Chapter 12 Leora
LEORA
Iwake to the color gray and the sound of my own shallow breathing.
I am not in the vast, velvet-draped bed where the world ended and began again. I am curled on the rug before the cold hearth in the guest room Imas locked me in weeks ago.
The memory of my exit is a blur of humiliation and terror.
I remember the sound of his voice cracking as he screamed Get out.
I remember clutching the shredded remains of the midnight-blue silk to my chest, stumbling out into the corridor, my bare feet slapping against the freezing stone as I fled the predator who had just come undone in my arms.
I sit up, the movement pulling at the deep ache in my muscles.
My body feels heavy, rewritten. There are bruises blooming on my wrists where his fingers anchored me—dark violet marks that look like ink stains against my pale skin.
My neck throbs with a dull, rhythmic sting where his teeth broke the surface.
I touch the mark.
He drank from me. Not blood, but feeling.
I shiver, pulling the spare wool blanket tighter around my shoulders. I should be traumatized. I should be weeping. A Khuzuth Lord used me to silence his demons.
But I am not weeping.
I feel… settled. For the first time since I was dragged to the auction block, the frantic, buzzing anxiety in my chest is gone. The connection between us is still there—a dormant thread in the back of my mind—but it is quiet.
Because he is gone.
I know it with a certainty that is unrelated to logic. The estate feels empty. The heavy, pressurized atmosphere that usually surrounds House Imas has lifted, leaving behind a hollow vacuum.
I stand up. My legs are shaky, but they hold. I find a simple gray tunic in the wardrobe—servant’s clothes—and dress quickly, hiding the bruises, though I cannot hide the mark on my neck.
I walk to the door. I expect it to be locked. I expect to be a prisoner again.
The handle turns. The door swings open.
He didn't lock me in. He didn't care enough to secure the cage, or perhaps he was too broken to remember.
I step out into the corridor. The silence of the house is unnerving. It is the stunned quiet of a place that has weathered an earthquake and is waiting for the aftershocks.
I walk barefoot down the hall. A servant, a young elf with terrified eyes, rounds the corner carrying a basket of linens. She stops dead when she sees me. Her gaze drops to the mark on my neck, then snaps back to my face.
She does not order me back to my room. She flattens herself against the wall, bowing her head so low her forehead touches the stone.
She is afraid of me. Because I survived the Lord of Pain, and I am walking free.
I continue moving. I need to know where he went. I need to know what happens next.
I reach the landing of the main staircase. Below, in the foyer, Asema stands guard.
She is not wearing her helmet. Her face is a map of old violence, scarred and harsh, her eyes the color of flint. She is sharpening a dagger, the rhythmic shhhk-shhhk of the whetstone the only sound in the cavernous space.
She looks up as I descend. Her hands pause. I watch them instantly—the way her fingers tighten on the hilt. She is a coiled spring.
"You are awake," she says. Her voice is gravel, devoid of the mockery she used when I first arrived.
"Where is he?" I ask. My voice is raspy.
"Gone," Asema says. She slides the dagger into the sheath at her hip. "He took the black stallion. He rode for the city gates before the first bell."
"He left you behind."
Asema’s jaw tightens. "He left me to guard the estate. To guard you."
I reach the bottom step. I am eye-level with her now. She towers over me, armored and lethal, yet she does not move to stop me.
"Am I a prisoner, Captain?" I ask softly.
Asema looks at me. She looks at the faint bruising on my jaw, the wildness of my hair. A flicker of something unreadable crosses her face—confusion, perhaps, or a grudging respect for a creature that walked into the fire and didn't burn.
"He gave no orders to lock you in," she says slowly. "He gave no orders at all. He simply... left."
"Then I am going to the library."
I step toward her. It is a gamble.
Asema does not move. She stands like a statue of iron and duty. But as I pass her, I feel the tension radiating off her—not aggression, but uncertainty. The hierarchy of this house has shattered. The master has fled, and the slave is walking the halls like a ghost.
"Be careful, human," Asema murmurs as I pass. "The library is where he keeps his secrets."
I do not look back.
The library is freezing. The fire in the great hearth has died down to a pile of gray ash, the heat long gone. The room smells of stale smoke and the charred remains of leather.
I walk to the fireplace. The book he threw into the flames last night—before he dragged me to his bed—is destroyed. The pages are delicate, black flakes that crumble at a breath. But the spine... the spine was thick, bound in dragon-hide.
I kneel on the hearthstone, ignoring the soot staining my knees. I reach into the cold ash.
My fingers brush against something hard. I pull it out.
It is a fragment of the cover, miraculously preserved in the middle of the burn pile. The leather is scorched, curling at the edges, but the deep, gold-leaf embossing is still visible.
It is written in the sharp, angular script of the High Elves.
...of the Purna.
I trace the word with my thumb.
Purna.
The word sends a jolt through me, sharp and vibrating, like striking a tuning fork against my ribs. It is not just a name. It is a memory I do not possess, a bell ringing in the deep waters of my blood.
Purna. The witches. The anomalies. The women who could touch the minds of gods.
I look at the charred scrap. Below the title, a fragment of text remains legible.
...not a gift, but a theft. They do not channel; they become.
I squeeze the leather until it bites into my palm.
He is aware of who I am even if I do not. That is why he looked at me with such horror in the study. That is why he hated himself for touching me. He absolutely knows what I am, and he knows that by Dark Elf law, I should be ash in this grate.
But he kept me.
The idea is a heady, dangerous wine. He is protecting me. Not out of kindness, but out of addiction.
Boom.
The heavy silence of the library is shattered. The doors to the estate, three rooms away, bang open with a force that vibrates through the floorboards.
A gust of wind sweeps through the house, carrying a scent that makes my stomach turn.
It smells like the air after a lightning strike hits a vein of iron—acrid, metallic, and burning. It smells of sulfur and old blood.
Heavy, staggering footsteps echo on the stone.
I leap to my feet, clutching the scrap of leather to my chest.
Imas appears in the doorway of the library.
He looks like a corpse that has been dragged through a battlefield. His clothes are soaked, mud splattered up to his thighs. His platinum hair is plastered to his skull. His skin is the color of parchment, translucent and gray.
But it is his eyes that freeze the breath in my throat.
They are not violet. They are dull, washed out, rimmed in red. He looks at me, and there is no recognition in his gaze, only a blind, terrified desperation.
He stumbles into the room, one hand gripping the doorframe to keep from falling. He reeks of dark magic—not the potent, controlled Chaos he usually wields, but something raw and festering.
He has done something terrible.
"Leora," he croaks. His voice is a ruin.
He takes a step toward me and collapses.