Chapter 26 Elle
Elle
The serving girl woke me by dropping the breakfast tray.
The crash of porcelain shattering against stone jerked me from whatever passed for sleep, and I bolted upright to find her on her hands and knees, frantically trying to gather the pieces before anyone noticed.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I said, moving to help before the chain on my wrist snapped taut, yanking me back. “Are you hurt?”
“Don’t—please don’t tell anyone,” she whispered, not looking at me. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the broken pieces. “They’ll think I did it on purpose. They’ll think I was trying to…”
The door slammed open.
A Bloomguard filled the doorway, his expression already twisted with suspicion. “What’s going on here?”
“I dropped it,” the girl said immediately, her voice high and thin with panic. “It was an accident, I swear—”
“Clumsy bitch.” He grabbed her by the hair, yanking her to her feet. She didn’t even cry out, just went rigid and silent like she’d learned this was the best way to survive it.
“Let her go,” I said. “It was my fault. I startled her.”
He looked at me then, and his smile was cruel. “Oh? The Crown Prince’s special guest thinks she can give orders now?”
“I said let her go.”
“Or what?” He twisted his grip, and the girl’s face went white. “You’ll burn me with your pretty marks? Oh wait,” He gestured to my restraints with his free hand. “You can’t. Because you’re just a chained-up anomaly playing at being important.”
Something in me snapped.
I lunged forward as far as the chain would let me, felt my marks flare hot despite the restraints trying to smother them, and spat directly in his face.
The guard froze. The girl froze. Even I froze, a little shocked at what I’d just done.
Then he dropped the girl and moved toward me, and his expression promised pain.
“You’re going to regret that, Earth-trash.”
“Add it to the list,” I said, lifting my chin even as my heart hammered against my ribs.
His hand caught me across the face hard enough to split my lip. I tasted blood and saw stars, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out. The second blow caught me in the stomach, driving the air from my lungs.
“Stop,” the serving girl sobbed from the floor. “Please stop, she didn’t mean—”
“Oh, I think she meant it.” Another blow, this one to my ribs. Something cracked. “I think the anomaly needs to learn some manners.”
He raised his hand again, and I braced for the impact.
“That’s enough.”
Auradelle’s voice cut through the room like a blade made of ice.
The guard went still, hand frozen mid-swing. “My lord, I was just—”
“Just what? Damaging my most valuable asset a week before the convergence?” Auradelle moved into the room with that predatory grace of his, and the guard actually stepped back. “Do explain how beating her unconscious helps my plans.”
“She—she disrespected—”
“She’s human. She doesn’t understand respect yet.” His eyes found mine, cold and assessing. “Though she’s learning.”
He gestured, and the guard’s corruption marks flared painfully enough that the man gasped. “Get out. Send someone to clean this mess. And if you touch her again without my express permission, I’ll show you what real pain feels like.”
The guard fled.
Auradelle watched him go, then turned his attention to the serving girl still on the floor. “You. Out.”
She scrambled to her feet and ran, leaving the broken dishes scattered across the stone.
Then it was just the two of us.
“Don’t expect a fucking ‘thank you’ from me,” I glared at him.
“That was foolish,” Auradelle said, moving closer. I tried to back away, but the chain kept me in place. “He could have killed you.”
“Would have saved you the trouble,” I managed through my split lip.
“No. It wouldn’t have.” He produced a cloth from nowhere—because of course he did—and reached toward my face. I flinched, but he just dabbed at my bleeding lip with surprising gentleness. “You’re no use to me dead. Broken, perhaps. Frightened, certainly. But not dead.”
“How reassuring.”
“You defended her.” His eyes searched mine, curious. “The servant. Why?”
“Because she was scared and he was hurting her. I don’t need a better reason than that.”
“Even when defending her got you hurt instead?”
“Especially then.”
Something flickered across his face—surprise? Respect? It was gone too quickly to identify. He stepped back, and the bloody cloth vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.
“Your grandmother would have done the same thing,” he said quietly. “She could never stand by and watch suffering, even when standing up meant suffering herself. It’s what made her perfect for the Root. And what made her too weak to survive this world.”
“She survived fine. She lived a whole life on Earth.”
