Eternal, shiny thanks to Drowningblonde, Narrowpath, Snyperlady, Tenjp, LoveCastle89, Sunshineleo, guests, and anyone else who has ever read, reviewed, followed, or faved!
This chapter kind of shows why this fic isn't listed as a romance (though I tentatively selected that as one of the genres in the beginning). Not much fluff to be found here, folks. Though, with in-laws like this, who can be surprised?
Doom. She was on Doom. Never had a place been so aptly named.
After Lotor had landed and opened the fighter's hatch Allura found she couldn't breathe. At first she thought it might be a lack of oxygen in the alien atmosphere. Perhaps even something toxic in it that would kill her within minutes. The thought brought comfort rather than dread.
The prince imperial stood in the open hatchway, staring as if he couldn't believe he'd succeeded any more than she could. But when he finally stepped toward her Allura knew primal terror was what had stolen her air. She scrambled back out of his reach.
Face scrunched into a scowl, Lotor crouched down to better make eye contact. "We don't have time for anymore games, Allura."
Those words, in that order, lit a fuse inside of her. One moment she was huddled in a corner of the fighter, and the next she'd launched herself straight at him. Her fingers lanced forward to tear those evil yellow eyes of his out. Only his reflexes saved him from blindness. Lotor jerked his head back with a sheared second to spare, her nails sinking into his cheeks and ripping red furrows down them. Hissing through his teeth, he captured her wrists and wrenched her clawing hands away. A sound, half-howl, half shriek, erupted from her throat as she was yanked up and hefted over his shoulder.
She had no concept of their surroundings. She didn't need one. Anywhere she might have looked would have still been Doom. All her attention and energy went into screaming, thrashing, and raging against the fate that would befall her once Lotor stopped walking. It was inevitable, but that didn't mean she had to go quietly.
At last, they slowed, forcing her heart to do the opposite. She felt Lotor's weight shift as he reached for something; the pneumatic whisper of a door sliding open followed after a pause. He went into motion again. Futile though it was, Allura grabbed onto the door frame. It didn't take Lotor more than a few seconds to pull and wrench her grip free, breaking a couple of her nails in the process. The door shut behind them with a final, ominous hiss.
Unceremoniously, Allura found herself dumped onto the floor. A deep, wine-colored carpet of the most plush material she'd ever encountered cushioned her fall. She snapped her gaze up to Lotor. This was it. The part where he would pounce on her like a starving animal on meat.
Lotor's attention, she discovered, lay elsewhere. His eyes had settled on something above and beyond her. When he spoke it came out in brusque Drule, directed at the mysterious target. Tension slackening into confusion, Allura twisted around to look.
Shock burst through her bemusement at the realization she wasn't the only woman in the room. Not one but three female Drules stood a few paces behind her, listening to Lotor without expressions. The one in the middle made a short reply that had the lifted end of a question. Lotor fired back an exasperated answer that made the female's features tighten, a muscle in her cheek jumping as if with a suppressed snarl. Blinking, Allura turned back again only to find him huffing out a sigh and tacking on a word she recognized from her brief language lessons.
Hala. Please.
Not that she was about to complain over his lack of instant ravishment...but what in the cosmos was going on?
Finally remembering she existed, Lotor glanced down and noted her dumbfounded stare. Reassurance didn't come attached to his smile.
"These ladies are going to prepare you for our meeting with Father, Allura."
She couldn't have been more wrong about this nightmare degenerating further.
"Your...father?" she repeated through numb lips.
"Yes," he said, annihilating her hopes of a hearing problem. "You might have caught us speaking before I landed the fighter, though you couldn't have followed our Drule."
Nebulous memories of being startled by a smug, basso voice booming over the comm drifted back to her. She'd only heard Zarkon speak a handful of times before, and always in English.
Zarkon. The tyrant who had murdered her family in cold-blood on the steps of their home, all but destroyed her planet afterwards, and had done the same to countless people before and since.
The tyrant Lotor meant to introduce her to in person.
"No." While Allura didn't shout, the word resonated with a finality and loathing that penetrated to the very core of her bones.
