Chapter 15 Elza
ELZA
For three days, I do not go to the lower cells. I send Tarek with the food and water, a silent admission of cowardice that chafes at me like a raw wound. I avoid the very heart of my own fortress, because the monster chained there has undone me.
I try to scrub him from my skin. In the washroom, I use a rough lye soap and a coarse brush until my flesh is red and raw, but I can still feel the phantom pressure of his hands, still smell his scent in my hair. It is a stain on my soul, a brand I can never remove.
So, I throw myself into my duties. I lose myself in the endless, grinding work of keeping Haven alive.
I spend hours on the southern wall, directing the masons as they reinforce the section he pointed out, the mortar now mixed with crushed iron shavings.
His criticism was a weapon, but I will turn it into a shield.
“You work too hard, My Queen,” Tarek says, finding me atop the wall, my hands covered in grime and dust.
I look out over the small, bustling sanctuary I have carved from the world’s forgotten places.
The title still feels strange on my ears, even after all these years.
I never asked to be a queen. There is no human kingdom left to rule.
But when I led the first wave of escaped slaves to this ruin, when we fought off raiders and starvation with nothing but our bare hands and a desperate will to live, they needed a leader.
They saw the scars on my back and the fire in my eyes and they started calling me their Scarred Queen.
The queen of the broken, the lost, and the defiant.
It is a crown forged of desperation and loyalty, and it is heavier than any crown of gold.
“A queen’s work is never done, Tarek,” I reply, my voice rough with exhaustion. I am trying to build a future for them, but all I can feel is the past, chained and breathing in my dungeon.
I try to lose myself in my son. I spend the afternoons with Lyren, helping him with his reading, watching him spar.
But even there, there is no escape. I see the flash of silver in his hair, the startling intensity in his gaze, and I see him.
My love for my son is a fierce, pure thing, but now it is tangled with the shame and confusion of what I have done.
I have willingly lain with the creature who is his father, and the hypocrisy of it eats at me like a cancer.
On the third evening, Lyren finds me in the armory, where I am sharpening my own dagger with a focus that borders on obsession.
The scrape of steel on whetstone is a harsh, grating sound that almost drowns out my thoughts.
He comes and sits beside me on the bench, his small legs dangling, his expression uncharacteristically solemn.
For a long time, he just watches me. Then, his small, quiet voice cuts through the noise.
“Mama,” he asks, his dark eyes serious. “Why is the winged man so sad?”
The whetstone slips from my hand and clatters to the floor. The sound is unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. My blood runs cold. I stare at my son, at his innocent, perceptive face, and I cannot find the breath to answer.
I see a monster. A cold, calculating, unfeeling thing. A predator. But Lyren… he sees sadness. He senses the vast, echoing loneliness that I felt for a terrifying moment through the psychic link. The loneliness of a creature who has lived for ten thousand years and never felt a moment of warmth.
The thought shakes me to my very core. It makes me question everything. I can no longer hide from him. I can no longer hide from what happened between us.
The next morning, I take the bucket and bowl myself. My hand is steady on my dagger as I descend the stairs. The fear is still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it is overshadowed by a new, burning curiosity.
When I enter the cell, he is different.
He is still chained to the wall, his posture one of patient stillness.
But the way he looks at me has changed. The cold, analytical assessment is gone, or at least, it has been pushed to the background.
A raw, possessive focus is directed solely at me, a tangible heat that warms the air between us.
It is the gaze of a dragon watching over its hoard.
It is more terrifying than his apathy ever was.
I set the food down, my movements slow and deliberate, my senses on high alert. I feel his gaze follow my every move, a physical touch that makes my skin prickle.
I am about to leave without a word, to retreat back to the safety of my anger. But he speaks first, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through the stone floor.
“How is Lyren?”
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, silent gasp.
Not “the specimen.” Not “the anomaly.” Lyren.
He used his name. The name I gave him. The shift is so monumental, so unexpected, that I am left completely unguarded.
I turn and stare at him, my mouth slightly agape, my carefully constructed defenses crumbling to dust.
He studies me, and for the very first time, I see a glimmer of something other than cold logic or possessive fire in his eyes. A deep, aching conflict. A war being waged in the starless depths of his soul.
He holds my gaze. His voice, when he speaks again, is not the formal monotone of the Vrakken Enforcer. It is the guttural, possessive growl of the monster I challenged, the male I took into my body. It is a declaration. A claim.
“He is Vrakken,” he states, not as a threat, but as an undeniable, biological fact.
His eyes burn into mine, and he finishes the sentence, his claim expanding, his possession absolute.
“He is mine.”