"Hah... hah..."
Julian was wheezing, a thin, whistling sound that he tried desperately to swallow, terrified of alerting the guards stationed just outside the door. He couldn't let them hear. He couldn't let them report to Aurelian what they had 'noticed'.
His hand clutched at his chest even tighter, fingers digging into the sore, red skin he had scrubbed raw the night before.
It felt as though his heart were being squeezed by an invisible, iron fist. Tears, hot and uncontrollable, rolled down his cheeks and dripped onto the sheets.
Lucien, he screamed in the quiet of his mind. Help me. I can't breathe. Please, just help me.
But his voice was a strangled, non-existent rasp to an ear that was miles away.
He pressed his forehead into the edge of the bed, his body shaking with the effort to remain silent despite his suffocation and the agony that was clawing at him.
