"You’re going to make this worse if you’re not careful," Loren said, his brow furrowing as he adjusted the splint with deft, precise movements.
“There wasn’t much I could do to protect it,” she said, her voice trembling. “Not when I was crawling through sewers.”
Loren’s hands stilled, guilt flickering across his expression. He released her wrist, stepping back. "I’ll have Thorne arrange for a Healer to look at it,” he said. "They’ll make sure it’s set properly."
“Thank you,” she said cautiously, the softness in his voice throwing her more than she wanted to admit.
“I owe you an apology,” Loren said, his eyes dropping away from hers. “Probably more than one. But everything I did—I was trying to keep you safe.”
“By drugging and kidnapping me?” Araya straightened, anger chasing away the strange warmth in her chest. “You had Thorne lock me in my room like some kind of prisoner.”
Loren flinched at that, turning away from her. He crossed to the window, gripping the sill with white-knuckled hands. Shadows coiled tightly around his feet, mirroring the tension in his shoulders as he stared out at the dead garden below.
“I’ll tell Thorne to give you the key,” he said without looking at her. “You’re welcome to walk around the castle. And the grounds if you want to.”
“But—” Araya stammered, caught off guard by how easily he yielded. “Thorne said it was dangerous?—”
“That’s why I’d prefer you stay inside,” Loren cut in, still staring into the dark. “But asking you to follow orders seems like a waste of breath, even when they’re in your own interest. You’ll just do what you want anyway, won’t you?”
Araya sucked in a sharp breath, his words stinging more than they should have.
“Well, thank you,Your Highness.” She folded her arms, dragging her anger around herself like a shield. “I’ll be sure to cherish my newfound freedom.”
She stepped back, putting space she suddenly desperately needed between them. “I think I’ll go back to my room now,” she said stiffly, every word bitter on her tongue. “Sorry to bother you.”
She turned, practically bolting for the door so he wouldn’t see how her hands trembled at her side. She’d barely closed it behind herself when something slammed against it, shattering with enough force to rattle the frame.
Araya stood frozen, her breath caught in her throat. For one reckless moment, she almost reached for the handle, ready to fling the door back open, demand—what? An explanation? A reason?
But she didn’t want to hear it. Not if it meant admitting how badly he’d hurt her.
So instead, she curled her fingers into fists and turned away, forcing one foot in front of the other. Each step dragged heavier than the last, like something had hooked beneath her ribs and was trying to pull her back to him. But Araya held her head high—and did not look back.
Epilogue
Araya was gone.
Jaxon’s fingers tightened on the edge of his desk, the wood groaning beneath his grip. She had vanished from the clinic—no trace, no explanation, no witnesses.Nothing. He might as well not have sent that useless guard at all.
“Are you even doing anything to find her?” Jaxon hissed.
“They’re tearing the clinic apart as we speak,” Caylin replied, not looking up as she sifted through a stack of maps. “The staff swears they saw nothing. And Serafina Hart—” she glanced up, her lips pressing into a thin line. “—is being questioned.”
Jaxon exhaled slowly through his nose, resisting the urge to slam his fist into the desk.
Serafina Hart.He should have cut the troublemaking Healer out the moment Araya accepted her place as his bond. Instead, he’d spent months carefully chipping away at their friendship—but Serafina had always lingered at the edges of their life, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.
And when Araya had begged him to bring a Healer for the fae prince, it had been Serafina she asked for.
Ithad seemed like a harmless concession to keep Araya close when she was so obviously falling apart. But now?
Now she was gone. And Serafina was the last person to see her.
“Just let me do my job,” Caylin said, smoothing out a map of the New Dominion. She picked up his amulet by its chain, the casing Araya had made catching the golden light of the aetherlamps. The bone disc from their bonding was nestled inside, the pristine ivory marked with a single, dark drop of her blood.
Caylin let it dangle from her fingers, holding it out over the map as she murmured under her breath. Power crackled as she drew on the aether in her own amplifier. Jaxon’s amulet swung in slow circles over the map, then suddenly jerked backward—away from the parchment entirely.
“What the hell does that mean?” Jaxon demanded. “Has she left the continent?”
