November's nails cut into her palms.
"And now, here we are. Rhaezon is going to lose his second mate." Varek stood. Straightened his coat. "Drakon-kind bond forever, and so few get to suffer so much in a single lifetime. There is a sort of poetic beauty in it, don't you think?"
He moved to the door. "I expect Prince Dáinn's comm shortly. Once he gives me what I require, your suffering will end quickly. I am not, despite what you might believe, a man who enjoys prolonging these things."
Caeden stepped away from the wall. "Killing her wasn't part of the plan. You said we were keeping her for leverage. To make sure the prince keeps his word."
"Plans change, Caeden."
"You said?—"
"I said what I needed to say. You did your part admirably. And when Dáinn's kept his end of our bargain, we'll be rid of her."
"She's a person. She's not?—"
"She is ahuman." Lord Varek's patience evaporated. "A worthless, breakable, mortal creature that your halfblooded adversary dragged into his bed because he was too damaged to find a proper mate. Does it disturb you that she resembles Saevra? It should. He replaced her with a wingless beast, and you cannot muster the stomach to put it down." A beat. "You are such a disappointment, Caeden. I will find someone else up to the task."
The door slamming behind Caeden as he left the room shook dust from the ceiling. Footsteps retreated down the hall, and then nothing.
Varek watched the door for a long moment after his son had gone. When he turned back to November, his face had arranged itself again into something almost grandfatherly. "Forgive him. Our children never understand the burden we carry for them." He adjusted his cuff. "One spends a lifetime building something worth inheriting, and they arrive at adulthood imagining themselves the moral authority on how it was built."
November kept her hands still in her lap.
"Do not trouble yourself with what you've heard, Lady Vaethari." His smile returned, warm as a hearth. "I am not a cruel man. Whatever else you have been told about me today, believe this — your suffering will end quickly. You have my word on it." The door closed behind him, and the sound of the bolt locking in place echoed in the room.
November sat in the quiet. Varek's voice echoed:Your suffering will end quickly.
She looked at the locked door. She looked at the narrow window. She looked at her bare feet and her cut hands andRhaezon's shirt and the scale necklace burning warm against her skin.
She thought about Rhaezon.
Not the fear — not the image of him on the ground, not the blood, not the half-formed shift collapsing. She thought about him at the breakfast table, bringing her a plate before she asked. She thought about him in the stable, picking up a brush without a word. She thought about his hands trembling as they hovered near her face in the tavern doorway:Did he hurt you?She thought about the plateau, the ancient tree, the way he said her name like it was something he was still learning to deserve.
She knew him. She knew him the way she knew horses — by what he did, not only what he said. By the thousand small choices that built a man more clearly than any declaration. He was alive. She knew it the way she knew her own pulse. He was alive and he was coming for her and she just had to stay breathing until he got here.
She would bet everything on that.
Her hand closed around the scale. Warmth flooded her palm. She straightened her spine. She stopped being afraid. She started looking at the door bolt, the window, the distance between the bed and the wall. She started looking for a way out.
The bolt slid back.
Caeden stepped through. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it. He looked at her for a long time.
"I'm not a good man," he said. "But I'm not a monster either. I'm not my father." Something in his jaw worked. "Not yet."
He pulled the door open and held it. "I'll get you out of here. We need to hurry."
She was off the bed before he finished speaking. Her bare feet hit cold stone. Caeden moved into the corridor and she followed, staying close.
The estate was enormous. Pale stone corridors branched and intersected with disorienting uniformity. Their footsteps echoed. Caeden moved fast, taking turns without pausing, a man navigating the house he grew up in on muscle memory.
A roar came from somewhere behind them. Deep. Reverberant. The fury of a Drakon discovering that his cage was empty. The sound traveled through the stone floor and into November's bare feet.
"He knows you're missing." Caeden grabbed her wrist and pulled her left at a junction. "He won't fully shift in here — the corridors are too narrow, the ceilings too low. But he's still dangerous. Run."
She ran. The stone bit at her feet. Glass cuts on her hands opened against the wall as she steadied herself around a corner. They doubled back once — Caeden's arm across her chest, pressing her flat against the wall as a guard's shadow passed the end of the corridor. She held her breath. The guard moved on. Caeden pulled her forward again.
The exit was ahead — a heavy wooden door at the end of a long corridor, grey light seeping through the seams. Dawn. She could see it.
