Instead, numbness spread across his back, the shift severed as if flight had never belonged to him at all.
“Coercion is a double-edged sword,” Elashor mused, boots whispering through the grass as he paced a slow orbit. “Perhaps you thought yourself clever—slipping into my mind, breaking past my walls. But you left the door to yours cracked open.”
He stopped directly before Jassyn, eyes glittering with a predatory gleam, and lifted a hand. Threads of telepathy unspooled between his fingers before driving their hooks deep into Jassyn’s skull.
“And I made sure you’ll never remember how I stepped through.”
Pulse racing, Jassyn swallowed the rising horror, drawing in the garden’s sickening air through lungs that refused to fill. He remembered the last time their roles had been reversed—when he’d stripped the breath from Elashor’s chest, watched him choke in the dirt.
The memory flared, then guttered.
Nowhewas the string pulled taut, nothing more than an instrument held at pitch. Worse, an old instinct had already begun to stir. The survival script etched too deeply to erase. Theone that whisperedplease them quickly, and maybe it will end sooner.
That instinct hadn’t died when he’d left this estate. It had only gone quiet, buried beneath fire and rebellion and the fragile belief that he might one day belong to himself.
And for a breath in time, he had. He’d believed power could cauterize the wound, that wings and defiance and choosing Lykor might mean freedom.
But obedience didn’t vanish. It only hibernated, waiting for the command that would wake it.
Jassyn knew how to hollow himself out. How to offer the shape of his body with his will already molded into another’s want. Submission became armor when breaking wasn’t an option. A practiced stillness that made endurance resemble devotion.
His chest hitched as he dragged himself back into the moment, arm suspended in a strike that would never land. Every tendon drew tight from the strain of holding nothing at all, the effort pointless.
Elashor leaned in close. His breath brushed the point of Jassyn’s ear, obscene in its familiarity. “She’s never going to let you go.”
Terror rose rather than rage. Jassyn’s stomach heaved as his body refused even the smallest flinch.
“No Stardust this time,” Elashor murmured, reaching out to trail his fingers along Jassyn’s jaw. “You’ll feel it all. Every touch. Every time she calls you her pet. You’llwantit. You’ll beg for it.” His hand closed around Jassyn’s chin, thumb pressing against his lower lip. “Because you’ll have no choice but to please her.”
The pull came then, sudden and absolute, snaring deep inside Jassyn’s mind. As the final threads of coercion knotted into place, Elashor chuckled softly.
“No one will find you. I destroyed that bond myself.” His voice shifted, as if addressing a trained hound. “Come. Let’s not keep your mistress waiting.”
Jassyn’s body fell into step behind Elashor, surrender dictated with every measured stride. Crystal chimes shivered in broken harmony as they passed, ushering them onward while the estate unfurled. The cruel splendor pressed in until memory split open like a festering wound, leaking rot into his gut.
Smile for me,she’d purred in the smothered hush of night, her mouth damp against his ear.Let the bruises remind you who you belong to.
The ghost of her touch still scored his skin—the bite of teeth at his throat, her nails scoring down his spine. Echoes lingering like scars.
Elven-blooded servants glided through the garden in translucent silks that veiled nothing, perfection in motion. They bowed to Elashor without hesitation, gazes sliding over Jassyn. Appraising.
They knew who he was.
A silver tray swept past, cheeses shaved, fruit sliced to bleed across mirrored glass. At its center lay a pomegranate, cracked open like a heart.
And beside it, a knife.
Jassyn lunged.
His fingers clamped around the hilt, wrenching the blade upward in a blur. Steel flashed as he drove the point straight toward his eye. Not the throat—Elashor would heal that before his life spilled out. It had to be deeper, driven into the skull. A strike so swift no magic could mend the wound.
And in that feral clarity he understood Rimeclaw’s plight. To crave an ending. The need to reclaim the last choice left to him.
But before the blade could plunge—before he could seize that final mercy—Elashor crooked a finger.
The knife halted, quivering a hair’s breadth from Jassyn’s eye, its gleam flooding his vision. His lungs splintered. Every breath shattered into shards as the hold locked him fast.
The tang of pomegranate clung to the blade, the scent dragging up other memories. Steaming baths. Cashmere sheets that suffocated more than they soothed. Her hand tipping his chin as fruit bled down his neck. Laughter, soft and indulgent, as her mouth sealed over his pulse where the stain glistened.