The skin of Lotor's face darkened, a portent of the storm gathering behind his narrowed eyes. He fired a warning first. "If we don't meet with Father he's going to hop right back on his flagship and lead the armada to Arus. Then, not only will your planet be dead, but you'll still be stuck here with me."
She'd believed her hopes had already been exterminated. The agony that seared through her chest proved otherwise. His words cornered the remaining stragglers with the awful truth: she had so much more to lose still. There was nothing she could do about the situation, only react to it at this point. A choice lay before her—as strong as the urge to deny it, to play the helpless victim, welled up in her, she had to acknowledge there was indeed always a choice, no matter how unthinkable. She could dig in her heels, fight like mad, and keep some honor by defying Lotor and his butchering father. Or she could barter that honor for the lives of her people, finding out whether Keith and Lance still lived, and a remote chance of living to escape another day.
"I. Hate. You." Allura hadn't said such a thing since she was a child. And then never with anything but petulance fueling it. Even toward those who'd attacked Arus before—Yurak, Haggar, and the rest—she hadn't felt such a corrosion of her natural goodwill. Hadn't wished they were dead, painfully so—and maybe that her hands had been the instruments of their demise.
A rictus split Lotor's lips. "Yes, I imagine you do. But it's a start, I suppose."
Letting that cryptic remark be his last, he nodded to the triad of Drule females before, of all things, leaving.
When the heat of her rage cooled enough to allow some of her thoughts to solidify, she registered that someone was speaking to her. She looked up into the face of the middle Drule woman.
"Princess, may we put hands on you?" From the exasperated edge sharpening the otherwise polite words, Allura gathered they'd been repeated several times already.
Permission to touch her. That's what was being asked, Allura realized. A sound between a scoff and sob wrenched out of her. What was the point of such a question? She had been reduced to Lotor's property here; consent was nothing but a formality.
"Does it matter?" she replied, not disguising her bitterness.
The Drule cocked her head, pupils dilating several degrees. "Yes. That is my meaning for asking you, Princess."
Fury scalded the walls of Allura's chest and skull again. She wanted to scream at the woman. Tell her exactly where she could stuff her mocking questions, sideways at that. Spending time around the guys on the Force, especially Lance, had armed her well.
Except some cool, logical part of Allura bound her tongue. While it was quickly becoming apparent that Drule facial expressions tended to differ from human ones, the confusion advertised in the woman's translated clearly. Allura just wanted a scapegoat. To sacrifice something or someone to appease the storm of wrath, despair, and terror howling inside of her. Who better than one of Lotor's own people since she couldn't get at the man himself? That she had the capacity to be so hateful chilled her, blowing out the flames of indignation. Instead, she took the opportunity to study the three women, a side of the enemy's population she'd never had the chance to see before.
The one who had been doing all the speaking so far appeared to be the eldest. Of course, how old Allura couldn't pinpoint; the Drule's unlined, blue-violet face could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. Or what equated to that range in their people—Drules supposedly enjoyed a longer lifespan than humans. Rather, the aura of maturity sprang from the way the woman carried herself. The squared, authoritarian set to her shoulders. How her pale hair had been restrained in a neat, no-nonsense bun at the back of her head. The lack of arrogance or uncertainty in her steady yellow gaze. No wonder Lotor had given ground when faced with her displeasure. This was no lady to trifle with.
By contrast, the Drule to her right seemed very young indeed. She blinked and gave a little twitch when Allura looked at her, revealing a more unguarded personality. While the elder possessed an austere, stately beauty, the younger easily qualified for lovely and then some. Her white hair frothed in thick waves around her delicate features like sea foam. She shared the light powder blue of Lotor's own skin tone. A nervous smile flickered over her face, and Allura decided to turn her scrutiny toward the last.
Nobody would have mistaken her for a man despite her hair having been sheared to indigo stubble. Her round cheeks and the faint lines around her mouth hinted that she had once been accustomed to smiles and laughter, but sorrow had invaded and overthrown them. She studied Allura even as she was studied, cat-like eyes holding no judgments, only intelligence and regrets.
