Chapter 25 - Elle
Elle
I woke up slowly, my mind foggy and reluctant to focus.
The last thing I remembered were the guards escorting me to my quarters Auradelle promised would be “comfortable.” I opened my eyes to find he hadn’t lied.
The room was luxurious to the point of insult: a four-poster bed with purple silk sheets that probably cost more than most people saw in a year, an ornate wardrobe already filled with gowns in my exact size, floor-to-ceiling windows showing a spectacular view of the dying realm below.
But luxury didn’t hide the cage. Root-forged restraints circled my wrists, the living wood humming with wrongness that made my markings writhe and retreat beneath my skin.
The chain connecting them to the wall was long enough to let me move around the room but not reach the door or windows.
When I tested them—and of course I tested them immediately—they burned cold, spreading frost up my arms.
“Fuck,” I muttered, yanking against them harder. The chain rang out a mocking chime, and my markings flickered like a flame being smothered.
Through the bond—that connection with Kaelren that had become as natural as breathing—I felt almost nothing.
Like trying to hear someone shouting through miles of vast nothingness.
Occasionally a spike of rage so pure it made my chest ache, but even that was muted, distant.
The restraints weren’t just holding me; they were drowning our connection.
“Still there, angry boy?” I thought as hard as I could, pushing against the magical dampening.
Nothing. Not even an echo.
The door opened without warning. A serving girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty entered, carrying a tray that smelled amazing despite my circumstances. A bruise darkened her jaw, carefully hidden by powder but not carefully enough.
“Lord Auradelle requests your presence for the evening meal,” she squeaked, not meeting my eyes.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked, softer than I’d intended.
She shook her head quickly—too quickly. “Please, miss. It’s better if you don’t resist. For all of us.”
The implication was clear: my defiance had consequences for more than just me. The Crown was too smart to torture me directly when they could hurt others instead.
“Fine,” I said, hating myself a little. “Lead the way.”
She gestured to clothes laid out on the bed—a gown in deep green with gold threading that would complement my markings perfectly. “You’re expected to change first.”
“Expected to—how exactly am I supposed to change with these?” I raised my shackled wrists, the chain between them clanking mockingly.
The girl’s face went pale. “I’ll… I’ll help you, miss.”
“This is humiliating,” I muttered, but let her assist me. Her hands shook the entire time, and she kept apologizing under her breath like this was somehow her fault.
We’d barely gotten the dress fastened when the door slammed open, making us both jump.
“Taking your sweet time, anomaly?” A Bloomguard filled the doorway—massive, with marks that crawled up his neck like diseased vines. “The Crown Prince doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Maybe he should have thought of that before putting me in chains,” I shot back.
His backhand caught me across the cheek before I saw it coming, hard enough to make my ears ring. The serving girl let out a small sob.
“You speak when spoken to, Earth-trash.” He grabbed my arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “And you move when we tell you to move.”
He dragged me out of the room, the serving girl trailing behind us. More guards fell into step as we walked, and their commentary was a steady stream of cruelty.
“Look at her boys, dressed in silk like she’s Court-born.”
“The anomaly playing at nobility.”
“The Crown Prince is too generous. After what her kind has done to the realm, she should be crawling through the rot-tunnels.”
“Maybe after the binding. If her mind survives it.”
“Back off, gentlemen. The Crown Prince gets first rights,” the guard guiding my arm said, his tone making my skin crawl. “But after the ritual, after you’re properly broken in? The garrison’s been promised time with what’s left.”
“If there’s anything left,” a woman with marks spreading like disease across her face, corrected. “The last one who went through the binding ritual came out wrong. Still screaming, three days later, before the Crown Prince finally let her die.”
“This one’s different, though. Natural marks. Might last longer.”
“Might scream prettier too.”
I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a response. But inside, fear was spreading cold through my chest.
The dining hall was smaller than expected, intimate rather than grand.
A table set for two dominated the space, carved from what looked like a single piece of coal-colored wood that reflected the green flames of the candles like water.
The chairs were high-backed, throne-like, making me feel even smaller than I was.
