Gessa flinched, her breath hitching. She expected a speech—one of his long, winding monologues about loyalty and destiny. She expected him to savor the moment.
He didn’t. It was terrifying.
Polan moved with a cold efficiency. He signaled the guards with a flick of his fingers. “Hold her head. Keep her still.”
He stepped in close, but Gessa noticed the difference immediately. He didn’t touch her skin. He kept his elbowstucked, his body angled slightly away, minimizing the contact surface. He treated her not like a lover, or even a prisoner, but like a spill that had to be contained before it ruined the carpet.
There was no hesitation, only the brutal speed of a man who wanted the danger neutralizednow.
The cold metal snapped shut around her throat with a final click.
The effect was amputation. The hum of the world, the buzz of the Ley Lines that she had learned to navigate, was severed. It felt like being buried alive in a lead coffin. She gasped, clawing feebly at the metal, the silence making the room spin.
Only then did Polan relax. The stiffness left his shoulders. He exhaled, looking down at her. Relief mixed with disappointment.
“There,” he said, finally reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder. Now that the iron was between them, he was safe. He could touch her again. “The noise is gone. I can feel the chaos receding already.”
He shook his head, his thumb tracing the line of the collar. “I tried to be patient, Gessa. I gave you the run of the house. I gave you silks, jewels, freedom. And look what you did with it. You ran wild. You broke yourself.”
His voice dropped, losing its warmth, becoming flat and clinical. “We are done with the old ways. They clearly didn’t work. We are going to have to start over, you and I. From the very beginning.” He smoothed her hair, a gesture that felt less like affection and more like an owner straightening a crooked picture frame. “It will be harder this time. Less... comfortable. But you left me no choice. I have to fix what you broke.”
He turned away, dismissing her. “Keep them here,” he ordered the guards. “I have business to conclude.”
He disappeared through the flap, leaving them in the dim light with two silent guards.
Gessa looked up at Ky. He stood a few feet away, chest heaving. He took a step toward her, testing the guards, but a spear point immediately leveled at his chest.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word rasping in her throat. She shook her head.Wait.
Ky froze, his eyes locking onto hers. He gave a nod and stood down.
Voices drifted through the canvas. Not shouted, but spoken with the casual volume of untouchable men.
“The courier escaped, my Lord,” a voice said—Koer, the scar-faced lieutenant. “The warning is on its way to the Academy. We have the container, but without the key, it’s useless.”
“You see a locked box, Koer,” Polan’s voice replied, sounding bored. “I see a negotiation tactic. You think like a soldier. You worry about the one who got away.”
“He will bring the Order down on us,” Koer pressed. “And we are wasting resources keeping the beast alive. Malak wanted the courier. We don’t need the cat.”
There was the sound of glass clinking—wine being poured. “Come. Sit,” Polan’s voice was warm, inviting. “You have a soldier’s eye, Koer. It is sharp. Brutal. I admire that about you. But if you are to lead my armies one day, you must learn to see beyond the blade. The bond between a Spur and his beast is not a partnership. It is a nervous system. They are one entity.”
Gessa recognized the tone. The “Lesson.” The soft, intoxicating promise that he saw potential in you that no one else did. Her stomach lurched. He was making Koer fall in love with him, just as he had done to her father. Beside her, Ky stiffened.
“Think of it like a siege,” Polan continued, the sound of him pacing the rug muffled but audible. “If you torture a man, he can steel himself. He can play the martyr. He can be a hero. But if you hold his heart in your hand? If you squeeze the thing heloves?” A pause. “The hero vanishes. The man remains. And that man will not just surrender, Koer. He will be grateful to us for stopping the pain. He will open the container. He will tell us the patrol routes. He will beg for the privilege of serving us.”
“It’s a risk,” Koer said, but the grunt was gone from his voice. Gessa could hear the hesitation, the sound of a man mesmerized by the sheer, brutal elegance of the plan.
“Greatness is always a risk, my friend,” Polan murmured. There was the sound of a hand clasping a shoulder—warm, reassuring. “That is why I chose you for this command, Koer. Other men want safety. They want simple orders. But you and I? We see the larger picture. We want the world.”
Polan’s voice dropped, becoming an intimate confidence. “Do you trust me to give it to you?”
There was a heavy silence, charged with the charisma Gessa knew too well. When Koer spoke again, the skepticism had vanished, replaced by the hushed reverence of a convert.
“Completely, my Lord.”
“Good,” Polan said, brisk and cheerful again. “Then go. Double the guard on the beast. I have to attend to my guests. The girl needs her rest before we begin her rehabilitation.”
The flap swept open. Polan stood there, wiping his hands on a cloth. He looked from Ky, vibrating with tension, to Gessa, who sat slumped under the weight of the iron.
