CHAPTER 17
ELISE
DAYS 43-44
Father arriveswith a new wife and a briefcase full of money he thinks can buy me back.
I smell them before I see them through the crystal windows of the great hall—human scent sharp and overwhelming after weeks breathing nothing but the clean, cold air of the Fae realm. Too warm, too loud, too desperately alive. The contrast hits me like a physical blow, making me realize how thoroughly my senses have adapted to this world of ice and ancient magic.
When they enter the great hall, escorted by silent palace guards whose breath mists in the perpetual cold, Vivienne actually gasps at the sight of me. Her hand flies to her mouth, eyes going wide with shock and something that might be horror.
I'm sitting in the chair beside Aratus's throne—not kneeling at his feet as I sometimes do, but positioned as an equal. Or at least, as much of an equal as someone bonded can ever be. The afternoon light streaming through crystalline walls catches the silver threads in my hair, making them gleam like spun starlight.
"Elise?" Father's voice cracks on my name, the single word carrying twenty years of love and a month of grief. "Dear God, what did he do to you?"
The question cuts deeper than I expect. I touch my silver hair self-consciously, suddenly seeing myself through their eyes. How the ice-blue streaks that have spread through my irises must look to purely human sight. How my skin shimmers with barely contained frost magic, patterns of light and shadow that shift with my heartbeat.
How fundamentally changed I am from the daughter they remember.
"Nothing I didn't agree to," I say, then immediately want to take the words back. Because that's not true, is it? I agreed under duress, begged for things I never would have wanted in my right mind, surrendered to urges that came from biology and magic rather than choice.
But even as I think it, the bond whispers that those urges were real. That the pleasure was genuine. That some part of me wanted exactly what he gave me, even if I couldn't admit it at the time.
Aratus enters behind them through the massive doors, and my body immediately responds in ways I can't control. My spine straightens automatically, shoulders squaring as I present myself properly. Every muscle relaxes into the comfortable submission that months of training have made second nature.
Even now, even knowing what he's done to me, my entire being orients toward him like a flower seeking sun. The bond pulls at me, making his presence feel like coming home after a long, difficult journey.
"Edgar." His voice could freeze flames, each syllable dropping the temperature in the hall by several degrees. Ice crystals form in the air around him as he moves, responding tohis emotional state with the kind of casual magic that still takes my breath away. "You have something to say."
Father looks smaller than I remember, diminished by more than just the towering architecture of the hall. His merchant's confidence has been stripped away, leaving behind a desperate man clinging to impossible hope.
"I want my daughter back." His hands shake as he opens the briefcase, revealing more money than most people see in a lifetime. Neat stacks of bills, bearer bonds, even what looks like jewelry and gold certificates. "Name your price. Anything. Just let her go."
The sight of all that wealth—everything he must have liquidated to gather this ransom—makes my chest tight with an emotion I can't name. How many assets did he sell? How many favors did he call in? How much of his life's work sits in that case, offered up for my freedom?
"Money?" Aratus laughs, the sound low and cold and utterly without humor. "You think this was ever about money?"
"Then what?" Vivienne demands, finding courage in her desperation. She's younger than I expected, probably not much older than me, with the kind of nervous energy that comes from being in over your head. "What do you want? What could possibly be worth more than—" She gestures helplessly at the fortune spread before us.
Aratus looks at me, something unreadable in his ancient eyes. Not possessiveness exactly, but something deeper. More complex. Like he's seeing me and seeing through me at the same time.
"Ask her," he says quietly. "Ask your daughter what I want from her."
All eyes turn to me, and I feel the weight of their expectations like a physical force. Father's gaze filled with desperate hope that this is all some terrible misunderstanding. Vivienne'swith barely concealed disgust at what she sees as my willing participation. And Aratus... his are patient as winter itself, waiting for me to speak the truth we both know.
"Everything," I whisper, the word echoing in the vast space. "He wants everything. My body, my will, my soul. He wants me to choose him over myself, every day, until I forget there ever was a self to choose."
Just like his brother said yesterday about Lyria—how Aratus always thinks he knows best, even when his certainty destroys what he's trying to protect.
The words hang in the air like ice crystals, beautiful and terrible and absolutely true.
"And have you?" Father asks, his voice breaking on the question. "Forgotten?"
I want to lie. Want to tell him that I'm still the same defiant daughter who left his house, just playing a role until I can escape. But the preservation magic won't let me forget a single moment of my transformation, and the bond carries my emotions to Aratus like an open book.
The truth is complicated. Painful. Impossible to explain to someone who hasn't lived it.
"The preservation magic whispers the answer before I can stop it," I say slowly, feeling the words dragged from some deep place I'd rather keep hidden. "That I was happiest when I stopped fighting. That I felt most complete when I belonged to him entirely."
