Chapter 25
ELARA
Ididn’t know how long I’d been in chains.
Time stopped meaning anything after the first day when my stomach started eating itself, and the second day my mouth went so dry my tongue felt like it had split down the middle.
The cold never left. It lived in the stone, in the air, in my bones.
It wasn’t the clean cold of snow outside.
It was the dungeon cold, the kind that crawled into you slowly and stayed there out of spite.
My wrists were raw where the cuffs had rubbed. My shoulders burned from hanging in the same position for too long. Every breath pulled tight through my ribs like my body was rationing air the way Icespire rationed food.
No footsteps came down here unless someone wanted something from me.
And no one wanted anything except my silence.
I let my head tip forward until my hair fell across my face. It was the only mercy I could give myself, the ability to hide. Not from them. From the light. From my own thoughts.
I tried counting heartbeats to measure the hours.
It turned into thousands. It turned into nothing.
My mouth tasted like copper and old fear. My stomach clenched so hard it came in waves, like my body was trying to fold itself into a smaller target.
I laughed once, a dry sound that scraped my throat raw.
They had wanted me quiet.
Congratulations. I was quiet.
Then the door opened.
Light spilled in, white and brutal, and my eyes watered instantly. Footsteps followed, heavy and purposeful. Boots. Armor. The careless confidence of men who didn’t have to be afraid of anything down here.
“Get her up,” someone said.
Hands grabbed my arms.
I tried to twist away on instinct. My muscles betrayed me. I was too weak to fight properly, too empty to summon even a convincing struggle.
“Touch me again,” I rasped, voice shredded, “and I’ll bite through your fingers.”
A soldier snorted. “She still talks.”
“Shame,” another muttered. “I was hoping she’d died overnight.”
They unhooked the chains from the wall and yanked me forward anyway. Pain tore through my shoulders, and I gagged on the sound that tried to come out of me.
“Easy,” one of them said, not even pretending he meant it. “The queen wants her intact.”
“How generous,” I whispered.
My feet dragged for a second before I forced them to move. The floor was ice slick, my legs shaky beneath me. I stumbled and a gauntleted hand caught my elbow, more irritated than concerned.
“Walk.”
“I am,” I snapped.
They hauled me down the corridor, my bare feet slapping cold stone, my breath coming in shallow, ragged pulls. Every movement hurt. Even blinking felt like work.
I lifted my head as they shoved me into a brighter chamber.
This room was not the throne room.
It was worse.
A table stood in the center. A basin of water. Linen folded neatly like anyone down here was meant to live.
A man waited beside the table. He looked wrong in a way I couldn’t fully name at first. Not deformed. Not monstrous. Just wrong, like something in him had learned how to pretend at being human and never quite mastered it.
His features were narrow. Too precise. His eyes were pale and flat, watching me with the mild, patient interest of a person inspecting meat. When he smiled, it didn’t reach those eyes. It only showed teeth.
“Ah,” he murmured. His voice was soft, almost pleasant, and it made my skin crawl. “There you are.”
The soldiers shoved me forward. My knees nearly buckled. I caught myself on rage alone. “Who are you?” I asked, forcing the words past the dryness in my throat.
He stepped closer. His movements were careful. Nimble. Like his bones were made of wire and he could bend whichever way he wanted. His hands were long-fingered and too graceful to belong in a place like this. They reminded me of spiders. Patient. Quiet. Certain they would win.
“The queen has ordered me to erase certain memories,” he said, as if he were explaining the weather.
For a second I thought I misheard him. My laugh came out cracked. “Erase.”
“Yes.” He tilted his head. “It is remarkably simple, in the right hands.”
His breath reached me when he leaned in. It was foul. Rot and mint layered together like he thought sweets could disguise decay. My stomach turned. I shifted back instinctively. The soldiers tightened their grip. The man clicked his tongue softly. “This shouldn’t hurt too much.”
I stared at him. “What are you?”
“A Cognivariance Weaver,” he said.
The word landed like a damp cloth over my face. Mind magic. They could change memories and perceptions. Change what you think you know. The kind of magic that didn’t leave bruises you could show someone. The kind that turned your mind into a room someone else could rearrange while you watched.
“I’ll need to sift,” he continued lightly, as if we were discussing books on a shelf. “The mind hides what it fears. Layers it. Locks it behind nonsense. I will have to move through several memories to find the ones I require.”
My pulse kicked hard. I tried to swallow. My throat refused. “Why?”
