"What am I?"
Instead of answering, he withdrew from her carefully, then pulled her against his chest. The movement was possessive but also protective, as if shielding her from his own questions.
"Mine," he said finally. "Whatever else you are, you're mine. That doesn't change."
She lay boneless against him, her thighs still trembling with aftershocks. She could feel the echo of him inside her, a hollow ache that somehow felt likeloss. Her skin was oversensitized, each breath making her aware of every mark he'd left, every claim he'd carved into her flesh.
The word should have made her rage. Should have rekindled her defiance. Instead, she felt something in her chest settle, like a lock clicking into place.
She was lost. Whatever she had been before, June's daughter, Allegra's sister, a girl with dreams of her own, was dissolving into what he was making her. The mark spread another inch, thorns curving toward her throat with loving cruelty, and she wondered if it was truly claiming her body or merely making visible what had already happened to her soul.
She had been claimed by him long before, after all.
Without thought, Briar had called him home. Even now, held possessively against him, she couldn't take it back. Couldn't deny the truth that something had shifted. What had she become? Or better yet, what had she always been? The question had no answer she could bear to examine.
Chapter nineteen
She woke to absence.
Gray morning light filtered through unfamiliar windows, casting long shadows across rumpled sheets that still held his shape. Eliam was gone. But when she shifted, her hand finding the space where he'd been, warmth still lingered in the fabric. Recent warmth. He hadn't been gone long.
The realization made everything worse somehow. He'd stayed through the night, stayed through dawn, then left just before she woke. Deliberate. Calculated.
Pain lanced through her as she sat up, muscles she'd forgotten existed protesting the movement. Between her thighs, dried evidence of their joining made her skin tight and uncomfortable. The mingled scent of them both clung to her skin, to the sheets, to the air itself. Pine and winter and sex and that indefinable something that was purely them together.
The warmth in her chest pulsed once, searching, finding nothing where he should be. She pressed her palm against it, trying to quiet its reaching, but it only pulsed harder. It could feel him somewhere in the castle, just as she'd felt him last night when he'd moved inside her, when their pleasure had echoed between them in ways that should have been impossible.
Another cruel trick. It had to be.
She'd called him home, the memory made her stomach clench with humiliation, and he'd shattered above her. But what if that had been performance? What if her desperate need to find something human in him had made her imagine a connection where there was only sophisticated cruelty?
Her gaze swept the room, looking for evidence of... what? That last night had meant something? That she hadn't just handed her dignity to someone who collected surrenders like trophies?
The emerald dress stopped her thoughts cold.
It draped across the chair near the window, catching morning light that made the fabric shimmer like deep water. Not the red dress she'd expected, that symbol of dominance and display he'd forced on her before. This was something else entirely. The color of his forest, yes, but also... beautiful. Genuinely beautiful in a way that made her chest tight.
She stood on unsteady legs and moved closer, lifting the fabric with trembling fingers. Soft as water, it flowed through her hands. The bodice was adorned with delicate metalwork—gold chains and jeweled accents that would drape across her ribs and waist. The neckline would frame the marks he'd left on her throat without seeming designed for that purpose. The flowing cape-like sleeves would give an illusion of modesty while the dress itself would cling to every curve.
This wasn't the red dress of ownership. But neither was it the silver freedom Arion might have chosen. This was something between, or beyond, either option.
Her reflection in the mirror stopped her cold. She looked destroyed. Hair tangled from his fingers, lips still swollen from his kisses, bruises blooming across her throat and breasts in purple testament to his possession. The mark had spread further in the night, thorned vines now reaching past her collarbone, creeping toward her heart with inevitable patience.
But worse than the physical evidence was her expression. She looked lost. Confused. Like someone who'd given everything and didn't know if it had been taken or received.
The warmth pulsed again, stronger this time, and she swore she felt an echo of something: distance, control, but underneath it a confusion that matched her own. Or was she imagining that too? Was she simply reading meaning into sensation because the alternative, that she'd surrendered everything for nothing, was unbearable?
She needed to bathe. Needed to wash away the evidence of her complete capitulation before she dissolved into whatever this feeling was. Shame? Regret? Or something worse—longing for him to come back, to explain, to make sense of what had happened between them.
The bathroom door stood open, steam already rising from the bath as if it had been waiting for her. She approached cautiously, remembering how he'd lifted her fromthese same waters, urgency overcoming his control. Her thighs clenched at the memory, sending an ache through already sensitized flesh.
The water was perfect. It was hot enough to sting her oversensitive skin, but not burn, and scented with herbs that would soothe the various aches he'd left. She sank into it with a soft hiss, watching the water swirl pink briefly as it washed away the dried blood from where he'd bitten her palm. The bruises remained, of course. Those would last days, maybe weeks. Visual reminders of how thoroughly she'd been claimed.
As she washed, she tried to make sense of what had happened. The way he'd lost control when she'd called him home. The desperation in his touch, so different from his usual calculated cruelty. The way he'd said her name, Briar, not pet, not little thief, like it was pulled from somewhere deep.
But then why leave? Why abandon her to wake alone with only confusion and the ache between her thighs as company?
The warmth pulsed again, and this time she was certain she felt something through it. Not thoughts exactly, but... impression. Distance held like armor. Need suppressed like weakness. And underneath both, a confusion that matched her own.
