Chapter 62 #2
If they weren’t his own offspring? That would complicate things. The male’s history with children… There was no way Isara knew. She would never have allowed them to remain under his care if she did. Unless they were his own. However unlikely, Ashterion needed to be sure.
Casually, almost bored, he asked, “Based on the timeline… I assume they aren’t Varyth’s?”
Isara stiffened.
He could see the moment happen behind her glare. The calculation. Lie, or truth? Protect, or reveal?
Finally she said, “No. They’re not Varyth’s.” She looked up at him, unflinching. “They crossed with me.”
Fuck.
Ashterion managed to keep his expression neutral. It took effort not to scrub a hand across his face. Every time this female opened her mouth, the situation got more gods-damned complicated.
More bullshit to deal with later.
Ashterion rose to his feet in one fluid motion. “Well,” he said, tone clipped. “Let’s see to those wounds, shall we? You can return once we’ve made it look sufficiently… unpleasant.”
He caught it, the tight lines around her mouth softened, and some of the stiffness in her shoulders uncoiled. She didn’t speak, just nodded.
He turned to step around the table, when her gaze caught on something. Her eyes dropped to his chest, fixating.
“What?” he said flatly, already annoyed.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m—what?”
She pointed, frowning now. “Your tunic. There.”
He glanced down. Sure enough, dark crimson had seeped through the fine grey linen. A sluggish bloom, vivid and ugly, right over his ribs. He prodded at it with two fingers and hissed faintly as pain lanced beneath the skin.
Huh.
He hadn’t even noticed.
Of course the wound had reopened. Why wouldn’t it? It wasn’t like his entire fucking ribcage wasn’t already on fire every time he breathed.
“Relax,” he drawled. “I won’t bleed out before you get back to your cell.”
“Let me see it.”
His head snapped toward her. “Let you see it?” The words came out edged with incredulity. “Why would I do that?”
She crossed her arms, her stance shifting to something more determined. “Because you’re bleeding all over your fancy floor, and I’d rather not slip in it when I finally get the chance to murder you properly.”
Despite himself, his lips twitched. “How considerate.”
“I’m a very thoughtful assassin.”
Ashterion studied her, trying to parse through whether the concern in her eyes was genuine or merely a tactic.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he muttered, turning away again.
“And you’re bleeding.”
Her footsteps padded across the stone floor, each one far too confident for someone who should be afraid of him. For someone who had every reason to be.
Ashterion let out a measured breath as she came to stand in front of him again, her expression carved in stubbornness. The same look she wore every time she challenged him, which was far too often.
She meant it.
And gods help him, she wasn’t going to back down.
“Lift your shirt,” she said.
A short, incredulous laugh escaped him before he could catch it. “Are you seriously ordering me around in my own gods-damned castle?”
“I’m seriously trying to keep you from bleeding out all over your own gods-damned castle.”
“I’m a High Lord,” he said dryly. “I won’t die from a little blood loss.”
“You’re bleeding through your shirt. That’s not a little.”
Ashterion clenched his jaw, irritation flaring through him. Not at her persistence—though that was certainly grating—but at his own inexplicable reluctance to end this conversation. He should tell her to go to hell. Should remind her exactly who and what he was.
Instead, he growled something entirely unintelligible under his breath and dragged the fabric of his ruined tunic up, pulling it up over his head in one fluid motion.
He glanced down, the gash was worse than he’d expected.
It carved its way from beneath the centre of his sternum, angling downward across the curve of his ribs and stopping above his hip.
The wound had torn through more than flesh—muscle along the edge was visibly strained, the skin around it inflamed, weeping fresh blood where it hadn’t clotted properly.
Ashterion recognised the jagged pattern immediately. Ryleth’s handiwork. He couldn’t recall the precise moment this particular wound had been inflicted, the sessions with Ryleth often blurred together.
But the blade? That he knew. Its bite was unmistakable, leaving wounds that refused to heal properly, that reopened at the slightest provocation, that burned long after the cutting had stopped.
Isara sucked in a harsh breath.
