"I don't just want your heart. I want your flesh, your skin and blood, your voice, your thoughts, your pulse, and most of all your fingerprints- everywhere."

Shuri collapses to the floor, knees pulled up to hide her face as she counts to ten slowly, inhaling deeply each time.

It takes her several moments to calm herself down after T'challa is gone. And when she's finally able to think clearly again she curses at herself for failing to recover swiftly enough.

The damage had been done.

She'd never been so cold to him before.

And he'd seen her like this... ill and trembling like a kitten. No way in hell would he dismiss it. She knew her brother too well to even consider that.

She would need to put so much more effort than usual to reassure him that nothing was wrong. Fat chance too, since she could barely keep herself together as it was.

Not when she was still burning.

'Why? Why do you hate me?'

'That was your first mistake. Assuming that I ever did.'

That night...he had been more intense in taking her. More relentless. He hadn't just tried to hurt her. He had tried to break her. To make her, as he so plainly admitted, scream.

And oh had she screamed. And he didn't spare her when she finally did. Instead he went even harder, hadnt left her room to breathe, his touch as hot as a furnace and an almost desperate energy to the way he took her against that wall.

He had seemed almost...angry.

Why?

Shuri sits with her back to the door, heart pounding and head aching. She clenches her thighs instinctively when she suddenly remembers the feel of him inbetween her legs. How weak he'd managed to make her feel.

Shuri shudders, banishing the memory from her mind.

She tries to remember what T'challa had been saying to her when he came into her room. She can still feel his touch on her skin, warm and soft but not enough to snap her out of her quiet hysteria. She recalls the servants and their strained pleas. She tries to remember the words...but their voices are muddled, distant in her head. Drowned out by the loud ringing in her eardrums.

'Bloody hell...' Shuri sighs inwardly, a grimace to her lips as she heaves her body off the ground and lifts a finger to one of the beads on her bracelet.

When the private systems she'd installed inside recognize her fingerprint, an electronic hum sounds throughout the room as a space in the wall beside her sinks inward, a blue screen flickering on mere seconds later.

Shuri forces her fingers to stop shaking long enough to enter the code and sighes with relief when the wall slowly slides open, revealing several shelves topped with vials. Untouched. Unchanged. And undiscovered.

Shuri reaches in, fingers skimming each bottle before stopping on one. She openes it quickly, lifting her gaze to the door as if someone will enter at any moment, and pours the blue liquid into her mouth in one quick throaty swallow.

By the time she puts the vial back and has the wall secured, her headache is already subsiding, the blood is returning to her skin, and as she wipes at her forehead, she closes her eyes in relief when there is not a drop of sweat left.

Shuri inhales deeply as she turnes away, hands lifting to her chest and neck, fingers trailing across the bruises there before she changes into something that can better hide them.

For the past few weeks her dreams had been growing more vivid. More...painful.

Of course before Erik had revealed his intentions she had, at first, seen the nightly visits as simple nightmares. But nightmares could be treated, from her experience. One session in one of her pods could send almost anyone into a dreamless slumber as her systems rerouted the subjects brain electrons from within.

When the pods failed to work for her however, that's when the concern began. Then the dreams started to get worse the more she attempted to cease them. Soon she found that she couldn't force herself to wake up of her own will.

And then the pain started. When she gained consciousness, she'd find that Eriks assaults on her would still leave bruises on her body, most in the shape of his hands, others from his teeth- none of which could be explained away. She certainly wasn't a wild sleeper. There was no chance she had put the marks there herself.

What had truly been the final nail in the coffin was that the security cameras she had installed in her room showed no one entering the premises at night, which meant whatever control Erik wielded inside of her mind was a lot more dangerous than she had originally thought.

Confronting him in her dreams were of no help. After all, she knew he could do worse. The question was why he hadn't yet. When she demanded answers, he would always flash that damned smile and punish her body more as if challenging her, knowing that her concerns lied less with herself and more with what would happen if others saw her in that state, tried to intervene, and found themselves pulled into his little game.

And she knew that wasn't an option. Not for her. She fixed problems. Never made them for anyone else. Especially not now, so soon after her brothers crowning, their opening to the outside world, and Eriks death...

Shuri clenches her teeth as she walkes down the hall from her room, too deep in thought to care when the servants openly eye her from their positions.

She'd realized quickly enough that if she couldn't prevent that demon from causing damage, the only thing to do until she could find a way of destroying him was to work fast to heal herself. There was no way she could focus on the important positions T'challa had put her in if she let that demon have his way. Especially after that last butchered mission.

Her nails sink into the bruise on her neck when a wave of irritation flashes through her at the memory. She couldn't let anything like that happen again. Not because of him...

And not because of her.

"Lady Shuri," one of the scientists that frequented her lab, a lanky young man named Abdul, greeted her as she entered the enclosure. "It's good to see you up. You're needed currently in the throne room. Do you need me to-"

"Abdul. Please prepare a pod for me. Now would be preferable. Before my brother gets here." Shuri cut in, adjusting her sweater as she swiftly walked past the young scientist and headed to her desk.

"You can manage that right?" The princess mutters, turning her head to the side in order to glance at him when a beat of silence awkwardly settles.

Abdul gaps at her for a moment, having never heard her take such a tone with him before, but quickly recovers, a serious look replacing the shock as he turns to do as she says.

"Of course Lady Shuri. Which one shall I prepare."

"Thank you. One of the healing pods. Set it to the cryo-function. I just need ten minutes."

Shuri says it with such nonchalance but the young scientist pauses in his step, a furrow to his brow.

He slowly turns back to the princess, who is either oblivious or simply ignoring his hesitation.

"May I ask what you need it for?" He asks after a moment, tone serious and full of concern.

"Indeed. I'm curious as well." A painfully familiar deep voice adds, echoing across the labratory walls and freezing Shuri to the spot. It's T'challa. Her blood runs cold when she hears his voice. Burning, waiting, and demanding an explanation.

Her hands itch to reach up and clutch at her neck to cover her bruise but she forces the urge away, after all her sweater already hid them well and doing so would only be suspicious.

Regardless the scratches on her back burn when she feels her entire body stiffen once her brothers presence is announced.

Hadn't she told him...to come in an hour? It had barely been twenty minutes. How long had he...

Shuri bites at the inside of her cheek, fustration filling her as she turns to see her brother leaning idly against the wall, arms folded and eyes calmly burning into her own.

In that moment, he looks just like Erik.