"He used Cosima," I explain. "First as a bargaining chip with Monty, marrying her off to secure political alliances. Then with me, once he realized what she meant to me."
Nikolai snarls, taking a step forward. "So why didn't you get her the fuck away from him?"
"You don't think I tried?" The words crack like a whip, my control slipping. "Every plan, every escape route, every contingency—he was always three steps ahead."
"Because the great Azarel's not the military mastermind everyone claims?" Nikolai taunts with a sneer.
"Because he's in her head," I say quietly. "Literally."
The silence that follows presses against the walls. The alphas exchange confused, suspicious glances. Even the giant mutated one that never speaks doesn't seem to know what to think, his brow furrowed behind the silver mask.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Geo demands.
I study them, these alphas who've somehow earned Cosima's trust, trying to decide how much information I'm willing to part with.
I could always kill them.
Dead men speak only to the gods.
"Surely you've noticed she's not always... herself," I say carefully.
Geo's one visible eye narrows slightly. "You mean when she goes into space?"
"Fugue states," Raven corrects from his post leaning against the wall, arms crossed like a barrier, sharp eyes dissecting me for weaknesses.
Geo gives a grunt of irritation. "Know-it-all."
"What, you're saying Maybrecht drugged her or something?" Nikolai's voice carries a dangerous edge. Like he's ready to go in person and chop him into pieces.
"The drugs are part of it," I mutter, the memories clawing their way up my throat. "Meant to control her 'episodes.' But the episodes... they're just a side effect of what he did to her."
I can still see her that day, collapsed on the study floor, silver hair fanned out like spilled moonlight, violet eyes vacant and unseeing. A broken doll, discarded and forgotten.
I'd lifted her into my arms to take her to the hospital, but Arthur had stopped me. "It happens," he'd said with cold detachment, handing me unmarked pills. "She'll be alright."
And she had been, after the medication—but not really. She'd blinked back to awareness, but there was no fire in her eyes, no smoke in her voice.
Just obedient.
Empty.
That was when I first understood something was fundamentally wrong with Cosima, though I didn't yet know the pills were treating symptoms of what Arthur had done to his own daughter.
The memory fades, leaving me back in the present with four sets of eyes boring into me. And then cold steel kisses my throat.
"Enough bullshit. What's wrong with her?" Nikolai demands, pressing the blade that had just been in Raven's hand against my neck, his voice barely above a growl. "What did you let that motherfucker do to her?"
Heat crawls beneath my skin at the accusation. As if I would haveletthis happen to her. But I refuse to lie down with dogs.
"Cosima has been plagued with nightmares her entire life," I say, my gaze sliding to Knight. The massive alpha's soft rumbling growl vibrates through the room, his eyes burning into mine from behind his mask. "Visions of a monster hunting her. Devouring her."
Knight's growl deepens, but I continue.
"But they weren't just nightmares. She saw things sometimes. Thought they were visions of things to come. Hallucinations, or so we all believed."That'swhere the guilt sinks its teeth in, sharper than the blade pressing into my skin. "She'd become inconsolable, lost in terror that seemed to come from nowhere."
Raven's voice cuts through, bitter as poison. "Right.Hallucinations." He gestures sharply at Knight. "Like him?"
My teeth grind together. "I was wrong. About a lot of things."