His gaze snapped up in time to catch her expression. For a split second, her mask of detached determination faltered, horror flashing across her face. She looked at him like she didn’t know whether to be furious or sick.
And gods, he hated that.
Ashterion’s jaw tightened, muscles clenching against the unwelcome scrutiny. He despised that look, that fleeting flash of pity across her face before she could mask it. It was worse than her hatred. Worse than her rage. This... this almost-concern was something he had no defences against.
“It’s nothing,” he said, voice colder now.
Isara’s eyes darted between the wound and his face. “That’s not nothing,” she said, her words stripped of their usual venom. “That needs attention.”
He hesitated, every part of him screaming not to let this happen. Not to let her see him like this.
“Where are your healing supplies?” The softness in her tone scraped against him.
He considered ignoring her. Considered sending her to the cell right now and risking Xyliria’s wrath.
Letting this moment die before it became something worse, before it carved something else open inside him.
But instead, his jaw flexed, and he inclined his chin toward the cupboard near the bathing chamber.
She moved without hesitation. Ashterion tracked every step with wary eyes, his shadows following her as she walked. She rifled through the cabinet, efficient and sure of herself, gathering what she needed. Salves. Cloth. A curved silver knife, clean and honed for trimming torn edges of flesh.
She returned with her arms full, setting the supplies down on the low table beside him before meeting his gaze again.
“Sit.”
He cursed. Low and vicious, in an ancient dialect older than most living fae could understand. And then dropped into the nearest chair with the grace of a thundercloud.
Isara arched a brow, entirely unfazed. “Most people try not to swear at the person treating their wounds.”
“You couldn’t have possibly understood that.”
“I can tell when someone’s cursing at me, even if I don’t speak the language.”
Ashterion let out a quiet, humourless sound. “Then you’re more perceptive than most of my court. I’ve been cursing at them for centuries. No one’s caught on.”
Isara didn’t dignify that with a response, just shot him a flat look as she folded the warm, damp cloth. “This is going to sting.”
“I don’t need to be coddled,” he said, shadows winding around his feet. “Do whatever you need to do.”
She gave him a tight-lipped nod, then muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like gods, males before refocusing.
Ashterion let his head tip back slightly, eyes slipping closed, shoulders held in forced stillness. He heard the rustle of her movements, the wet slide of cloth against water, and then—
The pain was white-hot and biting as she pressed the cloth to the wound. It flared down his side like a blade had kissed him all over again, but he didn’t flinch.
Instead, he drifted.
Let himself slip out of his body in the way he’d learned long ago, when the only other choice had been screaming. He rode the pain like a wave, distant and dull, just pressure and burn and the occasional, sharper pull when her fingers worked too close to torn muscle.
He could feel her there, though. The warmth of her hands. And without thinking, he glanced down at her. The firelight caught in her copper-red hair, turning it to living flame as she focused on her self-appointed task with single-minded determination.
She was quiet. Steady.
And Ashterion, for all his centuries, could not fathom why.
Her fingers were gentle as they pressed a cloth soaked in healing salve against the wound.
The sting of it barely registered, he’d endured far worse.
What registered was the care in her movements, the clinical efficiency that spoke of experience.
Someone who had tended wounds before. Someone who knew what they were doing.
“Where did you learn this?” he found himself asking.
She didn’t look up, focused on cleaning the inflamed edges of the gash. “You pick up some things fighting in a rebellion.”
“Fighting in a rebellion,” Ashterion repeated.
Something in his mind clicked into place. The way she moved. The confidence. The authority that clung to her like a second skin even here, in captivity. He’d heard whispers. Rumours. A woman, a general, leading forces against the king who seized control of the human lands.
Ashterion’s breath caught. His eyes widened fractionally as he stared down at her bent head, her fingers working methodically at his wound.
“Fighting,” he echoed again. “Or leading?”
He caught it, the twitch in her fingers, the fractional pause in her cleaning.
Then she scoffed. “Who said anything about leading?”
She hadn’t denied it. But Ashterion didn’t press.