All three women wore simple white robes with mantles that brought images of churches and choirs to mind. All sported ornate daggers of varying design on a belt or chain around their hips. If they were servants then Lotor was a gentleman.
"What are you going to do to me?" Allura asked, her fear of not knowing greater than of receiving the answer.
"Do to you," the middle woman repeated, as if trying to make sense of the words. "Ah. We will put clothes onto you." She circled a finger around her face. "Paint?"
"Make-up," Allura supplied.
"Make-up, yes. And decorate your hair. To face the emperor with no fear. Like a woman."
It would take more than getting dolled up to accomplish that miracle. And a woman was among the last things she wanted Zarkon to see her as. She shuddered.
But at the moment all that mattered was survival. Horror and grief would have to wait their turns. Allura held out a hand and the eldest Drule helped pull her to her feet.
The trio went to work immediately. Like scavengers picking a carcass clean, they stripped her of her flight suit and boots. Their hands moved with haste and efficiency, urging her into a pair of trousers first. White and made of a snug, downy material, they were the last things Allura expected to find herself in. No gauzy wisp of a skirt with scandalous slits up the sides? No low cut dress that would have her charms half-spilling out and Nanny fainting dead away? Maybe Lotor just didn't want to share his spoils.
The Drule women had to shake her out of her bitter reverie for the next part of the outfit. They lifted a garment that looked like the hybrid child between an elaborate jacket and a gown from the room's bed. The front of what would have been the skirt had been cut and hemmed back, leaving her legs free and mostly exposed. The neckline lived up to its name, reaching high like a mandarin collar. The upper half of the garment hugged her torso once the back was laced up.
A few minutes passed before Allura realized that the stiff material built in beneath wasn't there for shaping or support, not entirely anyway. Her eyes widened as she recognized the feel of light body armor protecting her vital organs. One of the women held her hand while another helped her step into supple leather knee boots with low, practical heels.
Everything shone white, with flashes of silver accent. Polished beads of what she presumed were ivory dotted the edges of her almost-skirt, along with the trailing fabric that fell from behind her shoulders as well as the cuffs of the sleeves that hugged the rest of her arms.
"This isn't a wedding dress, is it?" she blurted, blood congealing. She wasn't ready for such a disaster. Not that she ever would be, but with all the other events whirling out of her control...her already cracked courage would shatter entirely under the strain.
A giggle escaped the youngest Drule and earned a sharp, silencing glance from the eldest.
"No," the latter answered. "You, a human, have no way to know. This thing is called yelshon. It is for meeting, but not with friends or family. White does not say the same to us as it does to you. No 'good, clean, happy'. White to our eyes means die. Fight. Kill. Like the teeth we show to enemies. To see their bones in the dust. White like the face of Inalia."
At that, the triad of women pressed a hand to the middle of their breasts. Allura felt her stomach alternate between dipping into troughs of relief and riding crests of dread. Lotor's hold over Arus or her wouldn't be put down on paper at least, not yet. But the fact they had dressed her more or less for a funeral gifted her with a whole new set of concerns.
Finished with her outfit, her companions moved to her hair and face. Something that smelled like citrus was spritzed into the waves of her hair. It hung compliant and straight when the woman with the shaved head brushed and pulled it into a tight, high ponytail. The sprightly young Drule went to the task of dabbing some light base onto Allura's face here, applying some shimmering powder there.
When her peculiar fairy godmothers turned her toward a full length mirror, Allura gasped at the sight of the creature staring back at her.
Sheathed in white, every seam, hem, and hair in crisp order, she resembled an aloof spirit or goddess. Of ice, of unfeeling reason, of judgment—any or all of those things. Gone were her soft, pink features, replaced by pale, stark planes and sharp, forbidding lines. The color had been bled from her lips. Only her eyes appeared alive, though changed as well. Lined by dark gray and frosted with silver, their blue had become deep enough to drown in.
The women truly had dressed her for the grimmest battle of her life.
"Good enough, for a small time," declared the leader of the three.
"What are your names?" asked Allura, staring at them in the mirror.
They exchanged glances between themselves.
"Jeyli," answered the youngest. From the thinning of her elder's lips, against some unspoken rule too.
