Chapter 22 Sable
Sable
The memory hit like a blade between my ribs.
They were talking in the corridor.
Varro's men never bothered to lower their voices around me. I was furniture to them. A tool. Something that processed information but didn't have feelings worth considering.
"Plague's spreading through the east quarter," one said. "Whole streets quarantined. They're burning bodies faster than they can count them."
"Anyone we know?"
"Some scryer. The one with the truth-taster daughter."
The pestle slipped from my fingers. Shattered on the floor.
My mother. The woman I hadn't seen in six months—not since Rafe's betrayal, not since Varro had branded me and dragged me into this hell. I'd sent her money when I could, secret messages through contacts who owed me favors. But I hadn't held her. Hadn't heard her voice. Hadn't told her I loved her.
And now she was dying. Alone. In some quarantine house across the city while I ground herbs for the man who owned my soul.
Before I told my feet to move, I was already running.
I made it five steps before guards caught me. Varro's men, always watching, always waiting. They dragged me back as I screamed, as I clawed at their faces, as I begged them to let me go to her.
They threw me at Varro's feet.
He looked down at me with those cold, calculating eyes. No anger. No pity. Just assessment. Like I was an animal that had slipped its leash and needed to be reminded of its place.
"You know the rules, pet." His voice was soft. Almost gentle. "You don't leave without permission."
"My mother is dying." The words came out broken. Raw. I’d never begged before, but I did then. "Please. Please let me see her. Just once. Just to say goodbye."
His lips twisted into a cruel smirk, his eyes dancing with delight. "No."
The first blow came from behind—one of his guards, a club to the back of my knees. I went down hard, chin cracking against the stone floor as blood filled my mouth.
"You belong to me," Varro said, crouching down to grip my jaw, forcing me to look at him. "Your time. Your magic. Your body. Everything you are is mine. And I don't share."
"She's my mother—"
He backhanded me so hard my vision went white.
"She's nothing. A used-up scryer with failing eyes and a daughter too stupid to know her place." He stood, brushing off his hands like I'd dirtied them. "Take her to the lower rooms. I’ll be there in a minute."
The lower rooms.
I'd heard whispers about them. The place where Varro broke the ones who fought back. The place where screams went to die.
They dragged me down stone stairs slick with something I didn't want to identify. The air grew cold. Damp. The smell of old blood and fear soaked into the walls like prayers that had never been answered.
Varro followed.
He always did his own work when it mattered. I’d heard that, too.
The first cut was shallow—a line across my shoulder blade, just deep enough to bleed. "That's for running."
I bit through my lip to keep from screaming.
The second cut was deeper, down my ribs. "That's for thinking you could leave."
The knife was so sharp, the pain hadn’t even registered until it was too late to stifle my scream.
"There she is." Varro's breath was hot against my ear. "There's my pet. Did you think I wouldn't notice you passing notes to guards? Sending money? Planning your escape? Did you think I'd just let you walk away?"
He gripped my hair, yanking my head back as he traced a line up my arm, resting the blade against my jugular. "There is no walking away, Sable. Not from me. "
Then Varro took his time, mapping his ownership onto my skin in lines of fire and blood. Every time I passed out, they threw water on my face and started again.
I lost count of the cuts.
I lost count of the hours.
And when I resisted, then came the whip.
Leather soaked in something that burned—salt, maybe, or spelled oil. It laid my back open in stripes that wept fire with every breath. I hung from the chains they'd locked around my wrists, my toes barely touching the ground, my voice gone raw from screaming.
"Are you ready to behave?" Varro asked, circling me like a shark scenting blood.
I waited until he was holding my chin in his hand before I spat blood right in his face. Nothing mattered anymore. Not what he would do to me, not my life. I would die in this room, I knew that.
But he wouldn’t break me.
The whip cracked again. And again. And again.
When I finally lost consciousness, I dreamed of my mother. Of her hands in my hair. Of her voice telling me I would be free someday.
I woke in darkness.
The manacles were already on—cold iron wrapped tight around my wrists, etched with wards that made my magic go silent. Like a limb that had fallen asleep. Like a piece of myself had been amputated.
The room was small. No windows. No light except what seeped under the door, thin as a dying breath. I couldn't tell whether it was day or night. Couldn't tell how long I'd been there.
I tried to escape, anyway.
