The mont the doll’s leg twisted, pain detonated through Arabella like a struck bell. Her body lurched sharply to the left; her knee slamd against the stone with a sound more brutal than she expected. A scream tore from her throat — raw, torn with pain — and she hated that sound for its honesty. Wendy’s face lit with sothing beautiful and terrible: elation, the kind that blooms on soone who has been given proof that they can hurt another.
"Painful?" Wendy cackled, throwing her head back so that the sound ricocheted off the rafters. "That’s only the beginning, sweetheart. You have no idea how much more I want you to learn."
Through the hot fog behind her eyes, Arabella hauled herself up and shoved. Her palm found Wendy’s shoulder and shoved hard; Wendy struck the glass of the high window and slid down it with a thud.
For a second Arabella thought she’d bought herself a mont. Wendy did not so much as flinch. Not on her face— the expression was smug, amused, untouched— as if whatever Arabella could throw at her were the rest irritation.
"Just that? HAH!" Wendy’s laugh pealed again, vicious and delighted. "Too easy. Too simple to dodge! For every attack you fail to truly hurt , I will break every bone in your body, you foolish girl!"
Arabella tasted copper and iron. She clenched her teeth until the world went white around the edges, every breath a serrated thing. Her head scrambled to think— to find a gap, a counter, anything— but her vision kept slipping back to the sa hard fact: her ankle had given way.
No matter how hard she endured the pain, a dull, thunderous shock ran from calf to hip; the bone’s alignnt had shifted grotesquely.
She tried to stand; the leg refused the command. Muscles contracted and folded into spasms; the joint seethed with a pain that was not simply sharp but traitorous. Sweats veiled her forehead as she endured the pain that reached to her head, causing for her eyes to turn bloodshot from all the sting she felt.
She pressed her palms to the floor and felt the damp grit of the floorboard, the faint stick of blood on her fingers where the earlier cut had opened. The room tilted. In the dizziness of pain she felt, she noted what she had— her power, the fact that she couldn’t co anywhere close to Wendy’s side with her broken leg, what had been stolen from her, mobility, and the fact that now Wendy was simply toying with her.
She could have snapped that doll’s neck, killing her instantly. Yet the way she didn’t explained that truthfully what Wendy wanted to do was to hunt her, to see her suffering.
The simple, blessed ability to outrun a witch with a doll, elated Wendy like never before. She had seen Circe before and she does bore resemblance to Arabella. Though unlike Arabella, Circe was more sharpened, while Bella was just too pure and innocent.
And that was her weakness.
Because unlike Circe’s determined power, Arabella was just a dull blade, a blade that wouldn’t hurt the enemy but rather her own ally.
Wendy’s satisfied hum filled the room like a girl who had just won over the attention of the man she loves.
Breathe, Arabella told herself. She could manage this, she told herself.. The pain was just another lesson; she could learn to endure it.
Her jaw worked; her mind, despite the pain, was still working for the best solution. She refuses to give up to the pain or fear. Refuse to back down when this could be her death.
If Wendy had the dolls, Wendy had to have left traces. There is no way sothing so powerful wouldn’t co with a cost.
But what is it? The red ribbon around one doll’s throat glinted in the candlelight like a warning. Even though she could not stand, she could still see, still look for the thing that bound this sorcery to flesh.
For now the ankle lay ruined and the bone scread its refusal. She would not lie and let Wendy finish the lesson she offered. Pain might steal her feet, but it could not steal her will. Arabella flexed her fingers until the pain in her hands was less loud than the plan forming behind her clenched teeth.
"Light," Arabella whispered.
The word left her lips like a prayer, and in the sa heartbeat, every fla in the chamber shuddered out. The torches lining the walls, the candelabra dripping wax on the long table, even the faint glow of the hearth— snuffed as though the air itself had swallowed them whole.
Darkness slamd down. Heavy and suffocating.
Wendy blinked, her grin faltering as the black pressed in, so complete that not even her own hands before her face could be seen. The gray storm outside smothered what little daylight might have helped, leaving her sight stolen.
Then ca her laugh. Harsh, confident, cutting through the dark like a blade. "So foolish! Do you think this is enough?!"
Arabella did not answer. Her silence was sharper than any taunt.
Wendy smirked into the void, unbothered. This was a greenhorn’s trick, a child’s ga. Snuff out light, steal sight, then pounce— or perhaps fumble to wrest the doll from her grip. Predictable. So predictable. She only had to wait for her eyes to adjust, for the dark to soften into shades. Then this little charade would end, and Arabella’s turn would be over.
"Pathetic," Wendy muttered under her breath, fingers tightening around the doll’s porcelain body.
Her voice rose, mocking and echoing through the hall. "Maybe it would’ve been more fun to fight the vampire instead of you!" she spat. "At least he wouldn’t waste my ti with petty parlor tricks. He would’ve co at like he ant it."
Wendy’s teeth glinted in the black as she sneered. "How pitiful that Sir Morpheus insisted he would handle the beast. Not that the vampire stands a chance, of course. Morpheus never loses. Never. He always knows the way to win."
The confidence in her voice filled the darkness, but it was hollow— because sowhere in that silence, where Arabella should have answered, there was only breath. Low, steady, waiting.
And in a space where sight was useless, silence itself beca a weapon.
Would you like to continue this with Arabella striking in the darkness— sothing unexpected that Wendy truly can’t anticipate?
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