"Brinu," offered the short-haired woman.
With a sigh, the third gave in. "Ailonti."
The last name tickled something fairly recent in Allura's memory. She had just traced it to the source when the door opened to admit Lotor.
"Good, you're ready." He took in her appearance with an approving nod. "At least as much as you can be. It's time to go."
Allura's gaze fled back to the stern face of the Drule woman who had supposedly trained Romelle. She found no comfort waiting for her there.
"Time for speaking will be later," Ailonti said. "If you live."
"She will. I'll see to it." Lotor's gallant reply earned him a quartet of deadpan stares. Rather than shrink under their combined power he held out an oh-so-gracious hand to Allura.
She swept past him without a second glance to wait at the closed door. There was a long, slow sigh behind her. After he punched in the key code she stepped out as if he weren't there.
Though Allura did her best, she knew she wouldn't memorize the twisting route they took through the halls. Not from a single trip. The black walls and floor held no adornments, nothing to serve as trail markers. All the doors they encountered were of the same kind as Lotor's, evenly spaced. She did take count of them however, noting fifty three before they arrived at an elevator.
Of course, she had no intention of staying long enough to learn the way by heart.
Silence grew like a canker between them while they awaited the elevator. Allura's animosity swelled in proportion to her fear until she felt like her bones, muscles, and organs had been dissolved in churning, fizzing acid.
Seconds before the metal doors slid open she burst.
"Well? Aren't you supposed to be briefing me on what to expect?" She hardly recognized her own voice. Brittle but sharp as slivers of broken glass. "Customs, protocol, everything I need to survive this calamity? Not that I could count myself lucky if I do."
Lotor coughed out a dry husk of a chuckle. "This is Father we're dealing with. If I tell you anything of use it's that expectations don't have a long life span here. Few things are as they seem in this place, Allura. Least of all my father, whose will shaped it."
The black maw of the elevator opened and he stepped in. His gaze was cool while he held the door and waited for her to follow. The notion of running flirted with Allura for a moment. To deny him the convenience of her cooperation if even for a minute. Maybe she'd come across something of value in the halls to lay hands on and smash. Petty of her, but she could think of no immediate way to express the loathsome abscess festering in her heart because of him, his father, and their whole rapacious species at that moment.
Finally, she stepped into the elevator, standing as far from Lotor as possible. She wouldn't spend her wrath, not yet. Something told her it might prove the only thing strong enough to carry her through the ordeal to come.
They were sucked up into the throat of the elevator, being spit out on a rather high floor, judging from the length of the ride; Allura didn't know any of the Drule symbols for numbers. Lotor exited first, and again the thought of leading him on a chase tempted her. Let the doors close and flee somewhere, anywhere. Instead, she followed.
Mosaics and tapestries decorated the vaulted hall on that level. Stone and metal work pieces graced illuminated alcoves along the way. Allura absorbed or appreciated none of it. Fight or flight instinct took a bite of her capacity for higher reason with every step toward the great double doors looming at the hall's end. That was it, she knew. Behind those waited the executioner of her whole family and despoiler of her world. She went to face him not armed to the teeth or supported by allies but in the morbid Drule equivalent of a party dress and with the man she despised most in the universe.
For Arus, though, she would do it. For her people, she would do anything. It became her mantra as they approached: for Arus, for Arus, all for Arus.
By the time Lotor put his hands against one side of the doors and glanced at her, Allura had achieved a state of disassociation if not calm. Her muscles were strung so taut that she could barely nod to him. The face carved in relief on the huge doors—she got the fleeting impression of drama's grimacing and laughing masks—split apart as Lotor pushed.
Dizziness rolled over Allura in a disorienting wave. She fought against it, mind clawing for the surface and control. Blinking, she checked her breathing. She was breathing, wasn't she? Yes, in shallow, sharp little pants. Slower. Deeper. That was better. The last thing she needed was to pass out. Her gaze scampered around the scene before her, snatching at details.
