He exhales, as though my question is beneath him. As though I’m beneath him for asking. “Because, despite how utterly unimpressive you seemed, Four-Three-Seven… I suspect you might be marginally less useless than the rest.”
The retort dies on my lips as he turns away. In one fluid movement, he strips off his shirt, tossing it aside.
Broad shoulders taper into a powerful back, every muscle defined, moving with the effortless grace of someone who knows exactly how dangerous his body is. The lines of him are sculpted in lethal symmetry—bronzed skin stretched over corded strength, scars crisscrossing like runes of survival. He looks like a figure carved from old stone, too perfect, too mercilessly honed.
But then I see them.
Twin ridges of scar tissue curve from his shoulder blades downward—symmetrical, raised, ugly against the beauty of the rest of him. Not the chaos of battle wounds. Not the randomness of an accident. These scars are deliberate, surgical. A punishment.
Wings.
He once had wings. What kind, I can’t tell. Storm fae, dusk fae, one of the aerial courts that ruled the skies? I picture them unfurled—great and terrible, shadowing the ground like stormclouds. Now gone, severed clean. Not taken by combat, but, if I had to bet, by decree. By the empire. Hacked from him like a warning to all who dared defy law.
It feels obscene. Wrong. To take a creature like him—born to command the skies—and pin him to the dirt.
And yet, even mutilated, he is overwhelming. My gaze drifts along the broad sweep of his back, the ridges of muscle shifting, the lean taper of his waist. My pulse hammers, traitorous, heatrising through me at the sheer maleness of him. The scars don’t diminish him. Somehow, they make him more dangerous… more compelling.
“What’s your problem?” he mutters, his back still to me. “Never seen a man before?”
His lower garments drop, and his nakedness knocks the breath from me. I’m suddenly, acutely aware of my own vulnerability. Barely dressed, weak, trapped in?—
He briskly strides forward, through a doorway I hadn't noticed before, partially concealed behind a hanging tapestry. The sound of running water hits my ears, and the door clicks shut behind him.
I release a shaky breath, staring at the place he stood.No, I haven’t. Not one like that. “At least, not one so full of himself,” I manage aloud.
Still, my heart doesn’t stop racing. His casual indifference feels deliberate, designed to provoke, to remind me of my place.
My gaze flicks around the chamber, searching for something—anything—to anchor me, but every detail only reminds me where I am: the shelves heavy with scrolls, the gleam of blades on the walls, the too-soft bed that doesn’t belong to me. The hiss of water seeps beneath the door, accompanied by the scent of soap and heated stone. Steam coils outward, curling through the room like ghostly fingers. I try to steady my breathing. Think clearly. But it’s pointless. Even if I had the strength to stagger out, I wouldn’t make it ten steps before collapsing—or being caught and dragged back to Voss.
The water ceases.
The door swings open, and Zeriel steps out as though wreathed in mist. A single towel hangs low around his hips, baring the sharp lines of his lower abdomen, water beading and tracing over the ridges of his chest. His black hair is slicked back, revealing the carved planes of his face—harsh, unyielding, beautiful in a way that makes my stomach knot.
He crosses the room without hesitation, moving to a wardrobe and pulling on a fresh tunic and leathers.
“Better?” he asks at last, not glancing my way, fastening his belt.
“Better than what?”
“Better than wondering if I was going to ravish you where you lay.” His tone is matter-of-fact, almost bored, as though voicing an obvious truth. “Your terror was practically screaming across the room.”
Heat burns up my neck. “I wasn’t?—”
“You were.” Now he turns, gaze locking on me. “So let me make something clear, Four-Three-Seven. You’re here because you might be useful. Nothing more. I have no interest in damaged goods.”
The words strike sharper than I want them to. “My name is Veyra,” I snap, forcing my voice past the tightness in my chest.
“Your name is whatever I decide it is.” He tosses the discarded towel over a chair, then draws it closer and sits, facing me directly. “You’re the champion’s ward now. The champion’s property. The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be.”
“The champion’s ‘property’ for what?” The words tear out before I can stop them.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, the lamplight catching the layered browns of his eyes. “You connected with an ashblood,” he says. “One of the most volatile, lethal breeds in the Ironhold. It should’ve torn you apart.”
The chamber feels suddenly smaller. A connection like that isn’t something to admit—it’s something they execute you for. Nothing about it should be useful.
I force my voice steady, though my pulse thrums like a trapped bird. “Yet it didn’t.”
“No.” His eyes narrow slightly. “It responded to you. Which means it saw something in you worth responding to.” He tilts his head, studying me. “That’s troubling… for you. But interesting, for me. And rare. Very rare.”
