Pain greeted me first, before consciousness fully returned. Not the searing agony I remembered from the river, but a dull, throbbing reminder that I should be dead. My eyelids felt weighted with stones, but I forced them open anyway, blinking against firelight that danced across unfamiliar stone walls.
This wasn’t my chamber. Not the royal apartments of Durand, with their silk hangings and polished marble. This place smelledof dust and magic and time forgotten. And underneath it all, blood. My blood.
I tried to move and discovered two things simultaneously: my wrists were bound to the bed frame with strips of cloth, and the wounds in my side didn’t hurt nearly as much as it should have. Memory flooded back of the gryphon’s attack, the river claiming me, the cold certainty of death before... before something impossible. My sister’s face in the water. A vision or hallucination, it hardly mattered now.
The room spun slightly as I lifted my head, taking in ancient torn tapestries faded with age, furniture carved with symbols I didn’t recognize. Beyond the four-poster bed where I lay, a figure sat before the hearth, silhouetted against dancing flames. Isabeau. Her auburn hair hung loose down her back, no longer confined by the hood she’d worn during our chase through the forest. She looked smaller somehow, shoulders hunched, head bowed. As if carrying a weight invisible to my eyes but heavy enough to crush her.
My throat felt scraped raw, but I managed to push out her name. “Isabeau.”
She turned sharply, firelight catching the amber of her eyes, making them glow like a cat’s in darkness. For a heartbeat, she looked truly inhuman. Something ancient and powerful wearing a woman’s skin. Then she blinked, and the illusion vanished, leaving only a pale, exhausted young woman who moved to stand on unsteady legs.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
She approached slowly, as if expecting me to lash out. The thought twisted something inside my chest. Had I given her reason to fear me? Of course I had. I’d locked her away, doubled her guards, declared her mine as if she were a prize to be claimed rather than a woman with her own will. Then there wasme making her feel crazy for her beliefs, but my own had been awoken in the river.
Now our positions were reversed. I was the one bound to a bed in a strange castle, dependent on another’s mercy.
“Where are we?” I asked, voice rasping.
“My beasts’ castle.” She reached the bedside, keeping a careful distance. “The place I tried to tell you about.”
In the better light, I could see the toll the day had taken on her. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath her eyes, her face drawn and pale as winter frost. Her hair hung limp and still damp from the river, and she trembled slightly with what might have been cold or exhaustion.
“You look ill,” I said, the words tumbling out before I could think better of them.
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Healing takes a toll.”
“Healing?” I glanced down at my side, where the gryphon’s teeth had torn through flesh and muscle. The wound was covered by bandages, but the pain was barely there. A distant echo of what should have been agony. “What did you do?”
“What was necessary.” She swayed slightly on her feet, reaching out to steady herself against the bedpost. “You were dying.”
Understanding dawned with sickening clarity. She’d used her magic, the same power that had healed Thibaut, to save my life. But unlike with the poisoned guard, she hadn’t simply drawn the injury into herself. She’d somehow taken my pain, leaving me whole while she suffered the consequences.
“You shouldn’t have,” I said, guilt churning my stomach. “After what I did—”
“What you did doesn’t matter right now.” Her voice hardened. “I didn’t save you out of some misguided gratitude. I saved you because I need your help. My beasts are running out of time. And, it was partly my fault you were hurt.”
I stared at the strips of cloth binding my wrists to the bedframe. Sturdy enough to hold me but not tight enough to cause pain. Consideration even in captivity. More than I had shown her.
“Is this revenge?” I asked quietly, lifting my bound hands as far as they would go. “For the guards? For the locked door?”
Something flashed across her face—hurt, anger, then a weariness that seemed to sink into her very bones. “No. It’s caution. The last time you were conscious, you were trying to drag me back to a kingdom that wants to burn me as a witch.”
Fair point. I couldn’t argue with her logic, even as the restraints made my skin crawl. Was this how she had felt in that tower room? This powerlessness, this complete dependence on another’s whim? The thought made me ill.
“How did you get me here?” I asked, trying to piece together the fragments of memory. Water filling my lungs, something massive pulling me from the current, and a voice that wasn’t quite human urging me to hold on.
“With difficulty.” She moved closer, eyes scanning my face with clinical detachment. “The gryphon helped, though it didn’t want to. The corruption is spreading through it faster than I thought possible.”
She reached toward me, then hesitated, her hand hovering inches from my face. “I need to check your temperature.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Her palm pressed against my forehead, cool against my skin. Something electric passed between us at the contact, a current that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the woman before me. Her eyes widened slightly, pupils expanding as if she’d felt it too.
“The fever’s broken,” she murmured, withdrawing her hand too quickly. “That’s... good.”
But she didn’t look good. She looked ready to collapse. The fire behind her cast her in half-shadow, illuminating the exhaustionwritten in every line of her body. She’d done this for me. Taken my pain, healed my wounds, brought me to safety when she could have left me to die.
“Isabeau,” I began, her name soft on my tongue. “I’m sorry. Not just for the guards or the locked door. For not listening. For not believing you when you tried to tell me the truth.”
