Shadera snarled wordlessly, bucking against him, trying to throw him off. But Greyson was bigger than her, stronger, and he had the advantage of leverage. He ground her down into the marble, his hips fitting perfectly against hers.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, locking her in place with his body weight as her eyes connected with his. “To fight until one of us is dead? If it is, I’ll be sure to make it slow—tosavorit.”
“Is that what gets you off, little heir?” she breathed, taunting him as he pushed his chest closer to hers. “Do you like it rough? Like inflicting pain?”
He fucking loved it rough.
Greyson shook the traitorous thought from his head as a charged silence grew, both refusing to be the first to break.
“Mr. Serel?”
Chapman’s voice from the doorway shattered the moment like a bullet through glass. Greyson shoved away from Shadera so violently he nearly fell, keeping his back to Chapman so he wouldn’t see his face.
“What?” The word came out as a snarl.
Chapman stood perfectly still in the doorway. His mask on, hands clasped behind his back in his typical pose as he took in the destroyed kitchen—broken glass, scattered papers, blood on the counter.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” Chapman said, his tone professionally calm. “I rang a few times, but the President ordered I enter to help Ms. Kael settle into her rooms.”
Greyson’s jaw worked, fury and annoyance fighting for dominance beneath the pain. Behind him, he heard Shadera push off the counter, her boots crunching on broken glass.
“Fine,” he bit out. The word was insufficient, too small for everything boiling in his chest, but it was all he could manage.
He needed distance. Space. A locked door between him and that fucking animal. Without looking at either of them, he strode toward his bedroom, his gait slightly uneven from the reopened wounds.
“Mr. Serel,” Chapman called after him. “Should I send for medical—”
“No.” He didn’t turn around, couldn’t look at them. If he did, he might do something stupid. Like show another person his face.
The bedroom door slammed behind him with enough force to rattle the bed frame. He pressed his back against it, chest heaving, and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Blood seeped through his fingers where he pressed against the wound.
Through the door, he could hear Chapman’s measured voice, asking Shadera if she required medical attention. Her response was too low to make out, but the tone suggested threats of violence if he came any closer.
Greyson closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the door.
His father wanted them to destroy each other, and it seemed he might just get his wish.
Chapter thirteen
Daggermouths Don’t Cry
Thebathroomdoorclickedshut behind her, and Shadera stood in the marble silence, breathing through her teeth. Everything gleamed—obsidian tiles, porcelain fixtures, a tub deep enough to drown in. The kind of luxury that could feed a Boundary family for a decade.
Her reflection stared back from three different mirrors, each angle revealing new damage. Blood had dried in abstract patterns across her skin, some hers, most not. Veyra blood. The prisoners’ blood. All of it caking together into a second skin she needed to shed.
Her fingers found the hem of the prison tunic, and she pulled upward. The movement sent lightning through her ribs, sharp enough she stopped halfway, arms trapped above her head, fabric bunched around her shoulders. She breathed shallow, counting to three, then yanked it the rest of the way off. The shirt dropped to the pristine floor just like the prisoners had—crumpled, bloody,forgotten.
The pants were worse. Bending forward made her vision swim, made the fractured collarbone grind against itself. Made blood rush to the stab wound in her side. She worked them down her hips with trembling hands, leaving blood smeared down her legs. When she finally kicked free of them, she caught herself on the sink’s edge, knuckles white against themarble.
Every injury screamed at her from the mirrored glass. Purple-black bruises mapped her torso like territories of pain. The swelling around her left eye had spread down her cheek, turning half her face into something unrecognizable. Her collarbone sat wrong beneath the skin, a visible ridge where bone had separated. The places where shock batons had seared her flesh were already blistering, angry red circles that would scar.
She braced herself and pressed her nose. A crack, a knife stabbing through her skill—she groaned, riding the pain until it ebbed. The collarbone was next, a grueling shift of bone beneath her skin. She sucked in a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut as she pushed the fracture back into place. This time she screamed, a guttural sound filling her ears. She breathed through it and waited for the agony to dull.
Blood dripped onto the counter from the split in her lip. She watched it for a moment, watched it spill over as another drop landed atop it and slid over the marble. Finally she pulled her eyes away, turning toward a black porcelain monstrosity that could have held three people. The shower hung above it, one of those rainfall heads that could only be found in luxury—water cascading from the ceiling like they owned the sky itself. In the Boundary, water came in rations. Here, it fell like it would never run out.
Shadera pushed the shower door to the side and twisted both handles to their limits. Steam erupted instantly, filling the bathroom with heat that made her shredded skin sting. She didn’t adjust the temperature, didn’t temper it with cold. She let it burn. Let it scald away everything she’d witnessed in that prison.
The tub began to fill as the shower pounded down. Wasteful. Excessive. She stepped over the rim, and her knees nearly buckled. The water was molten against her feet, climbing her ankles as she lowered herself by increments. Each inch down brought new protests from torn muscles, from broken bones, from flesh that had taken too much damageto heal properly without medical intervention she’d never accept from the Heart.
