She picked up a piece of bread, tearing it into smaller pieces more from habit than intention.
The meeting kept replaying in her mind—Ferria's deflection, the failed bargain attempt, the way the autumn marks had tried to strangle her. Arion's accusation that Eliam didn't actually care about her freedom.
"Eat," Eliam said, his tone carrying command but also something gentler underneath. "Or do you require my assistance?"
She forced herself to take a bite, then another. The food was good, simple and real in a way that made her realize how long it had been since she'd eaten anything. After all she’d been through, her body needed fuel even if her mind was too chaotic to care.
They ate in silence for a while and soon Briar felt the exhaustion creeping back in now that she'd stopped moving. Her throat still ached from where the marks had constricted, and every swallow reminded her that she belonged to Malus, that nothing they'd tried had changed that fundamental truth.
She reached for her water glass and paused, her hand hovering over it.
Something Malus had said seemed to drift like a phantom to the forefront of her mind. It had been in his chambers, when he'd been trying to understand what the warmth was, what it meant. The words had gotten buried under everything else, but now, in the quiet, they surfaced with crystalline clarity.
He placed a fragment of his essence inside you before youwere even born.
Her hand trembled slightly as she picked up the glass, took a sip. The water felt cold going down her bruised throat.
"Briar?" Eliam's voice cut through her thoughts. "What's wrong?"
She set the glass down carefully, not wanting to spill it.
"I think,,,” she said quietly, lifting her eyes to meet his gaze. “I think I know why Malus wants me back so badly."
Eliam went completely still, his fork halfway to his mouth. He set it down slowly, his eyes locked on her face. "What do you mean?"
“He bit me and he… he was so angry,” she explained, memories of that night rising unbidden. The fear and the hopelessness. She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling the warmth pulse beneath her palm. It grounded her. "My blood, he said it tasted of the old forest, of you. He was trying to understand why." Her fingers spread over her sternum. "Why it protects me, why it reacts the way it does."
"And?"
"He thinks he knows," she said, lowering her eyes.. "He thinks you hid something in me. That when you saved my mother's life, you put part of your essence inside me." She swallowed hard. "Before I was even born."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Eliam's expression went blank, that careful neutrality he used when his mind was racing too fast to show anything on his face. His hand on the table had curled into a fist.
"That's impossible, I—" He stopped, his jaw clenching, muscles working beneath skin. She could see him trying to reach for the memory, to grasp at something that wasn't there. The frustration that crossed his face was raw, unguarded.
"If I had done something like that," he said finally, "put part of myself in an unborn child, I should remember.”
He stood abruptly, moving to the terrace doors, bracing himself against the frame. His back was rigid, tension radiating from every line of his body.
"Malus said you were trying to protect it," Briar continued, needing to get all of it out. "He was doing something that night… some ritual or something… and you hid part of your power where he wouldn't think to look. In me."
"A ritual." Eliam's voice was distant. "Twenty-five years ago."
"He was trying to strip you of your power."
She watched his shoulders tense further, watched him process implications she couldn't fully see.
"If that's true," he said slowly, not turning to face her, "if you're carrying part of my essence, part of my power—"
"Then that's why he wants me." The words came out steadier than she felt. "Not just because of the bargain."
Eliam turned then, and his expression was terrible. Not angry. Worse. The kind of cold calculation that came before violence.
"He won't stop," Briar said, voicing what they both knew. "He can't afford to. This isn't about pride or the bargain or punishing you. If I have access to your power, if he can get it through me—"
"Then he gets what he's always wanted." Eliam crossed back to her, his hands finding her shoulders. "And knowing my brother, he'll do anything to make that happen."
