I go rigid, but I don’t look away. I won’t.
“Perhaps I should let you feel it,” he murmurs. “Lock you away. Starve you. Silence your bond until your body begs for mine.”
He straightens and snaps his fingers. Two guards materialize like shadows called to heel.
“Take her to her chambers,” he says coolly. “Seal the door. No contact. No food. No pleasure.” His voice hardens, amused. “She can scream all she wants. I’ll come for her on our wedding night.”
The guards close in. My heart hammers, but I don’t cry. I don’t beg. They drag me from the hall, heels scraping against obsidian.
Because I know one thing now: Cassiel is still with me. They all are.
And if I can feel him—then they can still find me. And when they do, I’ll burn this place to the ground.
The door slams. The lock clicks—final, merciless.
I stand in the dark silence, frozen, waiting. Listening. Hoping. But there’s nothing. No warmth. No voice. Just the necklace thrumming like a second heartbeat, stitching me to him like a leash.
I stumble to the bed and fold onto its edge, legs curling beneath me. My hands tremble in my lap. I stare at them like they belong to someone else. Some thing else.
I try to breathe. I try not to. It all feels the same. Useless. Empty.
“Cassiel,” I whisper into the void. “Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“Deimos? Bastion?”
Nothing.
Tears sting, searing hot. I choke them down. My throat burns, my chest splintered wide open and bleeding air.
I know they’re trying. I know. But knowing doesn’t stop the loneliness seeping into me like rot.
I curl onto my side, knees tight to chest, clutching the memory of Cassiel’s voice like a talisman.
You shouldn’t have left us.
The words tear me apart. But beneath them, his vow lingers—We won’t lose you. Not again.
I cling to both: the blade and the balm.
Because I’m locked in a tower, chained by silence, starved by a man who thinks he owns me. He believes he’ll mold me into something obedient and desperate.
He thinks I’ll beg. Crawl. Break.
He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know the fire I carry.
And yet—gods help me—I am starving. Not just for touch. For pleasure. But for them. Their voices. Their warmth. The bonds that once cradled me even in sleep.
My skin feels too tight, my body overheated. I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling—stained with shadows, carved with symbols I don’t understand.
Still… a thread pulses faintly in my chest. Thin. Faint. Flickering. But there. Cassiel’s bond. A ghost-light in the dark.
I reach for it carefully, desperately, like cupping a fragile flame.
“I miss you,” I whisper, knowing he can’t hear me now. “Please come soon. I’m trying to be strong. Trying to be everything you believed I could be.”
A flicker answers. So brief I might have imagined it.
