38. Chapter 38
AMARIA
The room was beautiful.
That was the worst part.
I’d spent the last hour pacing the perimeter, measuring the luxury like it was a weapon. Because it was.
The bed was a sprawling monstrosity, piled high with pillows soft enough to drown in. I hadn't touched it. My leathers were stiff with dried blood—mine, theirs, I'd stopped keeping track—and I wasn't about to wash it off in the porcelain basin waiting in the corner.
A writing desk sat near the window, stocked with fresh parchment and ink. Useless. A vanity with a silver-framed mirror I refused to look at.
And then, the roses.
I glared at the crystal vase. White blooms. Perfect petals. The cloying, cultivated kind meant to cover the stench of a cage.
I snapped the head off the nearest stem.
It felt wet in my hand. Pulp. No resistance.
I wiped the residue onto the deep burgundy silk of the curtains.
Then I stood in the center of the room, breathing in the sickly-sweet air and letting the silence press against my ears.
The door behind me was locked. I'd heard the bolt slide home, heard the guards take up position in the hallway. The windows were sealed with wards that made my skin prickle when I got too close. I'd tested them once. The burn had lasted for an hour.
And beyond the far wall—
Eryndor.
I could feel him through the tether. A constant pressure, like a hand pressing on a bruise. He was close. Closer than he'd been in days. The bond had stopped burning the moment they'd put us in these rooms, settling into a dull stasis.
I resumed my pacing. Counted the steps from the door to the window. Fourteen. From the window to the bed. Eight. From the bed to the wall that separated us. Six.
Six steps. That's how far away he was.
I braced my palm against the stone. Cool. Smooth. Ordinary.
On the other side, he shifted, and a tremor ran through the tether, an echo finding its surface.
He was doing the same thing. I knew it without seeing. Splaying his hand against the wall. Feeling for me.
I yanked my hand back.
I crossed to the bed. Sat on the edge. Didn't lie down—lying down felt like giving in. But my legs ached and the mattress was soft and eventually my body made the decision for me.
Night fell. Shadows swallowed the corners first, then the ceiling, then everything but the pale square of the warded window. But sleep didn't come.
The King's smile. The twins and their red thread. Eryndor's voice, steady and cold: If you want any chance of keeping her in line, you keep them too.
Her. Not us.
I turned over. Punched the pillow. Turned again.
The arrow in his shoulder. The fever. His hands in my hair, braiding like it mattered.
He didn't fight. Not hard enough.
That was the thing my mind kept circling back to.
Not the words, not the politics, not the cold calculation of keeping her in line.
The fact that when his father stretched the tether until we were both screaming—he stayed on the floor.
When guards put a blade to Serenya's throat—he barely fought—just negotiated. Chose his words. Found the angle.
I'd blown the doors off their hinges. Maxx had caved in skulls. Serenya fought with a mirror and her bare hands. Dreadscale killed suppressors before they could blink.
And the prince lay on the marble and talked.
The Crownforged had shattered an Oath-stone with a blade through his own chest. Had fought back-to-back with me like a god of war and made corpses bloom into crystal.
But the second his father walked into the room, all of that disappeared. The warrior evaporated. The male who'd bled for me—gone. Just a boy on a marble floor, finding the right words to make daddy listen.
He had a Soulbinder Mark that could bring fae to their knees. And he used it to kneel.
The tether pulled.
Dull ache behind my sternum. Then sharper. The bed sat in the center of the room—not against the wall. Not close enough to him.
Of course. The King had measured this down to the inch.
I gritted my teeth. Tossed in the over-sized bed. Punched the pillow again.
Ten minutes. Twenty. The ache became a burn. The burn became a fire.
I kicked at the blankets and flailed around, trying to find a comfortable position.
The bed was close enough to survive. Far enough to suffer. The bastard had probably smiled when he gave the order.
An hour. I lasted an hour before I dragged myself across the floor and pressed my spine against the wall.
The tether quieted.
I hated that I needed this. That the prince who'd just bargained for my leash was the only thing between me and agony—and my body had already surrendered to that, even if my mind refused to.
Sighing, I stalked back to the bed.
The mattress was heavier than it looked.
I dragged it across the floor, the wooden frame scraping against stone, leaving gouges I hoped someone would have to explain. By the time I'd shoved it against the wall—the wall, his wall—I was sweating and furious and the tether had finally, mercifully, gone quiet.
