The door was open.
Tish didn't know why and she didn't have time to ask why. She was barefeet, wearing Rudra's clothes that hung off her shoulders, her hair was a little more tidier than a bird's nest. But she didn't care. She just didn't.
Her feet slapped the floor as she ran like her life depended on it- because it probably did. Behind her, she felt a guttaral roar of a beast out for blood. She didn't look back to check. Stopping meant death.
The corridors were unfamiliar, strangely empty- as if the servants had found out about the Dragon Prince's rage and had wisely retreated in hidden room to stay out of his path. The entire palace was now the hunting ground. And Tish was the deer Rudra was coming for.
She found herself in a corridor where she had never been before- lit by gold caged lamps. She had no idea where she was going. She only knew behind her was something far worse that whatever was infront of her.
The corridor forked suddenly- a seam in the rock which abruptly became two. She took a left turn without so much of a thought - there was no time for thinking. It was a choice which was made when the wrong choice is choosing too slow.
The corridor became darker, narrower- with less and less lamps. Even the ceiling dipped low making Tish duck her head even though she didn't really need to.
Then she noticed a change in the air- from still, lifeless to a real moving thing. It hit her face and moved her hair. It wasn't the dry, temperature -controlled air of the palace she had become habituated with. It smelled like grass and rain. It smelled like outside.
Tish followed the air, like a bird followed a way that leads to the exit of a cage. And then the corridor opened to the sky.
The wall on her left side stopped being a wall and opened into a doorway cut leading to nothing and everything. After days of being trapped into rock, gemssilk
Tish was staring at open air, dark gray sky and an endless drop.
It was then Tish realised that Parthan Palace was not any ordinary palace. It was one situated where there was an entire mountain. But the palace wasn't situation on the mountain, it was carved out of it. The basalt walls here wasn't exactly a decorative choice. It was the very substance of the mountain. When Tish had first arrived in the palace, she had arrived by carriage closed from all sides- not letting her realise the sheer monstrous architecture it was. When she had been in the garden or looking at the hunting ground from her window- she had just assumed the palace went quite high in above in the sky. She had never imagined that palace itself was a mountain.
The fact that, Rudra's room, being situated in the innermost part of the palace-mountain, therefore having no windows- made a lot more sense now.
For a second, Tish thought it was the dead end. She squinted her eyes against the wind and she looked down. She couldn't see the bottom.
"TISH YOU SELFISH UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BITCH!"
suddenly she heard the venomous roar of the Dragon Prince, the corridor behind her vibrated with the raw anger of a dragon who was out for blood. The opening infront of her didn't look like a deadend anymore.
It looked like the only path to freedom.
Teresa Williams was not a Royal Taster. She was not Dragon Prince's maid. She was the Saintess- blessed by goddess Rāva herself.
The fall was bad to say the least. Yes it would hurt. It would hurt as much or maybe even more that how much Saya was hurting when she had died.
But she could heal herself. She was afraid of the pain the fall would cause but she was more afraid of what would happen if she stayed behind.
So she took a few steps back, screamed her lungs out:
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !"
And ran towards the open sky.
And then the gravity caught her. The fall took the rest of her scream. Her head tilted down as the ground rushed in at an alarming speed- the green nothing below started taking texture of treesz roads and buildings.
Then something heavy and big slammed into her. Smell of fire, ash and blood. Bronze skin and dark hair. The impact wasn't gentle- the force of him meeting her sent both of them lurching sideways. The world tilted and spinned.They were two things with different momentum colliding with eachother before they resolved into one falling thing.
He had chased her even her fall. The thought was so sickening, her stomach dropped a second time. She tried to distance herself and he just pulled her closer into his chest. Both of them fighting for their own separate agendas until Rudra turned them mid-air. She felt the violence of the motion, his body twisting so that he was below her and she was above.
So that whatever was about to happen, would happen to him first.
He didn't do it out of love or care- she knew. He did it because he wasn't done with using her.
"You are a hostage, remember? You're not allowed to die! Not when I can still use you."
He had said those words once. And he was making good of those words.
In the final seconds she saw the canopy rushing up and then Rudra cupped the back of her head, pulling her even closer until all she could see is his collarbone.
He turned his shoulders into the canopy first. It took him before it took her. The branches shattered against his back and arms as his body became a rigid cage around her.
Then the ground arrived like a single punctuation, a total stop of the violence of last few seconds. She felt it travel through his body before it reached her. It was a long sickening slam which should have killed something but it didn't.
It was like hearing two wet stones knocking eachother loudly- the sound of bones breaking- she realised- his bone breaking.
And then the impact, ofcourse, found her through his body. Her arm flung out and air left her lungs.
And for few seconds she blacked out from sheer pain.