She whirled on him. “Don’t you dare say my name like that.”
For the first time since the woods, something sharpened behind his eyes. Not guilt. Not remorse. Possession.
“Fix her,” he repeated.
The healer came closer.
Lyra swung—bare-handed, nails raking across the woman’s cheek. Red lines bloomed instantly.
The room went still.
Caelum tilted his head towards the healer. “Be gentle with her.”
Lyra laughed once, breathless, the sound teetering on hysteria.Gentle?
Two more people moved at once. One healer caught her wrists. A stylist seized her shoulders from behind. Lyra thrashed, twisting, kicking hard enough to send a silver tray crashing across the floor in a burst of glass and rosewater.
“Get off me!” she screamed. “Help me! Somebody help me!”
No one did.
Another stylist took her ankles. The healer whose cheek she had scratched pinned her arms more firmly, face expressionless despite the blood. A gloved hand pushed Lyra’s chin up, assessing the bruise already forming, the dried blood at her temple, the dirt streaked along her jaw.
“Minor abrasions,” the healer said clinically. “Scalp irritation. Bruising at the wrist. Superficial cuts.”
Caelum had settled into a high-backed chair near the fire by then, one healer kneeling beside him while pale blue magic glowed over the puncture at his ribs. He watched Lyra the way one might watch a storm through glass—interested, untouched.
“He plans to sell me like cattle tonight,” Lyra choked out, stillstruggling. “You all know that, don’t you? You know what this is.”
The healer holding her wrists did not even blink.
A warm pulse of magic passed over Lyra’s skin. Scrapes sealed. Bruises faded from purple to nothing. The cut at her temple knitted shut with a faint sting. Her body—still carrying the memory of the forest, of Adrian’s blood, of kneeling and begging—was tidied. Repaired. Restored for presentation.
Like a damaged object being polished before display.
She went still.
Not because she had given up.
Because suddenly she saw it too clearly: the room, the waiting hands, the silence, the efficiency. This wasn’t the aftermath of an accident. This was part of the process.
“You knew… You knew I was planning to escape, didn’t you?”
Caelum’s gaze met hers across the suite. Amusement curved one corner of his mouth. “Who do you think told Adrian where to find you, Lyra?”
Lyra was stunned. Caelum continued to look at her with cruel amusement while she looked at him with rage. She looked away first.
“Strip her,” one stylist said.
Lyra twisted so violently that the healer nearly lost her grip. “No.”
Caelum’s voice drifted from the chair, smooth as black silk. “I said gentle.”
The stylists obeyed—technically. They peeled the servant’s cloak away while she fought them, fingers digging into rough wool, tugging it down her shoulders, unfastening hidden clasps. They removed her boots next. Then the plain black shift beneath.
Every layer.
By the time they steered her toward the bathing chamber, she was naked.
