Vann.
I let myself think his name for the first time in weeks. I scream, and my chest convulses, fire shooting through my ribs as my bones are being drawn out from my flesh. I am torn from the inside, where flesh and spirit touch. I gasp and arch. Hot liquid spreads over my chest, over my gown, and I’m too afraid to see if it is blood.
“We’re only half done, Arlet,” Sayerel announces, calm. “Hold.”
The stone flares as if insulted. The flare rushes through me in a warm, impossible wave, so sharp it tastes like metal. My body claws toward the last few bonds that connect the magic to my heart, desperate, even as her hands pull it farther.
I close my eyes, because keeping them open would hurt worse
“Hold,” Sayerel says again, firmer. The brazier breathes andthe smoke thickens, sweet as lilies left too long in a hot room. The last threads draw tight—so tight they slice. For a breath there is nothing but fire, a ripping across my ribs that feels like my soul has split down its seam.
And then—I slip into darkness.
It is not a gentle release. It is a silence edged with pain, a wound where wholeness used to be.
I open my eyes to find my ribs and chest still intact, and yet everything is gone.
Sayerel’s hand hovers. “In a moment, you may feel?—”
“I am fine,” I say, and my voice is someone else’s, hollowed out. The air touches the place above my heart and finds no answering warmth. It is like stepping into a house you have lived in for years and discovering all the furniture has been removed while you slept. The room is familiar, but it’s…sad. Empty.
Red-orange glints in the corner of my eye, and I watch as Sayerel wraps up the Fuegorra and lays it in a lidded cup and closes it. The faintest gleam escapes before the lid kisses shut. “Done.”
Kiala exhales. Merlina looks anywhere but at my face. Eslina’s fists tighten just once and then release, because she cannot be seen to hold me.
Thorne asks, only then, “Any complications?”
“None.” Sayerel’s tone is approving, as if I had been an obedient instrument. “There will be soreness. But the mark will be small. Powder will cover it, and when the collar sits on her throat, no one will care anyway.”
“Good.” Thorne’s gaze touches my throat like a measuring string. “The king requires her in the antechamber before dinner. The jeweler waits for his final measures.”
I sit up, and blood rushes in my ears. The room listens for a heartbeat. The absence does not fill back in. It narrows sound, sharpens edges, and makes the world too clean. Eslina approaches and steadies me with two fingers at my wrist. Kiala’s eyes flicker with something that might be anger if I didn’t know better.
“We will keep her standing, Warden Thorne,” Merlina says.
“Do,” he says, and leaves without goodbye.
I stare at them, tendrils of frizzed hair falling around my face and chest burning. I do not wish to be awake, would rather fall and weep until all that’s left of me is a puddle.
Instead, ironlike elven hands hold me up.
“I’m cold,” I croak out.
They do not respond.
You are stronger than you look,Arlet, a voice says. My friend. My curse.
It shocks me how clear and direct the voice is. Like a real person speaking with me.
I do not respond.
Once, I was stripped of a body. Of a life. I remember the anger and the pain, but I still live. You shall, too.
In the depths of the sadness that seems to both wash over me with a force strong enough to topple trees, and stand at a distance from the very center of me, I find a bit of courage in her words.
He seeks to break you before you become his consort.
I stare at the wall. Empty. So cold. So tired.