Chapter 10
ELARA
Iwoke on a scream I didn’t remember making.
My throat burned anyway.
I bolted upright in the dark, heart battering my ribs like it wanted out, breath shredding in and out of me too fast to count. For one disorienting second, I didn’t know where I was, only that heat pressed in from every direction and my skin felt wrong, like it didn’t belong to me anymore.
Blood. Stone. Frostflower petals blooming from my hands like an apology that meant nothing.
Queen Marisella’s calm voice.
Bring out the next one.
My stomach twisted. I shoved a hand over my mouth and swallowed hard, fighting the sudden rise of bile and panic.
Silk clung to my legs. Too soft. Too clean.
Too expensive to be real. I tried to move, and pain answered immediately, bruises blooming under skin like reminders I hadn’t earned rest. Ribs.
Thighs. Shoulder. Palms scraped raw from gripping a blade all day like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
I dragged a shaking hand down my face and forced myself to breathe.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
It didn’t help.
Because my body was still in the training yard. Still on the ground. Still staring up at Isolde like she had the right to decide whether I stood or shattered.
Something shifted near the edge of the bed.
My lungs stopped working.
I jerked back instinctively, reaching for the blanket like it could save me, and then the darkness spoke.
“Elara.”
Valen’s voice.
Low. Smooth. Too close.
My heart slammed so hard it hurt. I blinked, vision struggling to catch up, and there he was. Not looming like a monster. Not lounging like a king.
Just standing there in the dark like he belonged in it.
Like the night had opened a door for him and only him.
“What are you doing here?” My voice came out thin and raw, which was humiliating, because I’d managed not to sound like a frightened child all day and apparently my dignity clocked out the second I fell asleep.
I pushed myself upright too fast, hair sticking to my face, blanket tangled around my legs. The room was still dim, firelight licking the walls in restless waves. For one blessed second, I considered pretending I was dead. The crypt had taught me the value of playing unresponsive.
Valen moved near the door like he’d always belonged there. Like the queen’s quarters were just another war room and I was simply another problem he’d been assigned.
His gaze swept over me once, calm as a blade. Not leering. Not soft.
Assessing.
“You were having a nightmare,” he said, as if he’d come to comment on the weather.
Of course. That explained everything. The Dragon King’s personal hobby: midnight check-ins. Next he’d be bringing me tea and a warm blanket and asking about my feelings.
My throat worked around nothing. “I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t shift his weight. Didn’t even look offended that I’d just spoken to him like he was some nosy servant who’d wandered into the wrong hallway.
He blinked once, slow. “Waking you up.”
I stared at him. “You broke into the queen’s room to wake me up.”
“I walked into a room I have graciously let you stay in,” he corrected, voice flat.
That was somehow worse.
“I assume the great people of Ashenveil don’t allow guests the dignity of privacy,” I snapped. My voice cracked on the last word, which made my stomach drop straight through the floor. I cleared my throat and tried again, slower. Meaner. “Leave, Valen. Or I’ll freeze you where you stand.”
His mouth twitched, the faintest shift. Not quite a smile. More like a reminder that he could have one if he ever felt like it.
“Get dressed,” he said.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
Valen’s gaze didn’t drift. Didn’t dip. Didn’t do anything a man in a room with a half-dressed woman was expected to do. His attention stayed on my face, on my eyes, on the only parts of me he couldn’t touch.
“Get. Dressed. Now.” His response was so infuriating.
I stared at him.
Then I stared harder, because sometimes staring felt like the only power I had left.
“What,” I said carefully, “is happening right now?”
“I want to show you something,” he said.
My skin prickled. Every part of me that had survived Icespire and Emberfall and the journey here screamed the same truth.
Nothing given by a king is free.
“I don’t want to see anything,” I said. “I want to sleep. I want to stop training until my bones stop creaking like old doors. I want to go home.”
Where was home?
His gaze dipped, not to my mouth, not to my body.
To my hands.
Like he was checking for frost.
Then it lifted back to my eyes.
“Get dressed,” he repeated, quieter now.
That should have felt less threatening.
It did not.
“Or what?” I asked, because my mouth never learned the art of survival the way my body did. “You’ll throw me into the lava fields yourself? Save the dragon the trouble?”
Because if I was going to be murdered, I at least wanted it to be efficient. Preferably with witnesses. And maybe a note admitting it was a bad decision.
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Not anger.
