His eyes tracked the bounty with sharp focus. When he reached through the bars, his hands barely trembled. The food had worked better than she'd dared hope.
"You're an angel of mercy." He took the bread first, but ate with more control now. Savoring rather than devouring. "Tell me, what kept you away? You look..." He paused, studying her face. "Different."
Heat crept up her neck. "Things have been... complicated."
"Ah." Something knowing flickered in his eyes. "The Forest King's been keeping you close?"
She nodded, settling cross-legged on the cold stone. The warmth in her chest pulsed with each heartbeat, content in a way that should disturb her more than it did.
"Thomas," she began, watching him eat with careful precision. "I've been thinking about what you said. About escape, about the flowers..."
His hand stilled, the cheese halfway to his mouth.
"I don't think I want that anymore." The words felt strange on her tongue, it was the first time she had spoken the words aloud, but it made them no less true. "To escape, I mean. I think... I think I want to stay."
Silence stretched between them. Thomas lowered the food slowly, those bright eyes fixing on her with unsettling intensity. In the moss-light, she could swear his features looked sharper. More refined. Less human, somehow.
"Stay? You want to…" The words came out carefully neutral. "That's quite a change of heart."
"I know it must be difficult to understand. I don’t even… it doesn’t matter. I thought—I still want to help you. I could talk to Eliam. Plead your case. You've suffered enough. Maybe after the Wild Hunt ball, when he's in a good mood, I could ask him to show mercy, to let you—"
Thomas laughed, startling her into silence.
The sound started low in his chest and built to something rich and dark that made her skin prickle. He laughed until tears gathered in his eyes, until he had to grip the bars for support. But his hands, she noticed with growing unease, bent the ancient iron slightly.
"Oh, child." His voice had changed to something deeper, more cultured. "Dear, sweet, naive little thing."
She scrambled backward, but he moved faster than any emaciated prisoner, any human, should. His hand shot through the bars, catching her wrist with shocking strength. The other hand... the other hand was peeling back iron bars like they were made of clay.
"Do you know," he said conversationally as metal groaned and gave way, "how long I've been down here? Century upon century spent in the dark, sustained only by hatred?"
Centuries?
"You're not human." The words came out whispered, her mind struggling to process what her eyes were seeing.
The bent bars, iron that had stood for centuries, now twisted like taffy.
His frame, no longer the skeleton draped in skin but something that filled the space with presence, with power.
The way shadows seemed to pool around his feet, reaching toward him like supplicants.
His face was changing, filling out, becoming something beautiful and terrible. The cheekbones sharpening to aristocratic angles. The hollow eyes now burning with inner light. Golden-red hair that had seemed lank now gleamed like autumn sunlight, like copper heated in a forge. Even his height seemed different, or maybe it was just the way he held himself now—no longer curved in on himself but standing like someone who'd never learned to bow.
"Human?" He stepped through the ruined bars with fluid grace, and the temperature in the cell dropped ten degrees. The air tasted of frost and old blood. "No, little mouse."
She tried to pull away, but his grip was iron. "Then what—who—"
"I am Malus." He said it like a declaration, like words that should mean something. When she only stared blankly, he smiled, a sharp, predatory thing. "Eliam's elder brother. The rightful Forest King. The one he buried down here after he stole my throne."
Brother. The word struck hard. She could see it now, the bone structure, the grace, the casual power. Different coloring, different energy, but brothers without a doubt.
"He never told you?" Malus pulled her closer, studying her face with dark amusement. "Never mentioned the brother he entombed? The rival he couldn't kill butcouldn't stand to see free?" He inhaled deeply, and his expression shifted to something darker. "You absolutely reek of him. His scent is buried so deep in your skin... Tell me, does he fuck you sweetly? Or does he make you scream?"
She jerked against his hold, face burning. "Let me go."
"But we're just getting acquainted." His free hand traced the air near her face, not quite touching. "My brother's pet. His little human toy. Do you know what he used to say about humans? That they were good for nothing but fertilizer." Another laugh. "And now look. He's been playing house with one."
"I'll tell him." The words came out fierce despite her terror. "I'll tell Eliam everything. That you're free, that I—"
