Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Briar's legs barely carried her back to her chambers.
Every step reminded her of his hands, his mouth, the confession that if he'd stayed he would have taken her until they both burned to ash.
The warmth still pulsed erratically in her chest, confused by the sudden separation, reaching for something that had withdrawn behind walls of ice.
She locked the door—useless gesture, but the click brought hollow comfort.
The silver dress waited on her bed like a question she couldn't answer. Not his colors. Not Arion's.
Something in between, something that suggested... what? That she existed in neutral territory? That she was unclaimed despite the marks blooming across her throat?
She lifted the fabric, watching it shift from bright silver to deep pewter in the light.
Sheer layers that would hint at her form without revealing it.
Beautiful and untouchable, perhaps that was the message.
Or perhaps he simply couldn't bear to see her in his colors after what had happened between them.
After she'd made him feel things he couldn't control.
Setting it aside, she moved to her vanity, needing to do something with her thoroughly destroyed appearance before—
The leaf lay there among her toiletries, silver veins catching the light.
Her heart stopped.
She had left it on her vanity at Arion's court.
She was certain, remembered seeing it there among her things to take with her in the morning, but then Eliam had arrived and well, it should still be there, abandoned in that guest chamber.
Yet here it sat, warm against her palm when she picked it up, as if recently handled.
Someone had been in her room. While she was pressed against the wall with Eliam's hands on her, someone had entered the Forest King's private domain and left this behind without detection.
She stared at the leaf, pulse racing with sudden hope.
This was her chance. Maybe her only chance.
Though something had shifted between her and Eliam, something that terrified her with its intensity, that didn't change the fundamental truth.
She was still a prisoner. Still marked and bound.
Still watching herself disappear piece by piece into what he wanted her to be.
The warmth in her chest pulsed uneasily, as if sensing her thoughts. She ignored it. That treacherous heat had already betrayed her enough, making her body crave what her mind knew was dangerous.
If there was someone else down in the dungeons like Ferria claimed, someone who had survived this, who had found a way out, she needed to know.
The fact that they grew golden flowers like she did suggested a connection—maybe they knew what the warmth was, why it responded to both Eliam and Arion.
Maybe they knew how to break free before it consumed her completely.
Because it was consuming her. Each surrender made resistance harder. Each touch made her forget why she should fight. If she didn't find a way out soon, she might stop wanting to leave at all. The thought sent ice through her veins.
The leaf offered two hours to find answers. To find allies. To find hope.
The warmth pulsed with what felt like distress, making her stomach turn. It could sense her intent somehow, knew she was planning something that went against its pull toward Eliam.
"I don't care what you want," she whispered to it, to herself. "I'm getting out of here."
But even as she said it, she could feel the warmth's disagreement, its contentment with where they were. The battle wasn't just against Eliam anymore, it was against the part of herself that wanted to stay.
The leaf lay warm in her palm, two hours of borrowed time burning away. The castle was vast, full of passages that rearranged themselves on the master's whim, but dungeons were always in the depths. Deep places for dark secrets.
Her mind skittered away from the obvious answer, but it returned with persistent dread.
The oubliette, the deepest place she knew, where even sound went to die.
If someone wanted to hide a prisoner who knew dangerous secrets, they would put them somewhere already forgotten.
Somewhere servants avoided, where even the castle seemed to hold its breath.
Her hands trembled at the thought of returning to that nightmare corridor. The memory alone made her throat tight with remembered terror, the perfect darkness, the whispers of forgotten voices, the weight of earth and stone and centuries pressing down.
But Ferria's words echoed through her fear. Someone who grew golden flowers, who might have answers, who'd been locked away rather than killed. That meant they knew something valuable. Something Eliam wanted buried but not destroyed.
She pressed the leaf between her palms, feeling its magic shimmer to life. The familiar tingle spread as reality bent, showing Eliam what he expected—her in her room, perhaps staring out the window or sitting at her vanity. Safe. Obedient. Certainly not creeping toward his deepest secrets.
