I wore a black tunic beneath the chains, stiff with old blood and grime. It hung loose on my frame now, heavier than it used to feel.
The one who kicked me, Captain Morris, I’d heard the others call him, grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. The chains around my ankles made walking difficult, but not impossible. They wanted me mobile. They wanted me functional.
They wanted me compliant.
“Cooperate, and this goes easy,” Morris said, his breath hot against my ear. “Fight us, and we’ll drag you unconscious. Either way, you’re going to do what the king wants.”
I met his eyes then, letting him see everything I thought of him and his king and this whole rotting kingdom. He stepped back, just a fraction, and I filed that reaction away. Even muzzled and chained, I could still make them afraid.
Good.
The corridor stretched ahead of us, lit by torches that cast restless shadows on the walls. Other prisoners pressed against their cell doors as we passed, some reaching through the bars with desperate fingers. They whispered things I couldn’t quite hear, but their voices followed us like prayers.
Or curses.
“The Wretch,” someone breathed as we walked by. “They’re taking the Wretch.”
“Poor girl,” another voice said. “She’s just a baby.”
“Baby nothing,” came a third voice, bitter and knowing. “That one’s got demon blood.”
I kept my face blank, my eyes forward. Let them think what they wanted. It didn’t matter anymore.
As we climbed higher, my black tunic caught on one of the chains, tearing slightly at the hem.
We climbed stairs that spiraled up through the keep’s guts, past empty chambers and abandoned guard posts. Blackstone Keep was falling apart, just like everything else in this kingdom. The stones were cracked, weeds growing through the gaps. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, a steady rhythm that sounded like a heartbeat.
Or a countdown.
The higher we climbed, the more my magic stirred. It could sense something, freedom, maybe, or just the absence of so much suppressive stone. The iron chains grew heavier with each step, fighting against the power that wanted to break free. My skin burned where they touched, leaving marks that would scar.
Just another reminder of what I was. What I’d always be.
“Almost there,” Morris said, and there was something in his voice I didn’t like. Anticipation. Hunger. Like he was looking forward to what came next.
That scared me more than the chains. More than the muzzle. More than the knowledge that, in a few hours, they’d force me to burn people I’d never met for crimes I didn’t care about.
We reached a landing where two corridors branched off into darkness. Morris took the left path, leading us toward sounds I recognized, voices, movement, the scrape of metal on stone. The room that had become the site of my pain was close. I could feel it like a weight pressing down on my skull, all that power and authority concentrated in one place.
The king was waiting.
My magic pulsed against the iron chains, and for a moment, I almost let it loose. Almost let it tear through metal and stone and flesh until nothing was left but ash and memory. It would be so easy. So simple. Just stop fighting. Stop controlling. Stop caring about the consequences.
But then I thought about my mother. About the last words she said to me before they dragged her away: “Don’t let them make you into what they fear. Don’t give them that power.”
I’d made her a promise. And I’d kept it for seven years, through hunger and cold and the kind of loneliness that ate you from the inside out. I could keep it a little longer.
Even if it killed me.
The corridor ended at a massive door carved with the royal seal, a crown wreathed in thorns. Very subtle. Very him. Morris knocked three times, and something heavy shifted on the other side.
“Enter,” came a voice that had haunted my nightmares for months. King Aeron Thorne, architect of genocide, murderer of my people, destroyer of everything good in this rotting kingdom.
The door swung open, and golden light spilled out, bright enough to make me squint after so long in the dark. Beyond it lay the throne room, all soaring columns and glittering tapestries, beautiful in the way poisonous flowers are beautiful.
And there, sitting on a chair carved from black stone, was the man who killed my mother.
He smiled when he saw me. “Ah, the famous Wretch. Right on time.”
