The monster is a boy (chapter 2)

Her father called it a monster, but the monster is a boy who wants to help her. She thinks he's stupid. (2,200~ words)

Despite Father's proclamation that this boy was both a monster and one that would eat her, neither of those things proved to be true. She was backed into a corner between the iron bars and the stone wall, yet the boy hadn't approached her. Lucky for her; because a lot of places hurt right now and she doesn’t need or want another problem to add to the list.
She was busy checking her wounds when her hip cries out in pain suddenly. Through the fabric of her red dress, she collects a dampness on her fingers. Blood. It only makes sense, considering she’s been thrown onto the stone floor twice now. It stings and aches. She covers her mouth as the pain gets to the point where her mind scrambles itself in distress. Her vision sways, and she resigns herself to the dizzy spell by sliding her upper body down the smooth but rough stone wall. It hurts. She's lucky that this is all that Father could do before abandoning her inside of this cage. Other visits to the dungeon have been worse than this.
Her once slow and controlled breaths descend into panting as the pain intensifies. Her heart beats like a drum in her ears, a timer, counting down before it stops. A fever rises in her body and a sheen of sweat collects on her forehead and cheeks. It's hard to breathe, she wants to cry. It hurts.
Normally, she's alone when she has to go through the aftermath of visiting Father, but now she has a spectator. Her attention is split, partly spent on thinking of him, which only exhausts her more quickly as her condition worsens. She wants to curl up�" until she's so infinitesimal that she disappears�" but her hip cries out in all of its wretched misery when she shuffles further into the stone wall and she’s forced to stop. Thinking through the pain is nearly impossible. She wants to writhe and scream.
Her will weakens as well, all because she can't cry or groan with someone near her. She nearly chokes on the frustration several times, but holds back. It's hard to tell if it's pride, distrust, or shame, but she can’t break in front of anyone. She can't.
In this state, she's going to have to stay awake all day and night until Father gets here and she can get to her room.
Walking is going to be a hell in and of itself.
The stone might give her an infection. Her dress might. The air might.
…
She's daydreaming about her bed when she hears a small voice.
"Uh... hello?" It sounds awkward and uncomfortable, and exactly like the voice that had been yelling and arguing with her father before she turned the bend earlier. She swallows, and her throat aches painfully when she does. She hopes that he doesn't yell at her.
The boy waits for a moment, but she gets lost in her thoughts and doesn't say anything back. Her voice is more than likely dead anyway.
"... Are you okay?"
"..."
No answer.
"I saw what happened to you. It looked like it hurt a lot." It did, she wants to reply. "Are you bleeding? Are you not able to move?" Yes, and yes. "... Can I come over?" No. Absolutely not. No way. Never.
He can’t read her mind, unfortunately.
She hears him stand up after a few seconds and panics a little. What is he going to do? Does he want to push on her wounds until they hurt enough for her to cry? What if he touches her hip? She might really cry, even if he doesn't press hard.
She tries to speak up but her voice comes out weak and rough, and the coughing fit she goes into proves nothing she didn't know already. The boy approaches faster when she starts coughing, and her own spiraling speeds up too as she imagines all the ways he could hurt her.
She pushes with her hands against the stone floor, pressing her body into the stone wall. It doesn't do anything but make her hip cry out in pain, and it doesn't get her any further away from the boy but she does it anyway. It doesn’t make sense but she doesn’t care. She inhales sharply when her hip angles into the wall, sending a jolt of pain throughout her entire body. It paralyzes her right up to the moment the boy kneels in front of her.
He seems to hesitate, as he’s done frequently up to this point. "I'm not going to hurt you."
She glares at him with sharp amber eyes but he doesn't flinch. He simply rests on his knees in front of her, caging her between the wall and himself. Like this, she can't go anywhere. Not that she could anyway; It’s the principle of it. Like being trapped in a cage in a room. Even if she’s already locked in the cage, it’s still distressing to watch the other door get shut and locked all the same.
"I swear it. I promise. I will not hurt you. I want to help you, and I have the ability to do so.” Her glare doesn't weaken, but his earnest eyes only grow stronger. “So... Please?"
He is truly beyond her level of understanding, she thinks dazedly. There is nothing she can do to stop him right now. Why bother to ask her anything? He could do whatever he wanted. She's a wounded lamb and he's a wolf. This should be the part where she gets eaten alive.
She stares at him with lightning in her gaze. It was as if she believed that if she simply looked at him hard enough, she would understand his intention.
Was it a joke? A cruel prank? If not, why does he want to help her? As if it isn't obvious enough that she wields no power in this manor. She can't help him escape. There is nothing she can do for him.
His eyes plead innocence.
They dig into her consciousness and beg her to let him help.
The barrier breaks down at last after enough eye contact and she feels the exact moment his emotions start to come through. They pass over the short distance from his eyes and into hers. When confronted with such pure emotions, she actually falters. She even recoils slightly, in a panic, so she averts her eyes from his gaze and pulls her arms closer to herself. The boy notices this change and leans closer.
"Will you... let me help you?"
She isn't looking into his clear eyes, but she knows that they're big and round, like expensive gems, polished and shiny in beautiful, geometric ways. She swallows the lump in her throat anxiously, and it hurts going all the way down. His eyes are really pretty. She’s always liked gems. She likes eye colors even more. His… look like diamonds.
