everyone staring at me?

Because you’re a slave, and you’ve just done things no slave

should do and now you’re giving me, your master, orders. Damon’s

telepathic voice was grim.

It’s not an order. It’s a—look, any gentleman would help a lady in

distress, right? Well, there are four of us over here and one is more

distressed than you want to look at. No, three are. I think I’m going to

need some stitches, and Bonnie is about to collapse. Elena was striking

methodically at weak points, and knew that Damon knew she was doing

it. But he ordered one of the sets of litter bearers to come and pick up the

slave woman and the other to take his girls.

Elena stuck with the woman and ended up in a litter with the

curtains all closed around it. The smell of blood was a copper taste in her

mouth, making her want to cry. Even she didn’t want to look closely at

the slave woman’s injuries, but blood was running onto the litter. She

found herself taking off her blouse and camisole and putting back only

the blouse so that she could use the camisole to hold to a great diagonal

slash across the woman’s chest. Every time the woman raised dark

brown, frightened eyes to her, Elena tried to smile at her encouragingly.

They were down deep somewhere in the trenches of communication,