Chapter 30
ELARA
Iwoke up wrong.
Not because the dungeon was cold. Not because my stomach was a hollowed-out cavern that had started eating itself. Not even because the chains had carved red grooves into my wrists so deep I couldn’t tell where metal ended and skin began.
I woke up wrong because my bones were… in place.
Reset.
Set back into their proper shapes like I was a doll someone had snapped apart for entertainment, then carefully pieced together again once the novelty wore off.
The pain was still there, of course. It lived in me now. It had moved in like a parasite. It pulsed behind my eyes and crawled under my skin and sat heavy in my joints like I’d swallowed stone.
But the unbearable, impossible agony from earlier was gone.
That meant only one thing.
The queen hadn’t wanted me dying yet.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the shadowed ceiling, trying to remember what it had felt like when Marisella’s power had locked into my ribs.
The exact point where my arm had bent too far.
The crack that hadn’t been sound so much as sensation.
The moment my mind had tried to flee my body, only to find there was nowhere to go.
It hadn’t been torture in the way people described it in stories.
There had been no rage in her face. No wildness. No loss of control.
Marisella had hurt me the way scholars dissected animals.
Interested.
Precise.
Patient.
She hadn’t been punishing me.
She had been studying how much pain a person could hold before truth started leaking out.
And the worst part was that she had been right about one thing.
Pain made you honest.
Not with words.
With noises. With shaking. With the involuntary humiliations of a body that refused to die quietly.
A bitter laugh scraped out of my throat, dry as dust.
I had screamed.
I’d begged.
I’d said I didn’t know until my voice broke, until the words stopped meaning anything at all and became nothing but sound. I’d screamed again anyway. Because that was what bodies did when they were being dismantled.
And then I’d blacked out, and when I woke up, my arm was straight. My wrist didn’t hang wrong anymore. My ribs didn’t grind like broken glass when I breathed.
The queen had repaired me.
So she could break me again later.
I rolled my head to the side. The movement sent a pulse of nausea through me. My stomach cramped, tight and angry, and saliva flooded my mouth like my body thought I might vomit even though there was nothing inside me to throw up.
My tongue scraped my teeth and found dried blood.
It tasted like copper and shame.
My eyes burned. My throat ached. I swallowed carefully, then squeezed my eyes shut.
I wanted to be furious.
I wanted to be defiant.
I wanted to feel the kind of rage that could keep a person upright when everything else failed.
But all I felt was the wreckage.
The aftermath.
The heavy, shaking quiet that came after pain so extreme it had stripped me down to something raw and animal.
I lay there and tried to remember how many days I’d been in this cell.
I couldn’t.
I tried to remember the last time I’d been clean.
I couldn’t.
I tried to remember the last time I’d heard a voice that wasn’t mocking me, threatening me, ordering me.
And the answer that rose inside my head was so sudden it stole my breath.
Aeliana.
My chest tightened painfully.
I hadn’t let myself think her name too often. I’d been trying not to touch that grief, because grief was soft, and softness got you killed.
But I couldn’t stop it now.
Aeliana had been my constant. My storm. My anchor. My curse. My girl in the dark who had still found a way to laugh even when the crypts were starving us, even when the cold had turned our fingers stiff and our stomachs empty and our lives into something the palace refused to acknowledge.
And I couldn’t hear her anymore.
I pressed my forehead to the stone, suddenly shaking.
The sob hit me without warning, violent and ugly. My throat convulsed. My lungs seized. And then it poured out of me, every bit of it, all the grief I had forced down, all the terror I had swallowed, all the loneliness that had been building since the moment I realized there was no one coming.
I cried until my ribs ached.
I cried until my face was wet and my nose was running and I hated myself for it.
I cried because I missed her so much it felt like my bones were splitting again.
I cried because I had thought, once, that sharing her soul would be a curse.
And right now, I would have begged our ancestors for that curse to speak.
Just once.
Just a whisper.
Just her voice in the back of my mind telling me I was not alone.
But there was nothing.
No presence. No cold edge. No familiar weight.
Only blankness.
And I knew, deep down, why.
The Hushcrafter.
That battered woman they’d dragged toward me like a warning. The one whose eyes had looked too frightened for her own body to belong to her anymore.
A Hushcrafter could weaken an opponent’s power.
That was what the queen had called her, like it was a tool she’d purchased, like a gift she’d unwrapped.
I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since.
Because I could feel the absence.
