For hours I stared at you stuck there on that bed, unable to hit your heart. The reason?” She gave a sad smile.
“I have no fucking idea, but I hate myself for not having managed it.”
Ignoring my suggestion, she undid the knot on my right wrist, tied to the headboard, furious with herself.
I let my arm fall onto the mattress, pretending I was still weak, and waited for her to circle the bed to undo the other one.
Leaning against that headboard, watching every movement of that wretch, I waited until she untied my legs to interrupt the act and pull her to me.
I grabbed her forearm and yanked her with a jolt. Elowen fell on top of me on the mattress, trembling and panting, pupils dilated like someone foreseeing her own death.
“You should have killed me!” I barked.
“I know. Believe me, Aldren, I know…”
I shoved her body onto the mattress and got up quickly, blindly heading for the silver knife on the coffee table. I grabbed it and went to the window, throwing it far away.
“The spray will meet the same fate,” I warned her.
“If I could have killed you, I would have.”
I turned, finding her hugging her own legs, in the same place I had left her.
“This is the last day of my life that I take risks. I need to thank you—it was good to be reminded that I must never lower my guard, Elowen,” I announced, and went to the bathroom to get the spray, which I also hurled out the window before closing it.
Among the scraps of her underwear scattered on the floor, I found my briefs and put them on. I stopped in front of the mattress, hands on my hips, thinking about what to do with that damned woman.
With a pained expression that stirred pity, hugging her knees, she stared at me from the bed.
“Where is Nerin’s medication?”
“Under the mattress…”
I turned and entered the cage behind me, searching for the vial. When I found it, in the left corner, I was surprised by Elowen approaching the bars.
“If you’re not going to gut me at dawn, I’d like to come in and sleep—I’m exhausted…” Head down, she seemed convinced of her own death.
Furious, I left the area and circled her, like the prey she was at that moment, watching her legs give way from trembling so much.
I stopped in front of her and closed one hand around her neck, forcing her to look at me.