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Aurelion wasn’t trying to kill her. He was teaching Lucan a lesson. Every moment Lucan would watch her suffer would become another link in the chain around his throat.

So Elarian stopped fighting.

She let her body sag against the shadows. Her breathing became shallow and her eyes widened; and when Aurelion looked at her again, she gave him exactly what he wanted.

Fear.

“Please,” she whimpered.

Lucan’s head snapped toward her.

“Ah.”

Elarian lowered her gaze.

“Please just kill me!” Please take the bait.

The Bloodlord’s expression softened with satisfaction. “Kill you? That is much too easy.”

She forced herself to tremble. Forced tears into her eyes and her voice to quake as she spoke.

“Please…my lord.”

Behind Aurelion, Lucan stared at her. She could see the horror in his eyes as he thought she had crumbled from within. Good—let him. And if Melistra still smiled upon Elarian, then Aurelion would believe it, too.

“You understand faster than most.”

Elarian nodded rapidly.

“You understand what your defiance has earned you?”

“Yes.” She gulped, a cool sweat breaking out across her brow as his breath misted over her face.

Searching for Lucan’s gaze one last time, Elarian let herself go limp. Slowly, she came to be the frightened moon elf Aurelion expected to find beneath the Ashen Blade.

She hated every second of it.

But she had spent centuries learning how to lie, and Aurelion was not the first monster she had pretended to fear.

“Good girl.”

The words made her stomach turn. Binding her tightly in their grip, shadows looped around her ankles and wrists, holding her in place as Aurelion’s attention shifted to Lucan opposite the bed.

“Do you see?”

Lucan said nothing.

“You have always been so desperate to believe that someone could love you.” Aurelion rose. “And yet, here she is.” His hand closed around Elarian's jaw. “Begging.”

Something in Lucan’s face shattered.

Elarian almost sobbed at the sight; but beneath the horror, beneath the humiliation, beneath the terror—there was something else.

Understanding.

He knew she was acting. Barely enough to understand her plan, but he knew. Enough for recognition to flicker in those crimson eyes and loosen the words from his tongue.

“You wouldn’t know love if it walked straight into your court dressed in crimson and gold,” Lucan sneered.