Drules packed the cavernous chamber from wall to wall, with only a trail in the midst of them left clear. The weight of hundreds of pairs of gleaming yellow eyes pressed against Allura. Her knees tried to buckle under the strain, but she locked them. Was she shaking? No, no part of her could move. She had to order her lungs to breathe again. When Lotor stepped forward, proceeding along the clear path, she followed out of pure instinct.
The Drules stared openly at her as she passed. Something primeval in her brain, recognizing a contest of strength when it saw one, had her meeting as many as she could for several seconds each. Allura would have said she'd harbored few expectations, but the tickles of surprise that brushed her awareness flushed them out of hiding. There were no masculine leers, no feminine titters behind fluttering fans like Nanny had described from her ballroom days. The blue, purple, or odd green faces she passed displayed nothing, inscrutable as that of cats. Only a few split to show fangs. Fewer still kept their teeth sheathed behind ever so slightly smiling lips. Allura granted no reaction to either.
All, men and women, wore white finery similar to what she had been dressed in. The only difference came in the form of the scarlet paint streaked across each face. Splatters, spirals, spidery lines webbed like bloody cracks in blue skin—no two designs could be called alike.
Savages. Just as Romelle had said. Beautiful, sophisticated savages.
Lotor came to a stop at last. Allura followed his example. She blinked at the set of stone stairs before them. Her eyes climbed up, up, up until they reached a pair of large, heavy boots. She couldn't force her sight or courage past that point.
It didn't matter. The boots started to come down to her.
Stair by stair they descended, falling lightly despite their size. They came to rest a scant pace away. It dawned on Allura that following them so intently had brought her eyes to the floor. Her pride bucked under the realization, throwing caution away from the reins. To lower herself into a kneel would lower her status in the minds of the predators surrounding her. Instinct impressed that upon her more emphatically than any etiquette book could have. Keeping her gaze in the dirt, so to speak, would do the same. Head feeling as heavy as if it had been cast from iron, she nonetheless commanded it to rise. Her eyes strained inch by inch toward their goal. Up the black and crimson robes edged in gold that draped the massive frame before her. Past the smirking lips, dimpled by peeking fangs, that Lotor had so obviously inherited. Finally, into eyes that burned as yellow and foul as brimstone mined in Hell. Reptilian pupils expanded, trying to suck Allura into their darkness.
"Father," came Lotor's voice somewhere to the side and a million miles away, "may I—"
"No," said the lips. The word rolled out of the great chest and over the assembly like the promise of distant thunder. "You may not, boy."
In the following silence she could hear the collective heartbeat of everyone in the chamber, more a low frequency vibration that pulsed through her than a sound. Or perhaps that was merely the desperate pistoning of her own, trying to flush her body with as much life as it could before death stilled it. Words materialized in her mind, but she gave them no voice. They were insubstantial, ghosts of her hopes and beliefs. Their wailing wouldn't frighten the very real monster in front of her.
"So," Zarkon spoke after the pause, "he finally managed to get his hands on you, did he?"
It took a moment to deduce that by "he" the Galran emperor meant Lotor. Allura's attention had shrunk to Zarkon and the eddies of adrenaline whirling through her body, the rest of the universe quite forgotten.
"The only thing he's managed is to further cement the enmity of Arus and myself," she answered in a voice so even she didn't know how it could belong to her.
The lines bracketing Zarkon's mouth and forking out from the edges of his gleaming eyes like lightning deepened as his smile grew. "And what exactly does the enmity of Arus earn one, Princess?"
"Why don't you ask Yurak or Prince Avok of Pollux?" The instant it escaped from her mouth Allura thanked Altarus her cousins or anyone she knew weren't present. Flaunting kills like badges of honor already—and one was family, no matter how distant. What would this place do to her over a longer period of time?
His lids drooped, banking the fires of his eyes while he considered her anew. She didn't know whether to call it an encouraging sign. She didn't know anything anymore—the rules of reality had been completely rewritten within the disastrous revolutions of a few short hours.
