Chapter 20
Jul 4, 2025
No breath beside mine. No weight of an arm curled around my waist. The warmth was gone. The bed was too soft. The sheets too clean. The room—unfamiliar.
I sat up too quickly. Pain sliced through my ribs. My wrists burned. The chains were gone, but the marks remained—raw, angry bruises where freedom should’ve been. My fingers trembled as I reached for the bond.
But there was nothing.
No tug. No warmth. Just… static.
It felt like screaming into a void that used to echo back. Now it was quiet. Dead quiet.
“Cassian?” My voice cracked. “Cassian?”
No one answered. The walls didn’t know his name.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, nausea curling low in my stomach. The stone floor was freezing. I padded across it in bare feet, pressing my palm against the walls as if they might open and lead me to him. Nothing. No scent. No sound. Just the ache in my chest where he used to be.
A long mirror greeted me across the chamber—one I hadn’t seen before. I looked wrong in it. Too pale. Eyes too wide. Wrists still ringed in black. Like someone had hollowed me out and left the shell behind.
“Where am I?” I whispered to no one.
Then came the memory—the ambush, the snow, the blood.
Cassian falling.
My scream.
His silence.
Panic clawed at my throat. I dropped to the floor, hands pressed to my chest like I could catch the threads between us and knot them tighter. I focused. Dug deep. The bond was still there—but faint. Flickering. Like a candle with no air left to burn.
He was alive. Barely. But far.
And fading.
“No,” I whispered, curling in on myself. “No, no, no, no—”
Footsteps outside the door.
I scrambled up, spine pressed to the wall. My fingers curled into fists, though I had nothing to fight with except a half-healed heart and a name still burning on my tongue.
A knock. Polite. Hollow.
“Enter,” I rasped.
A silver-eyed maid stepped in, head bowed. She looked untouched by the world I’d just clawed my way out of. In her hands—cream parchment sealed in red wax. My stomach dropped.
She didn’t speak. Just crossed the room with the grace of someone used to ignoring pain. She placed the letter on the edge of the table. Then turned and left without a word.
The door clicked shut behind her like a coffin lid.
I stared at the letter for a long time.
I didn’t want to touch it.
Didn’t want to know what it said.
But my fingers moved anyway, slow and aching, as if drawn by some invisible leash. I broke the seal with a snap that echoed in the quiet.
The words were slanted. Confident. Cruel.
“She’s mine now.
If you come near her again,
I’ll make her scream loud enough
for your whole court to hear.”
– Valen
The paper slipped from my hands.
I stumbled back a step.
My legs hit the bedframe. I sank down, shaking, the letter at my feet like a bomb that had already gone off.
My mouth was dry. My throat closed. I wanted to scream, but all that came out was a strangled, broken sound. A sob or a curse—I couldn’t tell anymore.
He wanted me to feel it before he sent the letter to Cassian.
The ownership. The victory. The warning.
He wanted Cassian to see this message burned into his mind and know he’d failed.
And he wanted me to know I was the weapon he now wielded.
I pressed my fists to my eyes. “I’m not yours,” I whispered, voice hoarse.
But the silence answered with something colder.
Not anymore.
I clutched my knees, rocking, shaking, waiting for the bond to flare again—anything, even a flicker. Just proof that he hadn’t let go. That he hadn’t died.
But it was fading.
Just like the warmth in my chest.
And I realized—Valen hadn’t just taken me.
He’d taken everything.
