Caelum rose to his feet, pulling her up with him by the hair. Lyra cried out, kicking and screaming as he dragged her back through the trees toward the Collegium.
“We need to get cleaned up,” he said calmly over her screams. “The gala is waiting, my perfect girl. Time to get betrothed to my lovely bride. We could even get married soon while we’re at it.”
She fought him every step of the way, nails clawing at his wrist, feet kicking up dirt and leaves, voice raw with horror and betrayal.
But he only smiled.
And dragged her home.
And this time she didn’t fight because she believed she could escape.
She fought because she knew she couldn’t.
XXVIII. Ownership
The grander suite was not theirs.
Lyra knew it the instant Caelum dragged her through the carved double doors. The chamber was too vast, too ornate, too impersonal to belong to the quarters they had shared in North Tower. This room had been prepared for display. Gold-veined black marble gleamed beneath chandeliers. Tall mirrors framed in antique silver lined the walls, shattering candlelight and blood into fractured reflections. Velvet divans and carved screens stood in deliberate elegance, and beyond an ivory-silk screen an enormous bathing chamber already steamed.
They had expected her. Of course they had.
The moment Caelum released her hair, Lyra nearly collapsed. Her scalp burned. Her knees struck the polished floor hard enough to sting. For one wild second she considered crawling, running, biting through someone’s wrist if she had to.
But there were too many people.
Four stylists in dark gray waited beside trunks of cosmetics, pins, combs, and folded silk. Two healers in pale robes turned from a preparation table at the far end, hands already gloved, expressions professionally blank. No one looked surprised by the blood on her hands. No one reacted to the dirt ground into the hem of her servant’s cloak. No one gasped at Caelum’s split lip, the bruising along his jaw,or the leaves still tangled in his coat.
They had been on standby. Waiting for her. Waiting for this.
Lyra stared at them, breath sawing in and out of her chest. Adrian’s blood was drying sticky between her fingers. Thirty minutes ago she had driven a knife into a boy’s throat in the woods and begged the man she had chosen to help her.
Now she stood in another gilded cage, surrounded by witnesses and chandeliers and hands already reaching for her body as if it belonged to them.
“Help me,” she rasped.
None of them moved.
Caelum stripped off his gloves with maddening calm and tossed them onto a side table laid with crystal decanters and folded linen. His black coat hung torn at the ribs where Adrian had struck him; blood had dried in a rust-colored line along his side. Dirt clung to the hem of his trousers and a shallow cut scored his cheekbone, yet even battered he looked composed. Elegant. Cold.
One healer approached him at once.
Lyra lunged toward the nearest stylist instead, seizing the woman’s sleeve. “Help me,” she said again, louder. “He’s going to sell me. He’s going to parade me out there like livestock and you’re all just standing here—”
The stylist rolled her eyes—not cruelly, only with the exhausted irritation of someone dealing with a difficult client.
“Please release the fabric,” she said flatly.
Lyra stared in disbelief.
Caelum gave a quiet laugh from across the room. The sound twisted something ugly inside her.
“Healers,” he ordered, not even glancing her way. “Fix her first. She needs to be presentable.”
The second healer stepped forward.
Lyra backed away, panic surging fresh. “Don’t touch me.”
“Lyra.” Caelum’s voice was soft.