Chancing another glance at them, she makes eye contact and becomes trapped in them. The emotions that she can feel from him aren't stifling like her father's or the servants, and it releases her from her pain, temporary as it is.
The emotions are hard to describe. She knows what he’s feeling, and it's familiar to her, but from a dusty and distant memory. Strong, powerful, pure feelings. His own are even more intense than the sensations she can recall. It's uncomfortable, and weird, and out of place, and… sort of, kind of�" nice.
She has to dig her fingernails into her palms to come back. Closing her eyes and looking away, she nods. There's no point in fighting back. But she can't keep feeling… that. It's not good for her heart. It has the power to take a twisted, immutable control over herself. Frightening, endless control over her. She doesn’t want to feel what he does. It’s useless.
Even as she convinces herself of this, she trembles from anxiety.
If she doesn't connect to his mind through his eyes, there's no relief from the pain, either.
Her eyes shut tightly in anticipation. For several long seconds, nothing happens. Nothing. She slowly opens her eyes. The boy- despite asking to help her so adamantly- hadn't moved from his spot. Even though she implied he could do as he wished.
Could he be… stupid?
He looks at her and smiles gently.
"Sorry. Just that you look more scared now than when you were earlier. With… him.” He pauses. “I don't know how to make you feel less afraid, but I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."
Those words drive a pole through her chest. She doesn't know why. The emotions behind the words he carefully chooses is enough to shake her heart and mind. Like a gentle earthquake, her makeshift tower begins to slowly bend and crumble.
The boy brings up his small finger, pointing it at her. She looks at it, confused. He laughs a little.
"It's how you seal a promise. By locking pinkies." The cutesy name of his small finger throws her off but she roughly supports her weight with one arm and raises her other hand, 'pinky' finger extended. She hovers it around his for a second before he takes charge, curling his finger around it and touching his thumb to hers. He even gives it a little shake. "See? It's a promise. I can't break it, or I'll have to cut off my finger."
He lets go and sits back. Distracted, she stares at her pinky in bewilderment. Rather than be shocked at the brutal consequence he'll pay should he break his promise- she replays the sensation of his finger touching hers, again and again. It was... weird.
She thinks it over.
Maybe it wasn't a bad weird.
Maybe it's… a good weird.
"I'm going to examine you now." She jolts out of her thoughts and swivels her head around to look at him but he's already bringing his hands to her hip. Already feeling the pain she pinches her eyes closed and flinches.
Except nothing happens.
No, something is happening. A delicate heat is roaming over her body. It feels like the radiating heat of a hot pan is hovering over certain areas. Opening her eyes and letting herself take a peek, she finds that the sensation aligns with the boy's hands- which hover over her skin and clothes without ever touching. The heat doesn't hurt even her hip, which she can only suspect to be broken or fractured.
‘I'm not going to hurt you.’
He really didn't.
She stares at him.
He finishes doing… whatever he's doing, for the lower half of her body, and scooches closer to the upper half, where she has to look up at his face. Due to lying down, even if she has propped herself up on her elbows, the boy towers over her. Her heart beats anxiously.
"I saw you hit your head when he first threw you. I'll need to put my hands near your head, so... Can I have your permission?" He fidgets his hands on his lap, looking at her without changing his expression. She swallows, glancing at his hands, then back to his face. She nods, while feeling the urge to climb into a hole and never come out. Awful.
He smiles, shaking her heart and mind again, while he reaches out his hand towards her face. Slowly, like approaching a wounded animal. Somehow, she feels insulted, but she can't help but be grateful for his thoughtfulness when his image overlaps with her father's. The image of him reaching out from above her, head tilted oddly, to grab her neck and practically wring it out just to throw her in the cage. She swallows. Her throat aches.
Thanks to his pace she can push her emotions aside by the point that he reaches around to ‘feel’ the side of her skull. The pounding of her heart nearly overwhelms her and she finds herself looking into the boy's eyes. The previous aversion to him dissipates like the shifting color of a sunset. By the time she noticed the change, it was already gone.
Gray blue, she notes to be the color of his eyes. Clear as a diamond, reflecting the dim light in fascinating ways, so that they are bright, even in the dark. She swears she can see through them and to the back of his iris. Perhaps his eyes will become her favorite of the kind she’s seen. Maybe this is because her mother’s favorite crystal was a diamond. Though she doesn't have any left, she remembers when her mother gifted a set of earrings to her for her seventh birthday.
By looking into his eyes her pain disappears, and she loses herself in his gentle and sweet emotions. If she could taste them, they'd be like candy. A soft candy that doesn't hurt to bite on, but doesn't dissolve easily in your mouth either. Neither sticky nor sharp, without a bitter aftertaste or a rough texture.
Without realizing, she finds herself drifting to sleep, eyes drooping slowly and head lolling slightly. The heat on the side of her scalp changed to a cool one ages ago, but she couldn't notice because she was trapped in the boy's eyes.
Her head gently falls into his palm. For years after this night, she will never forget the night she dreamt of gray-blue diamonds, sweet and gentle candy, and a kind warmth that she hadn't been able to find anywhere else.

Author's Note

I struggled a lot with describing her power without outright stating what it is. I think it sounds clunky. I also don't know what to think about the dialogue, and I've redone it like a dozen times before publishing it here.