She laughs, the sound wicked and loaded. “Are you scared, Elyssara? So much for being the all-powerful Lightborne from the prophecy,” she mocks, closing the gap between them.
Elyssara stills, mind reeling, trying to figure out exactly where she is and who the fuck these women really are.
The woman with the night sky skin and curly hair steps toward Marin, at ease and comfortable in her presence. Herarm drags lazily down Marin’s back. “Stop, love. Your mother is not watching. Be reasonable,” she requests, her voice silky and unaffected by the presence of the Princess of Caeloria.
Marin’s words flood back in.
That would be my wife.
Elyssara’s eyes dart between the two women.
The healer in rust.
The kingdom’s princess still in the dress from her mother’s masked ball.
A woman from the Inside. A woman from the Outside.
She doesn’t know what it means, exactly, but the question comes out of its own accord. “How?”
Marin huffs a laugh, and for the first time, Elyssara sees the real mask drop. Not the lacquered fox from the ball, but the one she slips on and off depending on where she is.
Her face softens—scowl dissolving, eyes no longer narrowed and suspicious.
“I fell in love with a woman from the Outside, Elyssara,” she admits, and she reaches for the healer’s hand, a gentility that contrasts her brutality.
They lock eyes, a thousand words passing between them in the silence. Fondness and choice and gravity. Elyssara hates that the sight feels real. Hates that tenderness survives even inside monsters.
Elyssara’s heart aches, and she can think of only one thing:Kael. Her Starbound. Her lover. Her mind whirrs and whips with the thought of him—chained, captured, taken from her. The tether between them feels wrong now. Distant. Muted. Like reaching for a hand through water and finding only endless cold.
She bares her teeth. “So what does this mean? Why are you helping me?” she grits out, wiping the tears that have already formed in her eyes.
“Take a seat, Dravara. We have a lot to discuss,” Marin says, pulling out a chair at the table that sits on such a lean it may topple at any moment.
Elyssara eyes them both warily, never turning her back.
“I won’t hurt you—you’re valuable to me. I need you alive,” Marin says, voice practical.
Elyssara scoffs. “Forgive me, but killing my Starbound’s family, capturing him, andthatfucking empty promise doesn’t really fill me with trust,” she snaps.
Marin’s wife places day-old bread on the table, a small stick of butter on the side. “I’m Saana, a healer for the Outside. I took an oath to heal, not harm. I will not hurt you.”
Elyssara barks a humorless laugh, and her side feels like it splits in two. “Yeah, well the only healer I know likes to drink upon waking and cut people with a sickle blade, so I believe trust will have to be earned with more than pretty words and a cheap oath.”
Saana can’t suppress the smile that pulls at her mouth. “Marin said you were clever,” she giggles. “Please, at least eat.”
Elyssara doesn’t move. There’s no fucking way she trusts Marin not to poison the entire loaf.
“Well… explain,” Elyssara demands. “What use am I to you?”
Marin’s eyes dart to her wife’s, and Saana offers a small but very real nod.Encouragement.
Marin’s eyes find Elyssara’s, intent and unflinching. For a moment, no one moves. Or speaks. The room fills with a kind of pause that signals only one thing: gravity.
Marin sucks in a sharp breath, and her face turns serious.
“My mother needs to die,” Marin announces, not an ounce of shame in her voice. Just cold, honest indifference.
Saana does not react to the statement. Like she’s heard it enough times for the horror to become familiar.