The man blinked slowly. “Because the world cannot know the queen ordered you to lie.” The cold in my marrow turned icy.
I lifted my chin. “So she’ll just make me forget she did it?”
He hummed. “If you forget, you cannot confess. That is, if you survive the mind magic. Stronger men than you haven’t.”
“What if I die?”
His smile widened by a hair.
“Oh,” he murmured, almost fond. “Then you die with the truth buried properly. Either way, I succeed.”
My hands curled into fists.
The soldiers shoved me toward the table. I twisted away, panic flaring.
“No.”
The man sighed like I was inconveniencing him. “Hold her.”
They forced me down. My cheek struck the cold metal surface. Pain flared through my jaw. My wrists were pinned. “Stop,” I snarled, struggling against hands that felt like stone. “Stop or I swear to the dead I will take your eyes first.”
The man leaned over me.
His breath hit my face again, and I gagged.
He smiled. “Only half of my patients go mad,” he murmured, voice almost cheerful.
“So you see, your chances are decent.” My stomach dropped through the floor.
He lifted his hands. Fingers hovering above my skull like he was about to play an instrument.
“Try not to fight,” he added gently. “It makes the mind tear.”
My laugh came out broken. “You’re going to tear it anyway.”
His fingertips settled against my temples. The world lurched. Not sideways.
Inward.
My body stayed on the table, trapped and shaking, but my mind split open like a seam giving way. Something yanked me backward through darkness, through cold, through sensation so brutal it felt like glass. A memory slammed into place.
The crypt. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. The walls were ice and silence and death, layers of frozen royal bodies stacked behind crystal like the kingdom’s favorite secret. Elara was there with me. Wait. This was Aeliana’s memory.
Thin. Pale. Lips cracked. Eyes too bright. We were huddled together on the stone, wrapped in threadbare furs, shaking so hard our teeth clicked.
“We haven’t eaten in a week,” I whispered. Elara pressed her forehead to mine like we could share warmth that way. Like we could share strength.
“Aeliana,” she said quietly. “I love you. It’s just you and me.”
My chest ached. I clung to her like she was the last living thing in the world.
The man’s voice cut through it. “Mm. Wrong one.”
The crypt shattered. Another memory ripped me open.
Fire.
The dragon.
The roar made the world buckle. Heat so intense it felt like my skin peeled back from my bones. Frost turned to steam in an instant. The air screamed. Aeliana’s hand was slipping from mine.
This was my memory. My most painful one.
I was screaming her name.
Valen’s hand hit my chest.
Not gentle. Not kind.
A command.
A pull.
And something inside me ripped loose like cloth tearing.
I gasped in the present, body jerking on the table.
The man clicked his tongue, mildly annoyed. “Also wrong.”
The memory snapped away.
Darkness.
Then another.
The dungeon in Icespire.
Chains. Stone. The smell of cold blood.
Queen Marisella’s voice, calm as a knife.
“Perform the rites on the dead,” she told me. “Prove your bloodline. Prove your worth.”
My hands were shaking. My stomach hollow. My skin bruised. I looked at the bodies and thought I would throw up and never stop.
The man sighed. “Not quite, but I’ll erase that one for good measure. I’m nothing if not thorough.”
The dungeon collapsed. Piece by piece breaking away into a black void. Where was I again? Who am I?
A new memory slammed down with brutal softness.
The cave.
The Shadowlands.
Fire crackling low.
Rhydian’s mouth on my throat, not hungry, not claiming, just there. His hands moving with reverence. His voice rough in my ear. His warmth. His weight. The hum of his magic threading through me. My body unclenching for the first time in weeks. Sleep coming without fear.
Me believing, like a fool, that safety was real. The man made an irritated sound. “Ancestors. Definitely wrong. Disgusting.”
The cave vanished.
I was dragged through darkness again, my thoughts snagging and tearing, my body convulsing with the force of it. It felt like someone had reached into my skull with hooks and started rummaging.
Then.
Stillness.
A room full of gold and cold.
The queen’s quarters of Icespire.
Marisella standing over me.
Me on my knees.
My hands clenched so tight my nails cut my palms.
Her voice, intimate and cruel.
“So remember, little imposter—this life is not yours. It never will be. You are a shadow cast in her name, and you will do exactly as I command. Or you will suffer in ways you cannot yet imagine.”
My stomach dropped even inside the memory. “There,” he whispered, pleased. “That’s the one.” The satisfaction in his voice made bile rise in my throat.