Chapter Thirteen

HOW CUTE IS DAMON???!!!

Chapter Thirteen

Three days pass when I am immersed in taking care of Damon. Upon my insistent requests, a variety of gauze and medical instruments were brought into the room and it took a while to nurse my love back to health.

He is starting to eat solids on the fourth day; I feel extremely proud of him. Damon is doing well for someone who had been beaten to within an inch of his life. It is then, on that fourth day, that he brings something to my attention.

"Princess." He says. It is a nickname he has taken to calling me in the time he has been bed-ridden. I look at him and stop feeding him the crumpets he is currently having for breakfast.

It is the first thing he has been able to keep down.

"Yes, Damon?" I smile softly at him.

"It is your wedding in three days." Damon looks away, out of the padlocked window.

I swallow a lump in my throat and smooth my black 'mourning' dress, "I know. I was trying to keep your attention away from it."

"Are you going to do it? Or are you going to fight?" Damon asks without a hint of judgement in his tone.

I tuck a stray strand of hair behind my hair, "I don't know. Should I?"

"No." Damon replies.

I look at him, startled into silence, "Why... why... Why not?"

"Because he will kill you. I know he will." Damon looks at me and his eyes are dark and narrowed, shrouded by his lashes, "You have no choice, just like you told me. He will not let you escape this wedding. No one will help us. There is nothing left for us to do."

"You want me to marry him? That monster who put you in such a condition? You think I will marry him without fighting? That is not possible, not in this lifetime and not in the next." I retort angrily.

"I will not have you putting yourself in danger, Ellie." He looks at me sternly, "I have contacts in Stonegate. They can help us, but for now, you have to go along with this. You have to marry him, okay?"

"But I can't leave you..." I trail off, "He will... He will try to..."

"If he tries to touch you, remember, you have the power of refusal. You can walk straight of his room." Damon cups my cheek, "You don't have to give up completely. There is still hope for us."

"Is there?" I look at him, my eyes brimming with hot and salty tears, "How many times do you think we can escape unscathed? How many times will it take for him to finally snap and kill you? What if we get caught?"

"We won't!" Damon snaps at me, as if he is dismayed I would even think like that.

"We're in too deep, Damon. He is more dangerous than we ever thought. We need more than contacts. We need a miracle to escape him. Emmanuel is so intent on ravaging my life, he won't let me go so easily."

Damon is speechless for a moment as he processes my words, "So, what are you trying to say, Ellie? You don't trust me? You don't think I can get you out of this?"

I push my hair back with a hand and sigh, "No! I trust you, Damon, I trust you more than myself. However, we must be practical."

Damon sighs, "You're right. I know it, but I cannot make myself agree with it. I have no idea how to make you safe anymore. I feel like such a failure."

"Damon." I say, "We can't sit here and beat ourselves up about this. We have to be active, we have to launch a plan, we have to do something."

"I will have to find a way to communicate to the people in Stonegate. They owe me a couple of favours; the least they can do is help us."

"How are you going to do that?" I ask.

Damon waves a hand at me and I fall quiet. He bites his lip anxiously and sits up a little straighter, "I know what I have to do. You just trust me; I will do what needs to be done for us."

There is a knock at the door. Emmanuel walks in and his eyes scan over Damon. His mouth curls in disgust and he turns to me, "Eloise, you are needed."

I get up and join Emmanuel at the doorway. On a whim, I turn back to Damon, "I shall be back in a second."

"I believe you, Princess." Damon grins.

Making a disgusted sound, Emmanuel drags me out of the room and down the corridor into his own quarters.

I snatch my wrist back from him, rubbing the sore skin where he pinched too hard, "What do you want?"

"Why is he calling you Princess?! And what do you think you're doing, acting like you're his servant? You're my fiancée, soon to be my wife. Do you think I'm going to let you serve someone who should be serving you?"

I raise an eyebrow, "He should be serving me? I love him, Emmanuel. He will never serve me."

"Love? Love?! You don't know how to love, you only know how to tarnish your family's reputation."

"Emmanuel, say and do whatever you wish. I cannot while away time with your petty behaviour. I suggest you let me leave; I have things to do."

"What did you say?!" Emmanuel pushes me up against the wall, "What did you just say to me? Did you order me? Did you just dare to order me?!"

I stare right back at him, glaring, "I most certainly did. Unless you want Damon to beat you into oblivion, let... me... go."

Something flashes in Emmanuel's eyes and then the hardness returns. He shoves me to the ground roughly and hovers over me, his hand - pressureless - around my throat, "Damon? Damon is going to beat me into oblivion? Your lover can't even eat crumpets with his own hands! How is he going to beat me?!"

I thrust my knee up, catching him in the most sensitive part known to man. Emmanuel grunts, winded and I take the chance to push him away. I get up to my feet and run out of his quarters, down the corridors with my dress hitched to my knees.

I can hear Emmanuel running behind me, limping slightly due to the injury I caused to him. I run faster, turning a sharp corner and nearly throwing myself into a wall. I push myself away from it, using the momentum to sprint even faster. I have never run this fast, not ever in my whole life.

Then, like a glass of ice-cold water in a scorching desert, I see my bedroom door. I feel as though it is calling to me, beckoning me inside so it can comfort me with it's four walls while it pushes Emmanuel away from it's boundaries.