When Zarkon's hand rose and came toward her, Allura's body petrified. If he touched her she knew the illusion of ice and indifference the Drule women had cast over her would shatter. Blood would seep out of his touch from all the lives those hands had ripped away. Soak her white clothing with vivid crimson. She would become six-years-old again, watching her mother's golden hair catch the sunlight as her severed head tumbled gracefully from its former perch. Just like then, she would scream and scream and scream, but there wouldn't be any Coran to carry her away from the horror.
Zarkon paused, clawed tips of his fingers hovering a mere inch from her shoulder. Allura stared at the hard sinews beneath the violet skin, the huge knuckles. That hand could envelope half of her skull. Crush it like an egg, her thoughts left to drip and puddle on the floor until some slave mopped them up.
Instead, his hand withdrew. "Well. I'll just have to see, won't I? It'll be entertaining, if nothing else." The words were little more than a rumble, spoken mostly to himself.
What the old monster planned on seeing, Allura had no idea. The only thing she had eyes for was the dagger Zarkon drew from behind the cover of his crimson cloak. To someone of her size it looked more like a short sword. It bore little resemblance to the ones the Drule women had worn, the grip wrapped in hide, the crossguard simple. The light of the throne room gleamed off the honed edge of the slightly curved blade. Resignation drifted through Allura's body like a narcotic. Her limbs turned heavy, as if filled with pounds of sand. There was no way she could dodge a strike, not at that range. Had Lotor brought his sword? She hadn't noticed. Anyhow, the best he could do with it was avenge her. Either way she'd be just as dead.
Allura's grim reflections turned out to be a drill. Zarkon lifted the dagger not to her vitals but his free hand (the right one, she noted with detached interest). At last the assembled Drules showed signs of life. She heard the crowd suck in a collective breath, a staccato smattering of gasps punctuating it. Whatever their emperor meant to do would be talked about for weeks, maybe longer. She knew a political or social splash when she saw one.
The dagger drew a line across his palm that quickly filled, then overflowed with red. Alllura blinked at the sight. No bubbling black ichor that scorched and corrupted all it touched? How could the destroyer of countless lives and worlds bleed like any other person?
Zarkon extended his hand toward her, for a closer look she believed at first. When he also offered the weapon, she understood.
Take it, part of her urged. Take it and plunge it straight into his vile heart. Assuming she didn't miss, another, more practical part retorted. Or he didn't block and counterattack, like he'd probably been trained from birth to do. Hunk had shown her a few moves with a staff, but that was a far cry from spur of the moment assassination. She'd only have one chance.
Choices. The past few hours her life had been consumed by them. Her former resentments over being excluded from so many big decisions before suddenly struck her as petty and naive.
Guts writhing, Allura settled on yet another impossible decision. She reached up for the dagger. Hesitated. The skin around Zarkon's sulfurous eyes crinkled more. His lips lifted just enough to show the barest sliver of teeth. Weak little human girl, he mocked her with both. Don't have the courage to do what must be done, do you? No surprise there. Like father, like daughter.
Her hand closed around the base of the blade, clenching. The sting of her skin breaking couldn't compare with the pain life had already taught her. She glanced at Zarkon's own bloodied palm. Hidden dangers jostled for position in the forefront of her mind. Disease. Blasphemy. Enslavement. Allura recognized them for what they were: masks for her true fear.
She slapped her cut hand into the one which had taken her family's lives and thanked Altarus her heaving stomach was empty. Like the petals of a carnivorous flower, Zarkon's fingers slowly closed. His skin felt surprisingly warm, not icy or slimy as she'd expected. He revealed the rest of his teeth in a wide, crocodilian grin before jerking her arm forward. Allura found herself being swung around, doe-si-doe, and jerked yet again, that time to a halt. She stared out at the sea of hungry Drule faces, their pupils flared with the same nerve-numbing shock working through her. If not for Zarkon lifting their linked hands, pulling her up onto tiptoe, she would have collapsed.
The Galran emperor declared something in his native tongue that reverberated off the black walls of the throne room. His subjects replied with a roar that shook the floor and Allura's very bones. Mind reeling, it sought the only source of stability among the chaos: Lotor.
She was familiar with a scant few of his expressions. Half-lidded, smirking lust she had become all too acquainted with. Tight-lipped, V-browed rage too. Neither inhabited his face then. His lifted chin, faint smile, plus the soft, rounded shape of his shining eyes were as of yet an unidentified species of mood.