Her fingers brushed against his skin again, applying a cooling salve to the wound. The relief was immediate, the burning sensation ebbing away beneath her touch.
Her touch lingered a moment too long at the edge of the wound, and Ashterion’s muscles tensed involuntarily beneath her fingers. Her eyes flitted briefly to his face before returning to her work.
“Sorry,” she murmured, so quiet he almost missed it.
Ashterion said nothing, watching as she applied a thin layer of the salve along the entirety of the wound. The shadows at his feet stirred again, curious, drawn to the careful movements of her hands, to the concentration etched in the line between her brows.
He wondered, distantly, when the last time was that someone had done anything for him without expecting a piece of his soul in return.
Isara’s fingers paused briefly. “How did it happen?”
Ashterion blinked, surprised by the question. Not because it was unexpected, but because of how ordinary she made it sound. As though she weren’t kneeling beside the carved-up flesh of someone she should, by every right, despise.
He considered lying. Brushing it off with something flippant or cruel. That would’ve been easier, more familiar. But the peace in the room, the way her fingers didn’t tremble, the absence of malice in her tone—it disarmed him.
“I don’t remember.”
Isara’s head tilted slightly. “How do you not remember this?”
Ashterion let out a hollow breath that was almost a laugh. “Because I ran out of room to remember them all. It’s not noteworthy.”
“Not noteworthy.” Her eyes narrowed, studying him with an intensity that made his chest tighten uncomfortably. “The fact that you can say that with such casualness is perhaps the most disturbing thing about you.”
Her hands wrapped a clean bandage around his torso, the pressure firm but not painful.
“More disturbing than being the Shadow Drask?” he asked, deliberately light, even as the words were foul in his mouth.
She didn’t rise to the bait. “Yes. Because this—” She gestured to his torso, to the map of violence etched into his flesh. “Suggests something worse than whatever darkness you wear on the surface.”
That shouldn’t have mattered. Shouldn’t have meant anything.
But it did.
And he didn’t know what to do with that.
“Why? Why do you even care?”
“Because you’re hurt.”
His breath stuttered. That’s it?
That was her answer?
As if it was that simple?
As if anyone had ever looked at him and seen anything other than power to use, a threat to fear, or a monster to survive?
His fists clenched. “That’s not reason enough.”
“Maybe not to you.” Isara glanced up at him. “But it is to me.”
He looked away, shadows stirring faintly at his feet as they sensed the unravelling in his chest.
“Be careful with that,” he said after a long moment, his voice a low murmur.
“With what?” She tied off the bandage with efficient fingers.
“Mercy.”
Isara watched him for a beat. “I think you’ve been careful with it long enough.”
Ashterion stood abruptly, jarred by the weight of her stare. Those jade eyes had somehow found their way beneath his skin, seeing far more than he’d ever intended to reveal.
“We should sort out the illusions now,” he said, harsher than he’d meant it to be.
He needed distance. Space. To rebuild the walls she’d somehow slipped past with nothing but a damp cloth and steady hands.
He moved to the centre of the room, shadows trailing him. This was safer—this role he knew. High Lord. Captor. Monster. Not... whatever had happened with her hands on his skin.
“Stand here,” he instructed, gesturing to the space before him.
Isara rose slowly, her expression guarded once more as she moved to where he indicated.
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” he said, voice low.
Isara gave a small nod. “Fine.”
His hands lifted. Shadows rose. Each one would have to be precise—enough to bruise, to welt, to bleed just right.
“It will hurt,” he added, almost absently. “Each one for only a moment.”
He should’ve stopped there. Should’ve kept it clean. Clinical. But her gaze pulled more words out of him before he could catch them.
“I have no desire to harm you,” he said, softer now. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
Isara’s eyes widened a fraction. She searched his face, and whatever she saw there made something inside her shift.
“I believe you.”
Everything inside Ashterion froze. The shadows stilled. The magic halted. His thoughts, every ancient, blood-slicked one—ceased.
She believed him.
He stared at her like she’d spoken in a language no one had dared use on him in centuries.
Three words.
And his entire world tilted.