Father's face crumples like he's been struck. "Elise..."
"I don't know," I continue, needing them to understand even though the explanation feels like tearing open old wounds. "I can't tell anymore what's me and what's his conditioning. What's genuine feeling and what's magical compulsion."
The admission tastes like failure. Like betraying both the woman I was and the one I've become.
"Then come home," Father pleads, reaching toward me before remembering where we are. "Come home and remember who you are. We'll help you figure it out, away from all this." He gestures at the crystalline walls, the impossible architecture, the casual magic that makes this place feel like a dream.
"She can't." Aratus's voice cuts through the hope like a blade through silk. "The bond won't let her."
"Then break it!" Vivienne snaps, surprising everyone with her vehemence. "You're Fae, aren't you? You have power over these things. Release her!"
Something flickers across Aratus's face—surprise, maybe, that she knows bonds can be broken. Or perhaps recognition that someone understands the true nature of what's been done to me.
"There is... a way," he says slowly, as if the words cost him something. "If she chooses it."
The silence stretches like ice forming over deep water. Dangerous. Ready to crack under the weight of what's not being said.
My heart pounds against my ribs, hope and terror warring in my chest. Freedom. The possibility of escape, of choice, of remembering who I used to be. But also loss—the severing of the bond that's become as natural as breathing, the emptiness that would follow.
"What way?" I ask, though part of me doesn't want to know the answer.
"The old laws. Written before the courts grew strong, when bonds were formed through negotiation rather than conquest." His voice is carefully neutral, but I can feel his tension through our connection. "I can release the bond within the first season—make it dormant instead of active. You could leave."
Hope flares in my chest like a struck match, immediately followed by a stab of loss so sharp it takes my breath away.The bond recoils at the very suggestion, sending waves of panic through my nervous system.
"But?" I manage to ask, knowing there must be consequences.
"But you'll never be free. Not really." His pale eyes hold mine, and I see something that might be regret in their depths. "The bond will sleep, not die. You'll carry me in your bones forever—an ache that never heals, emptiness that never fills. You'll age faster than Fae but slower than humans. Your magic will be weak and uncontrolled. You'll belong to neither world."
Each word hits like a physical blow. Not death, but something worse—eternal limbo, caught between worlds with no place to truly belong.
"That's still better than this," Father says quickly, desperately. "Better than being his slave."
The word slave makes me flinch, though I can't say it's inaccurate. What else do you call someone who exists entirely for another's pleasure, who finds happiness only in serving their master's needs?
"Is it?" Aratus turns those frozen eyes on me, and I feel the full weight of his attention like sunlight through ice. "You tell me, little omega. Is half a life better than a complete one? Is dying slowly better than living fully as what you are?"
The bond pulses between us, showing me flashes of memory without my permission. How peaceful I felt in his arms after our claiming, the rightness of submission settling into my bones like coming home. How right it seemed to kneel for him, to present myself for his pleasure, to find purpose in his satisfaction.
How desperately I'd missed him during my brief escape attempts, the emptiness gnawing at me until I could barely function.
"You're not asking me to choose freedom," I realize, the understanding hitting me like cold water. "You're asking me to choose between two different kinds of prison."
"At least one prison would be your choice," he says quietly.
"Made with incomplete information, while I'm bonded to you and can't think clearly."
"There is no clearly, Elise. Not anymore. This is who you are now."
I study his face, searching for any trace of deception. But he's being honest—brutally, completely honest in the way that only he can be. There is no going back to who I was. The preservation magic ensures I'll never forget what I've become, and the bond has changed me at levels too deep to reverse.
There's only choosing how to live with what I've become.
"Why are you offering this?" I ask, genuinely confused. "You could keep me. Force me to stay. The bond would compel me eventually, wouldn't it?"
For the first time since I've known him, Aratus looks uncertain. Vulnerable in a way that makes my chest tighten with unexpected sympathy.
"Because perfect submission isn't what I thought it would be," he admits, the words seeming to cost him something.