Pride, she classified it after several seconds of deliberation. Lotor was proud of her. Proud of how his new pet had performed before her masters for their amusement.
The surge of hatred that welled up from her bowels ossified everything in its path, saving her heart for last. It left her light-headed but strong, knees holding her weight when Zarkon finally released her. It gave her strength to walk steadily beside Lotor back down the central aisle while the assembled Drules continued to hail them. Carried her all the way through the halls and back to the room it had been spawned in.
Upon their return, the female Drules rose from the chairs on the opposite side, gazes expectant. Allura snatched away their unspoken question with her own voice.
"What just happened?" It came out deceptively calm, like the surface of a lake with a predator lurking just beneath.
She heard Lotor gather a deep breath. "Father made you a part of our family."
"What does that mean for Arus and me?"
Allura didn't have to be facing him to know he flinched. Her question had bypassed his defenses of understatement and subterfuge to strike at the heart of the matter.
"Arus will be spared," he started with, seeking to appease, "Since you're now Galran, it's part of the empire. You'll all be considered citizens."
"So in other words, he put a legal collar and leash on me. Not that it matters. Either way he owns Arus through me, and the second he gets bored or annoyed he'll crush it to watch me suffer."
His breath rode out on a huff. "It's not that simp—"
She spun around. The pressurized emotions compressing inside of her finally reached overload, released as tears that slid in stinging trails down her cheeks, and two words that hissed from her mouth like jets of steam.
"Get out."
Lotor rose to his full height. The little dents that formed between his eyebrows gave the impression he had the gall to feel hurt. "Allura, you need to—"
"Get out!" she screamed with such force she wondered how her vocal chords didn't snap. She grabbed the nearest items at hand—a pair of books on the room's desk—and flung each at him. "Get out, get out, getoutgetoutgetoutgetOUT!"
Her hands clawed for anything small enough to pick up and throw: a slender vase, a clock, a wooden case with writing utensils that made the the most satisfying crash as it burst against the wall. Lotor dodged each projectile, then crouched to lunge at her once she ran out of ammo.
Three figures in white appeared in a blink. The Drule women, forming a barrier between her and the prince. Ailonti, the elder, barked something that their animal instincts recognized as a command to be still. To her credit, both of them actually obeyed. She sniffed in a way that Nanny would have praised and fired a barrage of words Lotor's way. He returned in snarling kind. Ailonti's response should have had frost snapping in the air. She followed up by putting one hand on that dagger at her hip, her companions mimicking the gesture.
Silence reigned supreme for the longest minute of Allura's life.
At its end, Lotor reappeared, glowering at her over the wall of women. "I'm going to be back in a few hours," he said with his pouting, spoiled little boy's mouth. "And then we're going to talk." Only he could have made the prospect sound like a threat.
Allura, not able to find anything else suitable to throw, began tugging off one of her boots. With a snorted word that needed no translation to convey its disgust, the prince imperial turned on his heel, stabbed the code into the keypad, and stormed out.
Stances relaxed once more, the women glanced back at her. If they were expecting an adoring look of gratitude toward saviors, Allura cocking back her arm to throw and baring her teeth surely must have been a let down. Ailonti arched a white brow, Jeyli shrugged her small shoulders, and Brinu smiled with the same sorrow present in anything she did. More important, they followed Lotor out.
Alone. At last, blessedly alone.
No, not true. Being alone she could have handled. There, in that twisted castle of monsters masquerading as men, she was surrounded. Outnumbered. Besieged.
A prisoner awaiting execution.
Down she sank, knees giving way, no more bravado to prop her up. Down, down onto the carpet, clutching the boot—soft material smeared with red now—to her chest like a child's teddy bear. Lifting her right hand, she stared at the grinning slash on the palm. While the blood had slowed to a seep, her tears had just started to flow—her soul's version of bleeding.
Neither would be the last or worst wounds she sustained. She had no doubts on that. The only question left to ask was which would find her and put an end to the pain first: rescue or death.