“She ran away and died young, her power eating her from the inside because she refused to use it properly.” His voice hardened. “That’s not survival. That’s slow suicide.”
He manifested a chair from the floor—roots growing and twisting with sounds like breaking bones—and sat with elegant precision. “But we’re not here to discuss Josephine’s failures. We’re here to discuss yours.”
I stayed standing, even though my ribs screamed in protest. “I don’t have any failures yet. This is my first iteration, remember?”
“Is it?” His smile was cold. “Or is this just the first one you remember?”
“You look tired,” he observed as he tossed me a robe on the bed, his eyes taking in what I’m sure was a spectacular case of bed head and bags under my eyes. “The Heartspire takes getting used to. Most people never do. They usually go mad within the first three days.”
“Most people aren’t held here against their will with magical restraints suppressing their power,” I shot back, finally getting the robe tied despite the split lip making it hard to talk. My ribs ached with every breath.
“Aren’t they?” He tilted his head, and I noticed that his marks moved when he did—the golden corruption under his skin following the motion like it was always a half-second behind. “Every person in Wynmire is held by something. Duty, fear, love, prophecy. You’re just more honest about your chains.”
“Philosophical bullshit before breakfast? You really are a villain.”
He smiled, and I hated that it almost looked genuine, like he actually found me amusing rather than just a tool to be used. “Your grandmother said something similar when I first met her. Though she was more polite about it. She called me ‘exhaustingly metaphorical.’”
“Yeah, well, she didn’t have the benefit of knowing what a complete bastard you’d become.”
“Become?” He leaned forward, and the chair grew with him, adjusting to his movement. “I haven’t changed, child. I’ve always been exactly this. The only difference is that now I have the power to reshape the world according to my vision instead of merely dreaming about it.”
“And what vision is that? Turn everything into this?” I gestured at the writhing walls, trying not to flinch when one of the face-shapes turned to track my movement. “Make the whole world into your personal nightmare palace?”
“No, my vision is to make the whole world alive. Connected. No more separation between the Root and the Bloom, between growth and decay, between the mortal and the eternal.” His corrupted marks pulsed with golden light, and I felt them reaching for mine again.
“Your world—Earth—it’s dying. You know this.
You’ve seen it. The gardens failing, the green things retreating, the slow strangling of everything natural and wild. ”
I wanted to argue, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. Grandma Jo’s garden had been an oasis in an increasingly concrete world. Every year, fewer butterflies. Every season, less magic.
“So what?” I said instead. “You’re going to save Earth by corrupting Wynmire? That’s brilliant logic.”
“I’m going to save both by making them one.” He stood, and the chair dissolved back into the floor with a wet sound. “The barrier between worlds is already weakening. Your presence here proves that. But it’s been a slow decay, a gradual dissolution that will end with both worlds simply… fading.”
He moved closer, and I pressed back against the headboard despite myself, the chain rattling mockingly. My cracked rib protested.
“Unless,” he continued, “someone takes control of the process. Guides it. Shapes it into something new instead of letting it collapse into nothing.”
“Unless you take control, you mean.”
“Who else? The old courts, playing their political games while the rot spreads? The rebels, so focused on opposing me they can’t see the bigger picture? Or perhaps your precious Kaelren, too consumed by his own corruption to think beyond his next act of violence?”
“Don’t talk about him,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
“Protective of him still? Even knowing what I made him to be?” Auradelle reached into his coat and pulled out something that made my blood freeze and my markings burn simultaneously.
A locket. Not mine—I could still feel Grandma Jo’s, warm against my throat, hidden under my shift. But identical to it in every way that mattered.
“Recognize this?” he asked softly.
“That’s… how?”
“Your grandmother’s wasn’t the only one made.
There were three, originally. Tokens of the first compact, when the barriers between worlds were established.
One for Earth, one for Wynmire, and one…
” He opened it with a click that echoed too loudly in the breathing room, revealing not a picture but a small, perfect seed that pulsed with inner light. “One for the bridge between them.”
My markings responded to the seed’s presence, flaring so hot I gasped and doubled over. I could feel them spreading—from my collarbone up toward my throat, down toward my heart—and everywhere they touched felt like being rewritten at a cellular level.
“Stop,” I gasped, my hands clawing at my chest. “Whatever you’re doing—”