The journey down felt both endless and too quick. Her body remembered the path even as her mind recoiled, these stairs that spiraled tighter with each level, these walls that wept moisture and darkness.
The mark on her arm pulsed sluggishly here, muted as if even it was reluctant to venture this deep.
She paused at the entrance to the oubliette chamber, stomach churning. The sight of that doorway made her knees weak. But the corridor didn't end there, it continued past that terrible room, narrowing as it descended further into the castle's bones.
Briar forced herself forward, keeping her eyes averted from the oubliette doorway. The corridor beyond was older, rougher. Her fingers trailed along the wall for guidance as the darkness thickened to something almost solid.
The passage ended abruptly at what appeared to be a dead end of sweating stone. No doors, no turns. Nothing.
Disappointment crashed through her. She'd wasted precious time, nearly a third of the leaf's magic, for nothing. She turned to go when something flickered in the corner of her eye.
She froze, head still turned. A shimmer in the stone, a subtle glimmering glow. When she looked directly at the wall, it was solid. But in her peripheral vision, the shimmer persisted.
Heart hammering, she kept her gaze unfocused, sliding sideways toward that strange distortion. Each step made it clearer, not stone at all, but wood. Ancient planks bound with iron so rusted it looked like dried blood.
A door, hidden by magic that only let you see it slantwise, never straight on.
She reached out with trembling fingers. The moment she touched the iron handle, the enchantment broke. The door materialized fully, solid and real and covered in decades of dust. The hinges screamed protest as she pulled, but slowly, reluctantly, it opened.
More stairs carved from living rock descended into darkness so thick it had weight.
She almost turned back. Almost convinced herself this was madness, that no answer was worth venturing deeper into the castle's hungry dark. But the warmth in her chest pulsed once, not in recognition, just curiosity, as if it too wondered what secrets lay below.
Before courage could desert her entirely, she stepped through the door and began her descent.
The darkness pressed against her eyes like a physical thing. She kept one hand on the wall, feeling her way down steps worn smooth by age, trying not to think about who, or what, might have descended here before her.
Then her fingers brushed something that wasn't stone. Soft, almost velvet, and at her touch it flared with pale green light.
Moss grew in the cracks between stones, dormant until disturbed.
Where her fingers passed, it glowed, casting just enough light to see the next few steps before fading back to darkness.
She traced her hand along the wall as she descended, leaving a trail of temporary light.
The moss grew thicker the deeper she went, as if it fed on the darkness itself.
Soon she didn't need to search for patches, it carpeted the walls in a living tapestry that responded to her presence with waves of ghostly illumination.
The stairs seemed endless. Her thighs burned, her breathing echoed strange in the narrow space. The air grew thick with minerals and age and something else—neglect. Abandonment. No one came here anymore.
Finally, the stairs ended at another door. This one bore no enchantment, just heavy wood and heavier iron. The lock had long since rusted away, leaving only holes where mechanisms used to be.
She pushed, and it opened with the groan of hinges that hadn't moved in decades.
The chamber beyond was vast, or seemed so after the cramped stairwell.
More of that luminous moss grew here, responding to her entrance with a slow bloom of light that revealed cells.
Ancient things carved directly from the rock, iron bars so old they'd partially fused with the stone.
Most stood empty, doors hanging open on broken hinges.
But at the far end, where the darkness pressed thickest, one cell remained sealed.
And from within came the sound of breathing.
Her heart hammered as she approached. The moss here grew sparser, as if even it feared to venture too close. In the dying light, she could barely make out a figure huddled in the far corner.
And from within came the sound of breathing.
"Hello?" Her voice came out whisper-soft. "Is someone there?"
Movement, slow and painful. The figure shifted, and she heard the clink of chains.
"Dreaming again." The voice was cracked with disuse, barely human. "Always dreaming of voices. Of light."
"You're not dreaming. I'm real. I'm here."
The figure crawled forward, then jerked to a stop as chains pulled taut. In the moss-light, she finally saw him.