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“If he values humanity so strongly then why are his people petrified of him?”

“His kingdom lives by strict rules, rules that carry punishment for breaking. But there are rules for a reason. They keep his people alive.”

“So all those cages hoarding people like cattle, were they for display?” I scoff.

“He’s looking for his mage . . . and criminals,” he says, peering away and releasing me.

“Criminals?”

“Yes, for those that have committed terrible crimes. He won’t allow them in his kingdom. Depending on what they’ve done, they’re killed or shipped away. He reads the taint on their souls.”

“He told you this?”

He nods slowly. “Yes, I always thought he was making his own selections, turns out he has the lowest crime rate because he doesn’t accept anyone who has violence in their soul. When he makes a public display out of them, it keeps everyone in line.” He scrubs a hand down his face seemingly tired. “You should shower. We’ll be docking soon. I will go get you something for breakfast.” Kylian stands but then leans back down, nudging me under the chin and forcing me to meet his gaze. “He said he’d send word if he finds her so you can visit. He won’t hurt her.”

He gently pecks my lips before standing, but I remain where I am, feeling deflated. “I don’t trust him,” I mumble, but Kylian is across the room already.

“Zander’s men leave tomorrow morning.” His voice is flat, the voice of a king delivering orders rather than a man who just bathed the blood off a girl he broke. “Until then, you will stay here or close to me.”

Something hot and bitter rises in my throat. Prisoner, once again.

I pull the shirt tighter around me as if the fabric can shield me from the weight of his command. Then words slip out before I can catch them, because the fight in me isn’t dead; it’s just wounded. “As if I have a choice,” I mutter.

The shift in him is instant.

His jaw locks, the muscle in his cheek jumps, and those crimson eyes darken to something closer to black as he pushes off the doorframe and steps toward me with the deliberate slowness that tells me I’ve just lit a match near something explosive.

“You’re right,” he says, and the calm in his voice is the kind that makes my pulse stutter, because it isn’t peaceful; it’s his restraint stretched far too thin. “You don’t have a choice. Not after what you pulled at Malachor.”

“I was trying to find my sister—”

“You could have gotten yourself killed. So you’ll do as you’re told. It’s that simple!”

Something flickers across his face, guilt, maybe, or fury at himself for causing the reaction, but he doesn’t soften.

“Venturing into the Demon King’s territory, you had no protection, no plan, and not even a weapon. You forced me into the sun to chase you. You endangered all the people on this ship because you failed to follow a simple order.”

“Simple?” I spit the word back at him. “You call sitting in a room while my sister is suffering somewhere out there simple?”

“I call it surviving!” he snarls, closing the distance between us until I can feel the barely leashed violence thrumming beneath his skin. “Something you seem determined to make impossible. You do not get to run. You do not get to disappear into hostile kingdoms and expect me to retrieve you without consequence. Until you prove you can be trusted, you stay with me or Eagan. That is not a request.”

The words land like chains being fastened around my wrists, and I want to scream, throw something, to let the power churning beneath my skin surge forward and obliterate every wall between me and freedom. But I remember the bunker, the flames, Xavian’s calculating smile, and Eagan’s voice telling me that if I sink the ship, I kill everyone on it. I remember the little red head in a cell, wrapped in Kylian’s shirt, and the image of her face is enough to swallow the fire back down.

Instead, I glare at him with every ounce of hatred I can muster, and he stares back with the unyielding certainty of someone who has never lost an argument.

The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating, until the ship groans beneath our feet, and I feel the subtle shift in momentum that tells me we’ve stopped moving. The anchor drops with a muffled splash somewhere below, and the vibration runs through the floor into my bare feet.

I move toward the door without thinking, some desperate instinct propelling me toward the outside, toward air, toward anything that isn’t this room and his fury.

But Kylian’s voice stops me. “The sun isn’t down yet.”

I freeze, hand outstretched, and for a moment, the sheer absurdity of it hits me so hard I almost laugh. Trapped. Not by chains, not by locks, but by the sun. By the same sun that warmed my face on the farm while I worked the fields, the same sun Sable used to tilt her face toward on clear mornings like a flower reaching for light. Now the sun is the lock on my newest cage, because the king I am chained to cannot walk beneath it without burning.

I spin around and throw myself onto the bed with enough force to make the frame protest. Pain flares across my back, but I welcome it because it gives the rage somewhere to go that isn’t his throat.

“This daylight business is a real inconvenience,” I snap at the ceiling.

Kylian laughs.