The great door shakes in its frame, as though slammed by the hand of the enormous silence that fills the room afterward. Only then does she remember she is wounded, reeled back to reality by the flat, pittering sound of her own blood dripping upon the floor.
She raises her hands and stares at them, shining crimson streaming from multiple slashes across their surfaces, a pattern to drive any fortune-teller to madness. The idle thought breaks through her numb rage for an instant: imagine the reaction of one of those itinerant peddlers of cheap magic, if asked to read that map of horror etched on her palm.
A long lifeline. She almost laughs, but it's a bitter thing that fills her mouth with iron and salt, or perhaps she's just bitten her tongue too hard again.
Her gaze wanders over the metal shards littering the floor, reflecting bits of the room like a shattered mirror. She sees her own face, upside-down, tiny and white against a field of scarlet drapery, and turns away from it.
The slashes on her hands throb and sting, welcome reminders that she still can feel something. It is a long time before she speaks the word…one with which she once could have healed such superficial wounds from the inside-out. Now, depleted, it merely closes what was open.
But better that, than bleed where anyone can see.