I knew his face was ruined. Saw glimpses of it during the chaos in the medical wing. But seeing it now, without the mask, without the blood-haze of combat obscuring the details...
His lips are gone. Not damaged, not scarred—gone. Ripped away or cut away, leaving his sharp teeth exposed in the same nightmarish rictus grin I saw on Wraith when his scarf fluttered loose.
But that isn't all. One side of his aquiline nose is torn down to the bone. Blue eyes, eyes filled with a level of pure anguish I've never seen in my fucking life, stare at me from a face that looks more corpse than living flesh. Even with blood trickling into his eyes,he isn't blinking, and his eyelids are so scarred and torn, I doubt he can fully blink at all.
The gashes his claws scored diagonally across his face aren't the first. There are older scars from the same damn thing clearly happening multiple times over the course of his painful life. Scars from his own metal claws from times he tried to hide his face with a gauntlet instead of a hand.
Knight looks at me with those torn eyes, and I see nothing. No recognition, no understanding. Just empty blue depths that reflect torchlight like glass.
Somehow, his face is as impassive as the silver mask he wore. Even more, maybe, because of the level of scarring. At least the mask had serenity carved into it.
"Knight?" I try again. "Are you with me?"
No response. He stares right through me like I'm not even here.
The sedative, the trauma, the psychological break—it's all compounded into something that's left him a shell. And I don't know how to reach whatever's left of the man inside that broken weapon.
Think, Azarel.Think, for fuck’s sake.
What would Cosima do?
She'd touch him. Speak softly. Treat him like a person instead of a monster or a weapon. That’s how she’s always been. There was a guard at her old house who was badly disfigured from the war, and Cosima went out of her way to chat with him every day even though it took him a solid minute to get out a single word.
But I can't reach him from here. The chains keep us separated, anchored to opposite walls with just enough slack that we could stand if we tried but not enough to close the distance between us.
Unless...
I look at his metal arm, at those curved claws that sliced through machines like they were made of paper. His clawed hand is maybe three feet from my own left shackle. Close enough that if he extended his arm...
"Knight." I shift, turning my wrist so the shackle is more visible. "I need you to look at this chain. Can you see it?"
His unblinking eyes don't move.
"The chain holding my left wrist." I keep my voice calm, almost conversational. Like we're discussing the weather instead of planning an escape. "Your claw could fit in the lock mechanism. If you could just?—"
He blinks. Not completely—his eyelids are indeed too scarred to fully close—but it’s blinking for him.
It's such a small thing. Such a basic response. But it tells me he's still in there somewhere, buried under layers of trauma and sedation.
"That's it." I lean toward him as far as the chains allow. "I know it's hard. I know you're struggling right now. But Cosima needs us, and we can't help her from in here."
At her name again, something shifts in his expression. Not much. Just a tightening around those ruined eyes, a fractional change in the set of the exposed jaw muscles framing his sharp teeth.
But it's there.
"Cosima is dying," I say bluntly, the words coming out strangled, but sugar-coating it won't help. "Right now, while we're chained up in this fucking shithole, Cosima is dying. If we stay here,Cosimawilldie."
A sound escapes him. Not quite a growl, not quite a moan. Something caught between the two that speaks of agony that has nothing to do with physical pain.
"I can feel her slipping away." The words scrape against my throat like glass. "Every second we waste is a second closer to losing her forever. So I need you to focus. I need you to help us get out of these chains so we can reach her. You love her. She loves you. You're her mate. Can you do that for her?”
His eyes finally—finally—focus on me.
There's still nothing in them. No spark of intelligence, no sign of the alpha who fought so fiercely to protect her. But they're focused on my face instead of staring through me, and that's progress.
"The lock on my left shackle." I turn my wrist again, making the iron rattle. "Your claw. Can you reach it?"
He doesn't move.
