The pictures showed humans in various states of transformation. A woman becoming a tree. A man frozen in crystal. Children turned to flowers.
"This is what happens to those who break their bargains?" she asked, voice smaller than intended.
"This is what happens to those who try." He turned the page.
The new page showed a familiar scene: a twisted car, a woman crawling from wreckage and a figure watching from the trees. Waiting.
“My mother…”
"She promised anything for her life. For yours." His finger traced the illustration, and it moved in response. "But 'anything' is a dangerous word. It echoes. It compounds. It transfers."
In the picture, the shadow figure reached out, touched the woman's belly. Light passed between them.
"There is something I don’t understand," Briar said quietly, watching the light pass between the figures. "My mother thought she promised her life… but she didn’t did she? It was mine.”
Eliam stayed silent, watching her. “If she already promised my life to you. You could have come for me at any time." She looked up at him. "Why did you wait? Why agree to help Allegra at all?"
His expression shifted and something flickered behind his eyes. Annoyance perhaps? Discomfort? "Raising children is tedious. All that crying and need. Better to let humans do the messy work."
"That's not—"
"Besides," he continued, cutting her off, "a bond made by proxy is weak. Diluted. Your mother promised you, yes, but you had no say in it." He closed the book with deliberate precision. "When you came to me yourself, when you offered your life for your sister's, that created something far stronger. A chain forged by your own hands rather than inherited."
"So you manipulated everything? You made Allegra sick?"
"I manipulated nothing. You chose to enter my forest. You chose to make a bargain." His smile was sharp. "The fact that you were already mine by rights simply made the claiming... neater. Two debts where there had been one. Your mother's promise and your own."
He selected another volume. "Now. Let's see how quickly you learn, your survival depends on it."
The lesson that followed was its own kind of torture. He made her trace symbols until her eyes burned, repeat words in the old tongue until her throat went raw, all while he watched, evaluated, and found her lacking.
By the time he finally called a stop, the fingers on her wounded hand had grown stiff and her head felt stuffed with cotton.
"Adequate," he pronounced. "Barely. We'll continue tomorrow."
"Can't wait," she muttered.
"Good. Enthusiasm will serve you well." He was either oblivious to sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. "Now, it is time for court."
"I'd rather go back to my room."
"I'm sure you would." He moved toward the door, clearly expecting her to follow. "But what you'd rather do is irrelevant. You go where I go. Do what I say. Exist as I allow. The sooner you accept that, the easier this becomes for all those involved."
Briar followed, of course. But something in her chest, that warmth that wasn't the mark, pulsed with what felt like defiance.
And for just a moment, she could have sworn she saw him stumble.
But then he was walking again, all predator grace, and she must have imagined it.
Must have.
They were halfway to court when he stopped abruptly, turning back to her. His gaze dropped to her injured hand, which she'd been cradling against her chest.
"Show me."
She reluctantly extended it, grimacing as the pain burned up her wrist towards her elbow. The puncture wounds had swollen angry red, blood still seeping sluggishly. The skin around them looked wrong, too dark, with fine black lines spreading outward.
"The roses here carry toxins," he said, as casually. "In a few hours, your hand will be quite useless. In a day, the poison will reach your heart."
