26.
Next day.....
She wasn’t summoned to the trial. She was dragged.
Two guards—masked, silent entered her room at dawn and pulled her from the bed without a word. No breakfast.
No warning. No light in the hallway except flickering torches. Isolde didn’t fight.
She had learned by now—fighting never stopped the pain.
Sometimes it only moved it. They brought her to a new room.
It was small, circular, windowless. The floor tiled in black and white. In the center stood a table. On it: a box. Black wood. No lock.
Dante sat on a velvet chair behind the table, arms resting across the armrest, gloved fingers tapping slowly.
He looked like a god carved from grief and fire shirtless beneath a deep burgundy coat, boots polished, rings gleaming.
His expression unreadable. His presence overwhelming.
She stood barefoot before him, wearing only a white shift. Her collar remained fastened tightly at her throat.
The scent of smoke and dried blood clung to her skin.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked softly. She shook her head.
“I want to give you a chance,” he said, rising to his feet. “A single opportunity to prove that you understand me now not just my rules… but the truth behind them.”
She didn’t speak. He stepped to the table and gestured to the box “This is your trial.”
She stared at it, her hands trembling at her sides.
“What’s in it?”
“You’ll see. But first, you must understand the terms.”
He circled her slowly, like a wolf scenting for hesitation “There is something inside that box which will cause pain. Not to you… but to someone you’ve seen before. Someone whose face you won’t forget.”
She turned to look at him, throat tightening.
He smiled “The boy from the café.”
“Lucien? But he’s dead.
”
“No. The other one—the one who asked you to meet him at the mall.”
Her heart plummeted “He’s still alive.
For now.”
He moved behind her, his voice soft against her ear “I caught him trying to leave town two weeks ago. Found letters in his apartment—letters to you he never sent. Cowardice in ink. It made me sick.”
She shuddered.
“Now,” Dante said, stepping forward and unlocking the lid of the box, “you will prove something to me.”
He flipped the lid open.
Inside was a single switch.
And a monitor.
The monitor blinked on—revealing the boy, bound to a metal chair, blindfolded, bloodied, mouth taped shut.
Isolde gasped.
His left leg was visibly broken.
His breathing labored.
“No one knows where he is,” Dante said calmly. “No one will ever find him. But I’m offering you this—mercy, or loyalty.”
He gestured to the switch.
“If you flip it, it will release a neurotoxin. Painless. He’ll die in seconds. No more fear. No more pain. A kindness.”
Her knees buckled slightly.
“And if I don’t?” she whispered.
Dante’s lips curved “Then he suffers until nightfall. One inch at a time.”
She turned to him, eyes wide.
“You… want me to choose if he lives or dies?”
“I want to know if you’ve learned what matters more freedom, or belonging.”
Silence.
Only the boy’s ragged breathing filled the screen.
The switch gleamed.
Isolde’s hands hovered over the box.
Tears slipped down her cheeks. If she flipped the switch—she became him. If she didn’t… someone would still die. Just slower.
Her stomach turned. Her skin crawled.
But this was a language Dante understood.
Pain was the currency. Loyalty the price.
She clenched her jaw.
And placed her hand on the switch.
He stepped beside her.
Watched. Waited. “Say it,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Say why you’re doing it.”
She looked up at him. Eyes glassy. Voice shaking “Because you own me. Because my mercy belongs to you now.”
His eyes lit.
She flipped the switch.
The screen went black. No sound. No confirmation.
Only Dante’s approval.
Which came in the form of his hand sliding around her throat, tilting her head back.
And his mouth at her ear “Perfect, little dove. You’ve just earned your place at my table.”
He didn’t take her back to her room. He took her to the grand dining hall.
Just the two of them.
A feast already laid.
She sat silent as he poured wine into her glass—red, thick, laced with something she couldn’t name.
But she drank. She let him feed her pieces of roasted lamb with his fingers.
Let him press a kiss to her temple.
Let him stroke her thigh beneath the table.
Because tonight… she had passed.
She had played the role.
She had become the thing he wanted her to be.
But deep inside, beneath the blood and bone, a whisper still stirred.
A voice that said “This was the price of survival. But not the end of the war.”