The first time, I made it to the door before the brand flared. Pain like molten metal poured through my veins, and I collapsed, convulsing, foam on my lips.
The second time, I tried to pick the lock on the manacles with a splinter from the floor. The wards of my brand shocked me so badly I couldn't move for what felt like days.
The third time, I screamed until my throat bled, pounding on the door until my fists were raw, begging anyone who could hear to let me out, let me go to her, she was dying, please, please, please—
No one came.
The ouroboros burned with wrath as the spelled manacles held any semblance of my power from me. The darkness pressed in.
I stopped counting the days. There was no point. Time had become meaningless—just an endless loop of pain and silence. I thought about my mother constantly. Was she still alive? Was she in pain? Did she know I'd tried to reach her? Did she think I'd abandoned her?
The not-knowing was worse than the torture.
And then, finally, the door opened.
Light poured in, blinding after so long in darkness. I flinched away, shielding my eyes, my heart hammering with something that might have been hope—
Varro stood in the doorway. He looked... bored. Inconvenienced.
"The plague has passed," he said. "You can come out now."
I stared at him, my cracked lips forming a single word. "Mother?"
"Dead." He said it like he was commenting on the weather. "Weeks ago. They burned the bodies to stop the spread. Mass grave somewhere outside the city." A pause. A smile. "You didn't really think you'd get to say goodbye, did you?"
Something inside me shattered.
I’d sworn he wouldn’t break me, but I had been a fool. I hadn’t known there was something worse than broken. This was destruction. Annihilation. The death of something fundamental, some piece of my soul that had still believed in hope, in rescue, in the possibility of something better.
My mother was dead.
She'd died alone, in pain, thinking I'd abandoned her.
And I hadn't even been able to hold her hand.
The scream that tore out of me wasn't human. It was something feral and wounded, an animal sound that echoed off the stone walls and—
"Sable!"
Hard hands gripped my shoulders, shaking me. Heat curled against my chest—Trouble, his foxfire blazing, his panic flooding our bond.
And Harkan's voice filtered through the war raging in my memories, ragged with fear. "Come back to me. Sable, come back—"
I gasped, lurching forward, and the world slammed back into focus. The courtyard. The stone wall. The box with the manacles still open on the ground beside me.
Blood was streaming from my nose, dripping down my chin, soaking into my shirt. My hands were shaking so violently I couldn't control them. And the taste in my mouth—copper and rot and years of agony compressed into a single, devastating moment.
"I'm here," I managed, but the words came out broken. "I'm—I'm here."
Harkan pulled me against his chest, his arms banding around me so tight it almost hurt. Through the bond, I felt his terror, his rage, his desperate need to protect me from something that had already happened.
"What did you see?" he asked, his voice rough.
"Everything." The word was a wound. "He sent me... he sent me the chains he used when my mother died. When he locked me away and tortured me and—" My voice cracked. "He knew. He knew what my gift would do. He wanted me to relive it."
Harkan's growl vibrated through his chest. "I'm going to fucking kill him."
The words should have comforted me. Should have made me feel protected, cherished, avenged.
Instead, they ignited something else entirely.
Varro had sent me those manacles, knowing exactly what they would do. Knowing my gift would force me to relive every cut, every lash, every moment of darkness. He'd weaponized my own magic against me, the same way he'd weaponized everything else—my mother's illness, my desperation, my hope.
He thought it would break me. Thought I'd be cowering in the corner, easy prey for whatever cruelty he had planned next.
He was wrong.
I wasn't the nineteen-year-old girl he'd chained in that room. I wasn't alone anymore. And I wasn't afraid of him—I was fucking furious.
"Not if I kill him first."
The words came out cold. Steady.
He wanted me broken. Wanted me weak and trembling when he arrived.
He was going to be so disappointed.
A horn split the air.
I jerked in Harkan's arms, my head snapping toward the sound. Through the courtyard archway, I could see wolves scrambling, voices rising in alarm.
"That's the perimeter signal," Harkan said, his body going rigid. "Someone's approaching."
"Varro." I knew it in my bones. The timing was too perfect. Send the gift. Let it destroy me. Then arrive while I was still bleeding from the wounds he'd reopened.
"You don't have to—"
"Yes, I do." I pulled away from him, wiping the blood from my face with the back of my hand. My legs were unsteady, my head pounding, my magic scraped raw from the forced memory. But I would stand. I would face him.