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Cargo. The word surfaces from a conversation I barely paid attention to once off the ship. Kylian mentioned cargo being brought to the cells. I never gave it a second thought because my mind was full of other things. Now the cargo is standing in front of me with tears streaking through the dirt on her face, begging for mercy from the girl she nearly killed.

“Why are you here?” I ask, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Why did he bring you here?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I swear I don’t know. They came to my estate in the night. The guards didn’t explain. They just grabbed me and tossed me in a car. If you could get the guard, maybe explain that I am not a servant . . . His name . . . It was . . .”

“Eagan?” I offer.

Her eyes widen as she nods excitedly. “You know him?”

I sigh heavily, remembering Kylian’s words in the shower, and it makes sense why she is here.

She’ll never hurt you again.

“I’ll try to speak with the king,” I say.

The relief that floods her face is painful to witness. Her grip on the bars loosens, her shoulders drop, and for one moment, she looks on the verge of relieved tears.

“Thank you,” she breathes. “Alessia, thank you. I’ll—”

“I’m not promising anything,” I cut her off, because I need the boundary more than she does. “I said I’ll try. That’s all.”

She nods, fast and eager. The motion is so far from the woman who once looked down at my bleeding back and ordered a servant to clean the mess that she made of it.

I turn away from her cell and keep walking deeper into the corridor. I don’t look back. If I do, I’ll see gratitude on the face of someone who never showed me any. I’m not ready to reconcile that with the scars she put on my body, so I keep walking, searching for Arlo.

The last cell in the corridor is set apart from the others, positioned around a bend where the light barely reaches, making me almost miss him.

Then I see the shape against the far wall, and my feet stop moving before my brain understands why.

Arlo is slumped forward, one shoulder leaning against the wall. His knees are tucked under him so he can keep his back from touching the hard surface. He is still wearing the same shirt I last saw him in the night Crawly had him beaten and whipped. His shirt is torn open at the back, the fabric hanging in strips that expose the skin beneath. What I see there makes the air leave my lungs in a rush that burns.

Dried blood darkens the shredded fabric, crusted and dark. The wounds beneath are angry red welts that cross his spine and ribs in raised lines. The wounds I know he carries because of me.

“Arlo,” I whisper.

His head lifts. The movement is slow, heavy with pain, and his hazel eyes find me in the dark. He doesn’t react at first. His face holds the blank, unfocused expression of someone who has been sitting in darkness long enough to confuse imagination and reality.

I watch the moment recognition arrives. It moves through his features, slowly and then all at once. The blankness giving way to shock that parts his lips and widens his eyes, pulling his brows together.

He pushes to his feet, but the motion costs him, and I see it in the way his jaw locks, in the sharp breath that slips through his teeth, in the way one hand shoots toward the wall as though the stone is the only thing keeping him upright.

Once he is standing, his hands find the bars between us, fingers wrapping around the iron with desperation.

“Alessia,” he breathes, and my name breaks in his mouth.

I step closer without thinking, without caution, without any of the careful distance I have spent years forcing between us. He is alive, he is here, and he is looking at me as if the sight has given him back something he thought was lost forever.

He reaches through the bars and grips my shoulders, his fingers slipping slightly against the silk of my nightgown as he pulls me forward until my body presses against the iron and his face is inches from mine.

“Oh, thank the gods,” he whispers, his eyes searching mine with a desperation that makes my chest ache. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” I say, though my voice shakes, and the words barely leave my lips before his mouth is on mine.

The kiss is clumsy and full of all the fear neither of us knows how to say, and he tastes of blood from the split in his lower lip, tastes of pain and panic and relief, and my hands fly to the bars as I kiss him back because for one stolen moment, nothing exists except the fact that he is alive.

His hands tighten on my shoulders, dragging me closer, and even though the bars keep us apart, I feel the tremor in his grip. His body is still shaking from pain, but he’s kissing me for the first time as if it’s the last chance he will ever have.

I kiss him harder. A kiss for every almost.