Auradelle waited at the far end, rising as I entered—as if we were at a dinner party instead of a kidnapping. He wore robes that shifted between purple and black depending on how the light hit them.
“Elle,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from him. “You look lovely, dear niece. That color suits you.”
“Fuck you,” I said pleasantly, but I sat anyway since standing seemed pointless with the weight of the chains.
Servants appeared from shadows I hadn’t noticed, placing plates before us with practiced silence.
The food was beautiful and wrong—fruit that glowed faintly from within, meat that might have been venison if venison bled silver, bread still warm but somehow giving off cold steam.
My stomach clenched with hunger I hadn’t realized I felt, but I didn’t trust any of it.
“Such language,” he said, lifting his wine glass—the liquid inside thick and dark with an oily sheen on top. He took a deliberate sip but didn’t touch the food. “Your grandmother at least pretended to have manners.”
“Yeah, well, Arkansas didn’t exactly come with a finishing school,” I said. “You get what you get.”
He actually smiled at that, and it was almost worse than his threats. “I can see why he’s so taken with you. That fire, that defiance—you’re so much like her.”
“Like who? Jo?”
“In spirit, if not in temperament.” He set down his glass, the liquid clinging to the sides wrong. “Did you know he’s left a trail of dead forests from Mirror Lake across the realm? Entire groves withered to ash just from his presence. The corruption is spreading faster without you to balance it.”
The words hit like ice water, but I kept my expression neutral. “He’s stronger than you think.”
“Is he?” He produced a scrying mirror from nowhere, its surface rippling to show Kaelren in what looked like a rebel hideout.
His corruption had spread past his jawline, black veins mapping his face like cracks in porcelain.
He was destroying training equipment with methodical violence, and each piece didn’t just break—it rotted, corrupted by his touch.
My throat tightened. “Stop. Just stop.”
Auradelle dismissed the mirror with a wave. “If you don’t accept what you are by the Convergence, he dies. You die. The realm dies. Everyone dies.”
“Except you,” I said bitterly. “Let me guess—you get to watch it all happen because you’ve found some loophole.”
His eyes went sharp, predatory. “Ah. So you did hear about that at the Autumn Court. Yes, they told you about the wheel, didn’t they? About how a human split Root and Bloom, how the realm has been trying to reset itself. But they didn’t tell you everything, did they?”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned back, and a servant immediately appeared to refill his wine. “They told you a human broke the realm. What they didn’t tell you—what they couldn’t have known—is which human.”
My blood went cold. “What?”
“It was you, Elle. You were that first human who fell through. You made the choice that split Root and Bloom apart. And you’ve been paying for it ever since.
” His smile was sad now, almost pitying.
“Sixteen times you’ve lived this same life.
Sixteen times you’ve come through that portal, developed those marks, met Kaelren, been dragged into this impossible choice. Sixteen times you’ve failed.”
“That’s not possible,” I whispered, but my hands were shaking. “I would remember—”
“Would you? The wheel erases memories when it turns. Resets the board. But patterns remain. Connections persist.” He gestured between us.
“Do you think that bond with Kaelren is coincidence? You’re drawn to each other because you’ve been drawn to each other sixteen times before.
You were always going to meet. Always going to fall for him.
Always going to be trapped in this same dance. ”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I? Then explain why you’ve adapted to Wynmire so naturally.
Why it was so easy to fall for him. The way you knew how to use your marks without training, as if muscle memory reached across iterations.
” He leaned forward. “I discovered this recently, you see. Found records that survived the resets—fragmentary, scattered, but enough to piece together the truth. Sometimes you and Kaelren are lovers. Sometimes enemies. Sometimes allies who never quite cross that line. But every single time, you fail. Every single time, one of you chooses Root and the other chooses Bloom, or you both refuse to choose, or you choose the same one and create imbalance. Every single time, the realm collapses and iteration seventeen becomes iteration eighteen, eighteen becomes nineteen, on and on forever.”
I was going to be sick. The room spun. “No,” I managed. “My grandmother—she figured it out. She found a different way—”