Something more precise.
The kind of look that didn’t belong to tantrums or threats. It belonged to calculations. To a man deciding exactly how much damage he could do with as few movements as possible.
He stepped closer, stopping just outside the space where my breath would touch him. Like he was giving me a choice without calling it mercy.
Which was infuriating.
If you were going to be a villain, at least commit to it. Stop hovering in this maddening middle ground where you look at me like I’m fragile while speaking to me like I’m disposable.
“You’re sore,” he said.
The statement landed wrong. Intimate. Observant. Like he had noticed. Like he had cared.
Like he’d been paying attention to details that weren’t his.
I hated the heat that crawled up my neck anyway. Hated that my body reacted to concern like it was a compliment.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
Because “I’m fine” was the only lie I’d ever told that everyone expected. It was practically a greeting.
His gaze flicked to my shoulder where the fabric of my nightshirt had slipped, revealing the bruise blooming there. Dark. Ugly. Isolde’s signature.
I yanked the cloth back up on instinct, like that would erase it. Like modesty was going to save me from the fact that my skin had been turned into evidence.
“I didn’t ask if you were fine,” he said. “I said you’re sore.”
I did not have a clever comeback for the fact that he was standing in my room in the middle of the night like he owned my nightmares.
Like he could read the damage and file it away. And worse, like the sight of it had bothered him.
He turned toward the door.
I watched his back, heart hammering like it wanted out of my ribs.
He paused, just before stepping into the hall. Not looking at me, but somehow still addressing me completely. “Get dressed, Elara. If you don’t come willingly,” he said, voice calm as cruelty, “I’ll carry you.” A laugh tried to crawl up my throat. It came out brittle and ugly. “You’re an asshole!”
He glanced over his shoulder.
Harsh eyes. All fire. No apology.
“Yes,” he said. “Hurry along.”
I would like to tell you I made a dignified choice.
I did not.
I scrambled out of bed like it had grown teeth, yanked on my leathers with shaking hands, and shoved my hair back from my face in some vague attempt to look like I was not about to follow a murderous king into a mountain at midnight like a fool in a cautionary tale.
When I stepped into the hall, he was waiting.
He did not hold out a hand. He did not offer reassurance. He simply turned and began walking like I was already behind him.
I followed because I did not know how to do anything else.
The corridors were quiet. Not empty. Ashenveil never felt empty. It felt awake. It felt like the stone itself listened to footfalls and decided whether you deserved to keep making them.
We passed guards who dropped their gaze, and descended deeper into the fortress, down staircases carved directly into the rock, the air growing warmer, thicker, threaded with smoke and something faintly metallic.
Finally, we stopped in front of a door I had never seen.
No guards. No carvings. No grand insignia.
Just black stone and a lock shaped like a claw.
Valen pressed his palm to the seal.
The mountain seemed to exhale, and the door opened without sound.
Heat rolled out.
Not the living heat of the keep. Not the oppressive furnace-breath of Ashenveil’s public rooms.
This warmth was different.
It did not push.
It did not threaten.
It lingered like a memory.
I hesitated at the threshold.
Valen stepped aside. “Come,” he said.
I walked in.
The room was small compared to everything else in this fortress. Intentionally so. It felt contained. Protected. Like the mountain had curled around it and decided nothing inside would be touched by accident.
There was no decadence.
No silk.
No gold.
A simple bed with plain linens. A chair by a cold hearth. A shelf of worn books stacked like they had been read, not displayed.
And on a small table beside the bed sat a single object.
A comb.
Old. Bone, maybe. The teeth smoothed with use. A few dark strands of hair still caught between them, too fine to belong to anyone who fought with a sword.
I stared at it, and my mouth went dry.
“This is…” I started, and the words died in my throat the second I stepped over the threshold.
The room didn’t feel lived in. It felt preserved.
Like the air had been told to hold its breath. Like everything inside these walls had learned to exist in quiet so nothing risked disturbing whatever was left of her.
Valen’s voice cut in, low. “My mother’s quarters.”
My eyes swept the room. The bed was made, linens smoothed with an obsessive kind of care. No dust. No decay. No evidence of time winning.
It was wrong.
Not wrong in a scary way.
Wrong in a way that made your chest tighten because it meant someone had loved her enough to refuse the world’s usual cruelty.
Something in Valen’s face went rigid. “I haven’t been in this room in a couple of years.”