Her hair.
What happened to her hair?
Those long, dark curls—gone.
She’d hacked them off.
You gave me to him.
I saw Allison – her face filled with tears, the blade pricking her throat. Their faces shifted. Elira… Allison.
Elira.
Order before—
“Thorne.”
Vael’s voice slipped through the door just before he did, stepping into the room’s dim light with that snake’s stillness.
He studied me. “How is my beloved?”
I straightened, jaw clenched. “She is quiet, sir.”
Vael tilted his head, lips curling. “Quiet?”
“Quieter than before, at least.”
He stepped closer—slow, deliberate. “That doesn’t sound like her.”
I stayed silent. I didn’t trust my voice to hold.
“She’s proving... difficult, isn’t she?” he mused. “I may require your particular skills before long. I will not be denied my bride again.”
I forced my voice steady. “What of Ashton, sir?”
He blinked, then laughed. “What of him?”
“He’ll come for her now. He knows you broke the deal.”
“I certainly hope so,” Vael sneered. “I’dloveto take that obscene tub of lard down a peg.”
Vael wandered to the table, idly lifting a shard of broken mirror from where I’d shattered it. He turned it in his fingers, watching the fractured light play across the surface.
“You know,” he said lightly, “I always admired your discipline. The others fall to their passions so easily—rage, loyalty, lust. But not you.” He glanced up.
“You break slower.”
My spine locked rigid.
“She still matters to you, doesn’t she?” Vael murmured, circling me like a vulture. “I still remember that night you fought me over her. You were so—alive. Full of fire. Loyalty. All that misplaced conviction.”
He stopped behind me. “And now look at you. It’s almost pitiful.”
Flashes of Varrowmere burned behind my eyes—shadows, screams, the moment I’d nearly lost her.
“You almost killed her that night,” I said quietly.
Vael scoffed. “Oh, please. I never would’ve actually done it. She was too valuable. Too… exquisite.”
