He snapped his fingers.
A silent servant stepped forward and removed the prisoner’s hood. Gasps rippled through the court.
The man beneath was older—grizzled, grey-bearded, and slumped against his chains. His face was a brutal map of bruises, his eye swollen shut, dried blood crusted at his temple. But he was still conscious. Still breathing. His one good eye opened—and met Elira’s.
There was no recognition in it. Just fear. The kind born of too much suffering.
Elira’s breath hitched.
The shadows at her feet coiled tighter, flickering at the edges of her boots like restless wolves.
“I want you to hurt him,” Ashton said. “Don’t kill him. Just show me the edge of what you can do. I want toseeit. I want to feel thebiteof your gift.”
“She won’t,” I said tightly. “She’s not a torturer.”
He turned his gaze on me. “Then she is useless.”
I stepped forward before I realized what I was doing, and guards moved instantly to intercept me. Elira raised a hand—stopping themandme.
She was trembling.
But she held her chin high.
“I won’t hurt him,” she said, her voice low but steady. “Not for you. Not for anyone.”
Ashton tilted his head. “Pity,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Then let’s see how long your resolve lasts.”
He raised his hand.
A guard stepped forward, sword drawn and held high over the prisoner’s neck. The old man moaned, a hoarse sound of fear that echoed off the stone walls.
Elira flinched, her body moving on instinct before her mind could catch up. She stepped forward.
“Stop!” she shouted, voice raw.
Ashton gave a long, exaggerated sigh. “You are beginning toboreme, Elira. Either you show me your shadows, or the man dies. I have no use for a weapon I cannot wield.”
Something shifted in her face—some slow, simmering snap that I had seen only once before, in the chaos of the keep when she first defended herself. Her lips peeled back in a sneer as she turned her gaze on the king, venom lacing every syllable.
“You’re so desperate to see what I can do?” she growled.
Before anyone could react, she flung her hand forward, a wave of inky darkness lashing toward the throne like a beast loosed from its cage.
The shadows struck the air in front of Ashton—and shattered against a ward. A golden glyph burst to life in a wide circle around the throne, crackling with ancient magic. The tendrils of shadow recoiled as if burned, the impact shaking the walls with a low hum.
Vasquez didn’t flinch. Ashton merely laughed, slow and low, his teeth glinting like a predator's.
“There she is,” he purred. “Nowwe’re getting somewhere.”
Elira’s chest was heaving, her fists clenched, but the shadows didn’t retreat—they roared around her like a tempest, dancing across the floor, climbing the walls, pooling under the feet of the onlookers. Panic rippled through the sycophants who had come for a show, not a battle. They backed away as if her power might leap up and drag them under.
“Do you think that frightens me?” Ashton sneered, rising from the throne. “Iownyou now. You think your tantrums matter? You are bound to this court by right of power. You’re mine, Elira.”
“I belong to no one,” she spat, her voice shaking with fury—and something deeper. Something old.
The guard raised his sword higher, the steel catching the torchlight with a deadly gleam. Elira’s eyes flicked from the weapon to the bound prisoner—and something in her broke.
“No!” she screamed.
