I need to beat Darian home.
I need to get back before he realizes I was gone.
I need to pretend tonight never happened.
The thought makes the ache in my chest worse. Makes that strange pulling sensation—thatthreadI swear is still connecting me to Lorenth—stretch and strain until it feels like it might snap.
My fingers tighten in Ash's mane, and I push the animal faster.
This was always just one night.
One stolen night where I got to feel something other than fear and pain and emptiness.
I knew it was temporary. Knew I'd have to go back.
So why does it hurt so badly?
Why does it feel like I'm leaving behind something essential? Something I'll never get back?
The city walls loom ahead, and I don't slow down. The guards wave me through without question—just another human heading home after a night of festival debauchery—and then I'mout. Out into the darkness of the road that leads back to my village.
Back to Darian.
Back to my cage.
Ash's hooves pound against the packed dirt, and I let him run. Let him burn through the miles while that ache in my chest spreads. While the thread connecting me to Lorenth pulls tighter and tighter until I can barely breathe around it.
I should feel guilty.
Darian is my husband. Legally bound like the zarryn that Mira owns. I just committed adultery. Just betrayed the vows that were forced upon me—as he's done many times before.
But I don't feel guilty.
I feelalive.
And that terrifies me more than anything else.
Because how am I supposed to go back to being dead inside now that I know what living feels like?
7
LORENTH
The ledger blurs in front of me, numbers bleeding into meaningless shapes. I've stared at the same line for the past ten minutes and still can't process what it says.
Forty crates of brimbark. Or was it fourteen?
Fuck.
I drag a hand down my face and lean back in my chair, the wood creaking under my weight. The study feels too small today. Too cramped. The walls pressing in until I can barely breathe around the tightness in my chest.
That goddamn tightness.
It's been there for two weeks now. Two weeks of this constant ache right beneath my sternum, like something vital got ripped out and left a bleeding wound behind. I've tried ignoring it. Tried working through it. Tried drinking enough Amerinth to drown it.
Nothing helps.
Nothing makes it go away.