I crash through the door, panting and heaving for breath. Damon jumps to his feet unsteadily, running over to me, cupping my face in his hands and then running his hands over my shoulders and down my arms, almost patting me over for any signs of injuries, "Are you okay? What happened? Did he hurt you? Are you wounded anywhere?"

Then, almost as if he just noticed it, "What happened to your eye?" Since he was in such a bad condition himself these past few days, I don't blame him for not having seen it before.

"Nothing, nothing, I'll tell you later." I say, turning back.

Emmanuel enters the corridor and he snarls when he sees me. He begins charging towards me. I calmly walk towards the door, one hand resting on it. When he is but a few strides away from the door, I slam it shut and slide the bolt home.

I hear him grunt as he thuds into the door and I turn to Damon, giggling. He pulls me closer to him, wrapping his arms around me. We both jump when we hear Emmanuel attempting to break the door down.

With a final grunt, the door gives in to his torture and swings open. I stare at Emmanuel.

Never have I seen a human being with such hatred in their eyes.

It makes my spine go cold and I can almost feel icicles of fear rolling down my back, desperately racing in an attempt to escape his empty glare.

Damon steps forward, pushing me behind him, trying to shield me from Emmanuel.

Emmanuel just stands in the doorway and then looks at me, uttering a string of curses, "You miscreant! You besmirched spinster! How dare you raise your hands upon me? I am your future husband. How dare you oppose me?!"

"Hey!" Damon snaps, "You call her those disparaging words one more time and I will murder you! What proof is there that she is a miscreant? That she is a spinster? That she is besmirched or tainted in any form possible?"

Emmanuel just curls his lip in disgust.

Damon continues, "There is none and you know it."

"Why are you meddling in me and my future wife's business? You stay out of this! You have no say in any of it." Emmanuel jabs a finger in Damon's direction.

"Actually, I do have a say in this. Your future wife loves me."

"And that is what makes her tainted. That is the blemish on her heart and on her character. That, and she cannot conform to society like a woman should."

"Conform to society? Or conform to you, Emmanuel?" I ask, finally gathering the courage to look in his eyes.

Emmanuel's eyes darken, "You have quite a few lessons to learn. The first being never to speak unless you're spoken to."

Having said what he had to say, Emmanuel turns and barges out of the room. I turn to Damon and roll my eyes dramatically, "What a drama queen."

However, Damon is not in the mood to joke around with me, "You hit him?!"

"Yes! He had me pinned to the ground, I didn't know what to do."

"I appreciate that, of course I do, but do you know how dangerous it is?"

I sigh and run a hand through my hair. He doesn't understand, and maybe he never will. I cannot tolerate that monster's hands on me and I will fight him, no matter what the supposed 'plan' is.

Damon sighs himself and cups my face in both of his hands, "Princess... Ellie, I love you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I need you to be careful and I need you to be wise, patient and tolerant. I know you hate him - trust me, I do - but we have to put up with him for a little while longer. Just a little while so we can be together."

His earnest eyes bore deep into my soul, picking the tangle of hate and fury apart and moulding it, reshaping it into a temple of love and adoration.

"Can you do that for me, Ellie?" Damon asks, biting his lower lip.

I nod, "Yes. I can do that."

Damon exhales in profound relief and leans his forehead against mine, closing his eyes and chanting, "Thank you. Thank you, Ellie."

"Damon, just... I can't live without you. Please don't make me."

Damon's eyes blaze with confidence and conviction, "I will not fail you, Eloise. I... will not... fail you."

I stare into his eyes, trying to fight the urge to let tears slip from my eyes. "I know." I whisper, leaning into him, closing my eyes.

Damon runs his lips over my forehead and taps my cheek as though trying to wake me up. I open my eyes to see Damon biting his lip anxiously. He isn't looking at me; his gaze is glued at something over my head.

I turn to see what has captured his attention. The bolted window.

"Your mother did that?"

"Yes." I nod. "She wanted to make sure I didn't escape again."

"Again?" Damon asks.

I turn to him. "Remember when I met you in the stables twice? I climbed out of the window the first time and I locked the guards in my restroom the second."

Damon's eyes widen. "You climbed out the window?!"

I nod.

He picks me up and twirls me around before setting me down. "You've turned into a little gladiator! I can't... It must have been so frightening for you."

"Just a little." I smile, feeling pride swell in me at his reaction. Damon smiles back and uses the back of his hand to stroke my still-swollen cheek.

"You've been taking care of me for so long." He says, leading me over to the bed and tucking me in. "Now let me do the honours."

"But you're still not well." I protest.

"I'm fine." Damon shrugs and sits beside me, clutching my hand with one of his hands and caressing my hair with the other. "You should get some rest, Ellie."

"Damon, I can't." I sit up. "We don't have enough time. We have three days. We need to be aware of what we're going to do and we need to be together as much as we can."

"I am aware of what we're going to do and we're together right now." Damon says.

"I don't know what we're going to do." I remind him.

"You don't need to know, Ellie." Damon sighs. "I need to keep you safe, so the less you know, the better."

"Damon, I don't... I don't understand any of this. What plan can you possibly have that will ensure that we escape without me knowing any element of it until the actual moment?"

"You will find out very soon, I promise." Damon whispers softly. "I need you to rest now. Give me some time to think."

I sigh, too tired to fight. "Okay."

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