Phryne lost all control in that moment and flew across the room. She managed to reach Isoeld before Teonette could stop her. Screaming in fury, she raked her stepmother’s beautiful face with her nails, leaving bloody furrows down both cheeks.
She got in a few good punches, as well, and then Teonette hauled her away, stood her up, and backhanded her so hard she was knocked all the way across the room where she slammed up against a wall. She tried to rise, her head spinning, but he was on top of her again, hitting her over and over.
“Stop it!” she heard Isoeld scream at him. The words rolled and echoed behind a wall of pain and bright colors. “If you kill her, we’ll never find them! We need her alive!”
The pummeling ceased, and she heard Teonette mutter something as he moved away.
She tried to speak, to call them the names that were right on the tip of her tongue, but her mouth was full of blood. She lay where she was and listened as their footsteps receded and the storeroom door opened and closed again.
Then she was alone.
IT TOOK HER A LONG TIME to gain enough strength to sit up straight, bracing herself against the wall, her head still spinning, her body racked with pain. Everything hurt, especially her face, which Teonette had battered with both fists until she was barely conscious. She touched it experimentally and flinched. Wasn’t a good idea to do that, she told herself.
Shouldn’t look in any mirrors for a while, either.
She desperately wanted something to drink, but the water pitcher had been toppled in the struggle and its contents spilled on the floor. She thought about lapping it up from the stones, but decided she wasn’t quite ready for that. She would be soon, though. She could feel a sense of desperation creeping in, and it wasn’t only about the water.
Thoughts of her grandmother crowded her mind, and she imagined all sorts of terrible things that might have been done to the old woman. Mistral Belloruus was a tough old lady and a match for most, but sheer numbers and brute force might have been enough to overwhelm her.
What Phryne couldn’t quite understand was why Isoeld thought that making her grandmother a prisoner would be worth the effort. Word of a seizure of this sort was bound to leak out—through those old men who were the old lady’s consorts, in all likelihood—leading to rampant speculation. Mistral could hardly pose a threat to the Queen. She hadn’t been all that fond of Oparion in the first place; his killing would affect her less than most. If he hadn’t married her daughter, they probably wouldn’t have had any relationship at all. So to lock her away out of fear of what she might do, an old woman living by herself on the outskirts of the city, what sort of sense did that make?
Holding her head in her hands, bent forward so that the pain seemed to lessen somewhat, Phryne pondered the question. Did Isoeld really think anyone would believe that wild story about her grandmother encouraging her to kill her father? It was patently ridiculous. Isoeld must have known that Phryne would never agree to take the blame for her father’s death simply because of threats made to her grandmother. Doing any deliberate harm to someone of Mistral Belloruus’s stature posed great risk in a tight-knit Elven community where everyone knew the history of the royal families.
No, something else was going on here. But what?
Phryne didn’t know. She couldn’t think straight. She wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but she knew that sleeping after a beating like the one she had taken was not wise. Concussions could kill you in your sleep. She needed to stay awake and wait for things to settle down. She thought about crawling over to the door to ask for water, but she had every expectation of being refused, and she didn’t think she could bear that just now.
So instead, she stayed where she was, breathing slowly and deeply, searching for slight shifts of position that might help lessen the pain and slow the spinning.
She was still engaged in that endeavor when she heard the snick of the door lock. She raised her head high enough to watch the door open and a pair of young women enter the room carrying cloths and basins of water. They came over to where Phryne was sitting and knelt beside her. Saying nothing, working in silence, they cleaned her wounds and daubed at her bruises, using the cold water in the basin to bring down the swelling and warm water in the other to wash away dirt and blood. Phryne let them work on her, grateful for even this little bit of help. She didn’t know these Elves and appreciated that in all probability they were under strict instructions not to make any attempt to converse with her. But at least someone was making an effort to keep her in one piece.
She wondered, though, who that someone might be.
When the young women were finished, they picked up the cloths and basins and disappeared out the door. Not one word had been exchanged.