“That’s not your call, Starling.” Jaxon raised his eyebrows like she’d said something amusing. “You’re too important to risk now.”
He sighed, gliding his fingers down her throat. “If the shadows answer to your blood, you matter just as much as Loren now. Maybe more.”
Araya shivered, a chill skittering down her spine as his handtightened around her throat. He studied her for a moment, like he was counting each terrified beat of her heart under his hand.
“You can’t take risks anymore,” he continued, his words wrapping around her like silk. “It’s for your own good, of course. You’re too valuable to be left to your own devices. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “Do you know how many fae would beg for the protection you have?” His fingers traced over her skin, threateningly gentle. “Anyone else would be rotting in a cell right next to the prince. But not you.”
A cell next to Loren. No sunlight. No escape. Just the cold bite of iron against her skin.
They wouldn’t just take her magic and her blood—they’d carve her into pieces. And when she finally died, they’d take her bones too, cataloguing every part before using her up completely.
The threat curdled in her stomach, thick and suffocating. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick, and Araya swayed where she sat as the world shifted around her. She wasn’t in Jaxon’s room anymore—she was at Kaldrath, screaming while they held her down and carved into her flesh with iron.
She’d rather die.
Whatever Jaxon saw on her face, it must have pleased him. He smiled down at her. “I don’t want that for you,” he said. “But if you fight me again…if you do anything that makes this harder than it has to be…it may be out of my hands.”
He wouldn’t have to lift a finger. If he just said the word, the Arcanum would leap at the chance to do the rest. Araya forced herself to nod, clenching her fingers around the fabric of the dress he’d chosen for her.
“Good,” Jaxon said with a satisfied smile. “Let’s get moving, then.”
Araya barely curbed the instinct to flinch when he reached for her, pulling her to her feet. She had to be perfect for him. Even if histouch burned against her skin and every instinct screamed at her to run.
Because there was nowhere far enough that Jaxon wouldn’t find her, that he wouldn’t drag her back. There was no escape for her—not from this.
So she let him lead her to the door, leaning against the wall as he shoved her feet into her boots and laced them before sweeping her cloak over her shoulders, fastening it at her throat. Finally, he lifted the hood, covering the last of her bruises. Hiding what he’d done.
“You’ll be good for me, won’t you?” Jaxon asked, tucking a loose strand of hair into her hood.
“Yes, Jaxon,” Araya whispered.
“That’s my Starling.” His fingers trailed down her spine, a gentle, possessive touch, before settling at the small of her back.
“You’ll see,” he said, his voice a silken promise as he led them out the door. “It will all work out in the end.”
A grim-faced guardrode in the carriage with her, watching from the opposite bench with surly intensity. But Araya couldn’t bring herself to care. She leaned against the window, her mind drifting as the wheels rumbled over the cobblestones.
He grabbed her by the arm before the carriage had even fully stopped at the back of Serafina’s clinic, ignoring her weak protest. When she tried to tell him patients had to enter through the front, he gave her a vicious shake, jarring her already aching joints and cutting off whatever words she’d meant to say.
“She needs a private room,” he said, wedging his boot in the door like he expected the confused apprentice who’d answered his pounding to slam it in his face.
“We don’t have private?—”
“For her you do,” he said, shoving past the woman. He draggedAraya with him, his grip on her arm the only thing keeping her upright.
They ended up in the cramped storeroom where Serafina kept supplies. The space was cluttered—boxes stacked high, jars and bundles crowding the shelves—but there was a spare cot in the corner. The apprentice shoved the boxes off it in a hurry, clearing just enough space for Araya to collapse onto the thin mattress with a pained groan.
“What happened—” the Healer tried to ask, but the guard shook his head brusquely.
“Master Shaw saidonlySerafina Hart is to treat her,” he said, scowling at the woman.
The Healer hesitated, but then her eyes darted to Araya—bruised, trembling, barely upright—and whatever protest she might have made died before it reached her lips. With a final glance, she turned and hurried down the hall.
Araya barely noticed. The room swayed, nausea churning beneath her ribs. She dropped her head back against the thin mattress, her breath coming in slow, uneven pulls. Was Serafina even here? Or would they have to send for her?—
The door slammed open.
