My eyes widened. “Everything?”
“We don’t know which detail might be helpful,” Uriel explained neutrally. “This is for your sake too.”
They were right, but there were just some things that didn’t need to be said …
I would try to confront this objectively. Time to prove I could be mature about this, too.
Squaring my shoulders, I exhaled. “Okay. Like I mentioned before, I woke up on the floor. Wrists and ankles tied up, gag in my mouth.”
“You were gagged, too?” Elias growled. There were curses all around.
It was sort of funny watching them get all worked up, despite the seriousness of the situation. “Hey. How am I supposed to tell the story if you’re going to react to every detail?”
“We’ll try to control ourselves,” Winston promised, but the way he gripped the armrests of his chair had me thinking otherwise.
Ignoring that, I continued. “It was late afternoon then. Since I was on the floor, my ear was pressed against it, and I figured I was in some kind of brothel based on the, err, sounds.”
“A fucking brothel?” Surprisingly, it was Vincent who reacted this time, standing up from his seat, while there were curses thrown around again. “What were they planning to do with you?”
Samuel looked at him. “What are you —” He paused, and then a dark look passed over his face. “Motherfuckers.”
“I’m going to kill them,” Theodore announced from the shadows.
“Not if I kill them first,” Claude beamed, and as if to prove his point, his Oracle-blessed sword was already in his hand.
“No killing just yet,” I frowned. “And what’s that about reacting to every detail, again?”
“I said we’lltry, princess. Please continue.” Winston’s face held a calm, serene look, and I would’ve believed it if not for the broken pieces of his armrests.Huh,so that was possible by pure, raw strength.
“I don’t know if they plan to do anything with me in that context,” I informed them before they get any worse ideas. “Anyway. When I heard them coming in, I pretended to be unconscious. That’s when I figured there were three of them — their leader and two lackeys. I also learned they were following some lord’s orders to kidnap me, and they shouldn't touch me.”
There was a collective release of relieved breaths.Oh boy.
“Then they figured, technically,lookingisn’t banned, so they undressed me —”
Elias growled, or mayberoared,which had my heart rate climbing up to the highest peaks, remembering he harbored an actual fucking dragon inside of him. He must have seen the look of fear on my face as he sobered up quickly, hanging his head as he tried to calm himself down.
Holding a hand to my chest to still my heart, I realized everybody else stayed quiet, so I continued. “It’s not as bad as you think. They just lifted my skirt up, so my panties showed, and the leader guy pulled down the neckline of my dress, so my breasts popped out.” I did an imitation of the actions without revealing anything.
“Bea …” It was Derrick who called me, holding my hand. “Don’t downplay it. What happened was horrible.”
“Listen.” I made sure everyone could see or hear me. “Nudity is not a big deal to me. It was bad for sure, but notasbad. What was really bad was when the leader guy made the two othersleave the room so he could fondle me, clearly breaking their orders.”
“Fuck!” Amos suddenly yelled, kicking his chair in anger. Winston stood up from his half-broken armchair and walked to a window, Elias cried again, my knights shook behind me, Derrick held tighter, Samuel broke his wineglass, Vincent covered his face with both hands, Uriel sat unmoving and expressionless, Claude stabbed his sword at the broken chair. I couldn’t even see where Theodore disappeared into the shadows.
I formed a fist with my free hand. “I knocked him out, so don’t worry. Broke his nose and all.”
“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Elias wailed, standing up from his chair to kneel at my feet. “I am so sorry, Ela. Forgive me. Please.”
I wiped away his tears. “It’s nobody’s fault except those kidnappers’ and the Lord who gave them orders. We’ll make them pay, I promise.”
Glancing around, I pushed on with the retelling. “The other two bastards came in to see what happened to their boss, but I knocked them out, too. I got a knife from one of them to cut myself loose.”
To further keep their minds occupied, I pulled out the knife from my pocket, surprising them as I placed it on a nearby table. “Is it possible to trace the knife’s owner?” I directed the question at Uriel since he seemed the most knowledgeable among us with magic.
“If magic was already embedded in it, like an enchantment, it might be possible,” he answered, unusually stiff, like he didn’t want to move at all.
“You had that dangerous weapon in your skirt thisentiretime,” Samuel pointed out, grimacing. “It’s official — we all absolutely suck as Bea’s keepers.”