I collapsed onto the mattress. Leaned against the cold stone.
And heard him.
A shift. A breath. The creak of a bed frame being moved.
He was doing the same thing. Right now. On the other side of this wall, he was pressing his back to the same stone I was pressing mine to.
The tether gloated.
A raw hunger slid down the bond. A deep, resonant craving that felt like being watched by a predator who'd already decided you belonged to it.
I gasped and then it was gone. Swallowed behind his walls.
I wanted to scream.
He didn't get to do this.
"I hope you're suffering."
The words came out before I could stop them. Low. Vicious. Aimed at the wall like it could carry them through.
Silence.
Then, so quiet I almost missed it, his voice. Right against the stone. Close enough that the stone vibrated against my palm.
"I am."
I closed my eyes.
The tether hummed between us—soft, content, oblivious to the war happening on either side of the wall. It didn't care that I hated him. Didn't care that he'd lied. It only knew that we were close, that we were alive, that the circuit was complete.
I flattened my hand against the stone.
I didn't hear him move. But I knew—knew—that his hand was on the other side. Palm to palm with nothing but rock between us.
I kept my hand there until I fell asleep. Even though the pain had stopped hours ago.
I woke to the sound of my door slamming open.
Three females swept into the room before I'd finished reaching for the blade under my pillow—a blade that wasn't there, because the guards had stripped me of everything sharp the moment they'd locked me in.
"Up," the first one said. Her hair was bound into a severe knot and her features were sharp and unwelcoming. "Now. The procession arrives in thirty minutes."
I blinked. "What procession?"
She didn't answer. Just snapped her fingers at the other two, who descended on me like ravens on carrion.
"Wait—" I tried to pull back. "What are you—"
Hands gripped my arms. Hauled me from the mattress I'd shoved against the wall. The tether flared—a spike of disorientation as I was dragged too far, too fast—and then settled as they pulled me toward the bathing chamber.
"I can walk," I snarled.
They didn’t care.
They hauled me through a door I hadn't noticed last night. It opened to a private bathing chamber with a copper tub in the center, steam curling from the water's surface.
The bath was scalding.
They dumped me in without ceremony, without waiting for me to undress. My leathers soaked through in seconds, plastering to my skin. Before I could protest, hands were in my hair, scrubbing with something that smelled like lavender and burned like judgment.
"What procession?" I asked again, spitting water. "Who's arriving?"
And where were Serenya and Maxx? Had the King kept his word, or were they already—
The thought broke off. I couldn't finish it. Wouldn't. If something had happened to them in the night while I'd been pressing my hand to a wall for a prince who'd sold me out—if Serenya had screamed and I hadn't heard it because I was too busy aching for the wrong person—
The female with the tightly wound bun stood at the edge of the tub, arms crossed. "Scrub harder. She has blood under her nails."
Another handmaid grabbed my hand and attacked my fingers with a brush that felt designed for horses. I yanked back. She yanked harder.
"I asked you a question."
"And we don't answer questions," she shot back. "We follow orders. The King wants you presentable in twenty-five minutes. You will be presentable in twenty-five minutes."
They stripped off my wet clothes and scrubbed every inch of skin until I was raw and pink and furious. My hair was rinsed three times, twisted, pinned. Someone rubbed oil into my shoulders that made me smell like roses and feel like property.
I stopped fighting somewhere around the tenth minute. Not because I'd surrendered. Because I was saving my energy for whatever came next and because Serenya and Maxx were still in this palace. Every bruise I gave these handmaids was a bruise the King could give them back tenfold.
The clothes they gave me were plain.
Simple grey wool. A servant's dress, shapeless and dull, with none of the silk or embroidery I'd seen on every noblewoman who'd stared at me in the throne room. A rough-spun apron. Flat shoes that looked like they'd been worn by a dozen fae before me.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
Yesterday I'd blown the doors off their hinges. Today I looked like I was supposed to disappear. Like I was meant to fade into the walls while the real guests glittered and preened.
Message received.
"Move." The sharp-faced female opened the door. Guards waited in the hallway—four of them, more than yesterday. And behind them, a figure in slate-grey robes.
A Suppressor.
The same dull pressure I'd felt in the throne room settled over my chest.
"The courtyard. Now."
I moved. The Suppressor followed—ten feet back, close enough to keep me leashed, far enough to pretend they weren't a living cage.
The courtyard was chaos.