NALEDI’S POV
“Two-degree burns, Ezra! What the fuck were you doing?!” Draken’s pissed voice woke me up.
The first thing I felt was pain. Raw, intense and nibbling on every part of my senses. What the actual fuck?
“The lady attacked her. I couldn’t make a move without causing further damage to the lady.” Ezra replied, sounding the opposite of Draken.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he had a laidback energy to his tone, like he didn’t care about how angry Draken was and stated his case.
“I don’t care if she fucking wrapped around her like a Koala. Your task was simple, ensure that Attai is protected and doing exactly what she was asked to do. But what did you do? You stood there and let her call stupid shots, messed up the business and even let her get hurt!”
Okay, now I was reconsidering opening my eyes. The last thing I needed was to be facing the consequences of my actions. Sorry, not sorry.
“I apologize.” He sounded like he couldn’t care less. And guess what? Draken took it. He fucking ate it like it was the best meal he’s had.
I really needed to take some lessons on how not to give a fuck about Draven Yakuza when he could fucking take my life on a moody whim.
“I don’t care. What I want is to get that fucking elementalist in the strongest pit cell and have no one attend to her until she is drained out of whatever energy she might have, and made ready to pay for her crimes.”
My eyes were opened now, and Ezra met them. “Do we expect you down the pit?” He asked Draken who was pacing around the room.
“As soon as my woman is awake, I will be down.” He said and for a second, I contemplated feigning death just so he would never go down there.
Korah would be in big trouble and I couldn’t even help her out of the darned mess. Everything was just a big hot mess with my body aching like I’d been rammed over by a speeding blazing truck.
“I’ll be seeing you down in a minute then.” He said, giving me a pointed look, and dragging Draken’s attention to me with it.
“Attai!” I didn’t miss the relief on Drakens’ face when he saw I was in fact awake. “What the hell is wrong with you?!” He roared the next second, confusing me as hell.
What was it with his fluctuating emotions? Was he happy or angry to see me awake? Ezra walked out of the door, leaving me to face the man in my condition.
Brutal.
“I’m sorry?” I managed to squeak, unsure of the crime I had committed and desperate to get out of his shit list for the time being. I was physically unable to bear being in it.
“How do you feel?” He suddenly asked, poking at my bandaged rib which seemed to hurt like fire. “Does it hurt?”
I winced, “I just got burned by a fucking elemental witch. How do you think I feel?” I hissed, unable to hide the bite in my tone.
Why the fuck was I still feeling this sort of pain? Didn’t he have healers at his disposal? Or even fucking doctors? I needed something and I needed it fast.
It felt like as time proceeded, the pain increased.
If Draken’s face was anything to go by, he didn’t appreciate my tone. I couldn’t bring myself to care about him so I guess we were stuck here.
“Your sidekick did a number on you while you were trying to protect her.” I froze at his sentence. “What a shame.”
“I didn’t try to protect her.” I managed to say, biting back pain and knowing that he saw through my lies. “I was trying to hold her down, prevent her from causing any more harm.”
“If your minions had acted a lot more faster, maybe we wouldn’t be talking about this.” I finished with a gasp, “Can I get some painkillers or a fucking doctor?”
Draken tutted. “Don’t think you can deceive me, Love. I watched the fucking footage, there was no way she could take out Ezra. You wanted to save her. And you got hurt.”
He was right, and boy did hearing him say that aloud bring warmth to my chest. I loved disappointing his expectations. Call it a fetish if you may. I’d never regret what I did, neither was I ever going to admit it. At least not to Draken.
I didn’t say a word, instead, I made a show of just how much pain I felt. It felt like torture. I reached for my clothes, which I now realized had been changed and refused to dwell on the thought of who the hell did the honours.
I expected to see a gash on my stomach but there was nothing. No burn, no slash, not even a scratch was on my skin. Everything was healed perfectly well and there was nothing that alluded to the incident that I survived.
Nothing other than the pain that refused to leave me.
Draken must have spotted the confusion on my face at the weirdness of it all because he immediately says, “You won’t find anything because Ezra took care of it.”
I was struggling to understand the meaning of his words. If Ezra took care of it, then why was I still feeling the pain? Why the hell was I going crazy with pain from a healed, or should I say, handled wound?
“Seeing you intentionally walked into harm’s way, it would be unwise of me to let you go without as little as a reminder of your choices.” He stated, looking like he had been waiting to say that this entire time.
“What do you mean?” I asked, unable to wrap my head around what he was trying to say.
“I have asked Ezra to heal the wound. Make your skin flawless, and rid you of every sign of the attack. But at the same time, preserve the pain that you feel for the next twenty-four hours.” He looked at his watch with glee, “Judging from the fact you have been asleep a total of nine hours, you are left with a meagre fifteen hours to bear the consequences of your actions.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “I tried to stop her from attacking..” My tone was full of pain, “If you are going to let me feel the pain then you should have not allowed him to heal me.”
“Wrong. You belong to me and there is not a part of you I want to be in a haphazard state.” An evil glint sparked in his eyes. “Except, of course, it was of my own making.”
So he was fine with hurting me himself but when others did it, it was a problem. What brand of crazy is he?
“I don’t understand what you stand to gain by doing this.” I breathed, it seemed like the more I spoke, the more my pains increased.
“You don’t need to. All you need to do is be a good girl and learn from your mistakes. You have a whole 15 hours to ponder on what you have done and amend where necessary. In the meantime, I would need to have a word with your sidekick. Maybe I’ll let you have your fun with her when you are all healed up.”