Not just of frost. Of strength.
I could feel the hollow space inside me where magic should have been blooming.
It was like reaching for an arm that wasn’t there. Or reaching for Aeliana. And finding nothing but air.
I pressed my palm against my chest, fingers curling into my shirt like I could hold myself together if I squeezed hard enough.
“I need you,” I whispered to the dark, to the dead girl who had been my whole world for so long that her absence felt like a missing limb.
“I need you,” I said again, voice breaking. “Please.”
Silence answered.
The dungeon didn’t care.
I turned my face toward the wall, shaking harder. The cold seeped into me, biting down into the ache. My teeth chattered.
And then, under all of it, the lowest, ugliest thought rose up and wrapped itself around my throat.
Maybe I deserved this.
Maybe this was the price for surviving when she hadn’t.
I bit down hard on my lip until I tasted blood again, because I couldn’t let my mind go there. I couldn’t afford it. Not when I was already so close to losing myself.
I wiped my face on my sleeve, furious at myself for crying, furious at the tears, furious at how human I still was.
I forced my breathing to steady.
I forced my hands to stop shaking.
Because if someone came down here again, if another set of boots stopped outside my cell, I refused to be caught sobbing like a child.
The universe, cruel as it was, decided to grant that wish immediately.
Footsteps approached.
Slow at first.
Then quicker.
A softer tread than guards. Not as heavy. Not as careless.
My spine went rigid.
My stomach dropped.
My mind scrambled, foggy and panicked.
No.
No, not again.
Not another round of questions. Not another broken arm. Not Lyra’s knife tracing my skin like she was writing her name on me.
I pushed myself upright with shaking arms, ignoring the way my joints screamed. I dragged my back against the wall and lifted my chin.
I would not curl up.
I would not beg.
I would not give them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart twice in one day.
The shadow outside my cell shifted.
Keys jingled.
The lock clicked.
My heart kicked hard enough it made my vision flicker.
The door creaked open.
Light spilled in.
I blinked against it, eyes watering instantly.
And then I saw silver hair.
For a split second, my mind refused to process it.
A woman stepped into the doorway, narrow shouldered and trembling, dressed in fine fabric that looked almost obscene in the dungeon’s filth. Her cheeks were flushed red from cold, or fear, or both.
Her eyes found me.
And something in her face shattered.
She covered her mouth with her hand like she was trying to stop a sound from escaping, but the sound came anyway. A soft, broken inhale. A quiet sob.
No guard followed her in.
No soldier barked an order.
She was alone.
And I knew her.
Princess Evadne.
Aeliana’s half-sister.
I stared at her, stunned.
Evadne stepped into the cell like she couldn’t help herself, like her body moved on instinct even while fear tore at her. She knelt on the stone floor in front of me without hesitation, silk pooling around her knees like spilled moonlight.
Her eyes swept over my bruised face, my swollen lip, the cut along my jaw, the raw marks on my wrists.
And then she cried beautifully, quietly, like she’d been holding it in for too long and my body was simply the thing that broke the dam.
“What have they done to you?” she whispered.
My throat tightened. My voice came out thin. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Evadne shook her head quickly, wiping her face with the back of her hand like she was angry at the tears. “I paid the guards.”
My eyes narrowed. “With what?”
Evadne’s mouth twitched, almost a grim attempt at humor. “Gold. And a promise that I won’t tell the queen which one of them is stealing from her stores.”
A bitter laugh scraped out of me. It hurt. “That’s… bold.”
“I’m tired of being afraid,” she whispered, and her voice wavered as she said it, like she didn’t fully believe herself yet.
She reached behind her and pulled a pack from her shoulder. It looked heavy, overstuffed, like she’d crammed it full in a hurry.
Food.
The scent hit me before I even saw it. Warm bread wrapped in cloth. Dried meat. A small jar of something that smelled like honey. A flask that clinked softly.
My stomach growled so loudly I wanted to die on the spot out of sheer humiliation.
Evadne didn’t smile. She didn’t mock me.
She just looked devastated.
“Here,” she said, voice trembling. “Please.”
I tried to reach for it and my hands shook so badly the movement was pathetic.
Evadne shifted closer and broke off a small piece of bread, holding it gently to my lips like she was feeding something fragile. Something that might snap if she moved too fast.
I hated how much I needed it.
I hated the weakness in my body, the way hunger made me helpless.
But the bread touched my tongue, and I didn’t care anymore.