Typhoon & Tempest

Chapter Thirteen

Lily didn't sleep last night. Her mind kept churning over and over the memory of her shoulder being carved up like meat and the screams of her friends in the chaos. All she could associate the night with was pain - the day spent touring Tyrill with Niall and Jack was forgotten, the music in the jukebox silenced, and the kindness shown to her yesterday morning by Cay and her bandaging was a blur.

Yuric's claw had been removed but the cost to her soul was horrendous.

Lily trembled, curled up against the headboard. She couldn't sleep on either side - her left was throbbing with pain and her right arm was still paralysed. Lily's only way to sleep after crying for hours was to lean against the headboard and even that was a struggle. Her raw shoulder slipped while she slept and the cold wood jolted her awake with a hiss between her teeth.

Staring at her feet now, Lily couldn't stop thinking. She was grateful Yuric's claw was gone and the rogues had no way to track her...but she hadn't given them permission to take it out. Claire just sliced her up, carved her body like it meant nothing.

Lily wasn't vain; she didn't really think much about the way she looked. Her life was spent in the shadows of her amazing sisters but she never once felt inferior - they constantly praised her. She hadn't thought much about what people thought of her until her abilities began to fully surface. It was only then she started to notice what she looked like.

What would people see now when they saw her scars? The white lines of lightning on her right arm? The shackles of red around her wrists and ankles?

How would they react to her back charred and burned? How could anyone look at her scars and fall in love with them?

Lily looked at her hands, her left hand curling in on itself. Her right arm was still bound in the pristine sling and the slightest twitches in the fingertips were the only proof her arm's paralysis was temporary. Dried blood coated her arm like a second skin. She snapped her head sharply away, unable to look anymore.

Lily swung her legs over the bed and stood up, her body shaking at the effort. Her jeans were still twisted around her and her cut singlet crinkled with dried blood. Lily's lip wobbled, feeling disgusted with herself. She was a lamb after slaughter.

She grabbed a towel and some fresh clothes and left the empty bedroom. Without looking around much, the house was silent from what she could hear anyway, she went to the bathroom she'd been shown yesterday before Niall's tour of Tyrill. Lily quickly ran in, her shadowed gaze looking over the abundance of rainbow toothbrushes next to the sink and the half-used toothpaste lying at the bottom of the basin.

As Lily shut the door behind her, breathing a sigh of relief knowing no one saw her yet, her hand hovered over the handle in search for the lock. Her gaze wondered to the top of the door frame to see the bolt loose, ready to be pushed into place. Lily couldn't lift her arms that high - she'd have to leave it unlocked.

Lily stripped down and hopped into the shower, keeping her gaze low to avoid looking at her charred back in the mirror. She couldn't look at it yet - ever. She didn't know when she'd completely heal - would she be injured for the rest of her life? Carrying wounds people couldn't see and scars with a story impossible to tell?

She'd read a lot of text books in her life to know burns had to have hardened with new flesh beneath before they could be soaked. Lily remembered enough about last night to feel Jack's tendrils in her muscles, Haidan cauterising the top of her skin before Niall's air cooled and hardened the burn. She should be fine. Painless? Probably not, but she was getting in that shower.

Lily couldn't stand seeing blood on her for a minute longer.

The water rolled over her shivering body. She hissed, gasps of pain clogging her throat as the droplets kissed her fresh burns. Lily did her best washing her hair - it wasn't going to be perfect - and scrub the dried blood off her torso. She knew she missed places, she couldn't wash everything with one arm but it would do.