Chapter 3
Three
T he darkness had teeth.
After a year at Grimstone, Alaire had become intimately familiar with it.
She traced the grooves in her wrists where the shackles had worn into her flesh. The marks had become a roadmap of Captain Verran’s games, each one a memory of his particular brand of entertainment.
Metal scraped against stone—weekly inspection.
Alaire tracked his approach by sound alone: the measured click of his boots, the jingle of keys at his belt, the soft whistle through his teeth.
“Still breathing, I see.” He leaned against the bars, close enough that she could see the dilation of his pupils. “Ready to play?”
“What do you think?” Alaire kept her eyes on the wall. Seventeen cracks in the mortar. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before.
“Why do you keep denying yourself? There aren’t any better options.”
His fingers began their familiar rhythm against the iron bars—thumb to pinkie, always the same pattern. It preceded violence the way thunder preceded lightning.
“You’ll beg eventually,” he said, breath hot through the bars. “Your kind always does.”
He wanted her to go to him willingly. To plead for him.
“Never,” Alaire spat.
The drumming stopped. “Perhaps another three days in solitary will help you find your voice.”
Her jaw locked, but she gave him nothing. No flinch. No fear. The captain fed on weakness.
Alaire’s spirit was the one thing he couldn’t have—and wouldn’t break.
Three days in absolute darkness. Three days when her heartbeat became the only sound in the universe. Three days to sit with her thoughts while the walls pressed closer.
In the darkness, she painted the grey stones with Verran’s blood.
The fantasy had evolved over the months, growing more elaborate with each stint in solitary.
She imagined the sound of the blade as it found his throat, blood spilling across the damp floor, the feel of thick sludge sticking between her fingers.
Soon , she promised herself. Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon .
The morning shift guards were getting lazy. She’d noticed it three weeks ago. They had started cutting corners on their rounds. The tall one with scarred knuckles had dozed off twice in the last week alone.
The guards kept a precise schedule. She memorized their body language, tics, and habits. In the world Alaire had lived in, weaknesses were opportunities, and information was ammunition. She’d been stockpiling.
This world had carved the na?veté from her soul and fed it a heaping dose of reality instead. The marks on her body were evidence of that.
Recently, the guards had been buzzing about the reignited war front against the vampires. They loved to boast about their connections to the noble houses.
Lies. If they were connected, they wouldn’t be working in a prison. They should’ve known better than to divulge personal details in front of those who would use every scrap of information to their advantage.
Power coursed through the veins of most fae, but not all magic was created equal.
Descendants of the original fae who bonded with Celestial Familiars wielded strength and power that could reshape entire kingdoms. Bonded fae were known as fliers, mastering the skies on their winged creatures.
They established the royal court of each Elithian territory.
Most revered the royal households and viewed them as directly connected to the gods.
Many coveted a bond to the Celestial Familiars—and the status and power that came with it.
While the guards weren’t as aggressive as their captain, it didn’t stop them from exerting their power over inmates, making their displeasure toward humans obvious.
“Filthy animals,” the guards would snarl. “Scum.”
Even in Grimstone, humans were prey.
But even caged animals could learn to pick locks.
Grimstone housed the worst of Cielore, or so the Consortium claimed.
Most of the human prisoners were guilty of the same crime: wanting more than scraps.
She’d heard whispers before her arrest, in darkened alleys.
Humans demanding change. Equality. The radical notion that they deserved the same rights as their pointed-eared overlords.
The fae had given them no opportunities, so they had no choice but to create their own.
Typically, the guards grew sloppy near the end of their shift, tired from the monotony of their mundane duties. It could prove to be an opportunity. How or when, she didn’t know.
She focused on finding a way out of this place.
Alaire imagined the captain’s face, the dawning realization of his oversight when, one day, he would come across an empty cell.
The thought brought a wicked smile to her face.
Night fell like a shroud over Grimstone. Between rotations, snores echoed down the halls.
“When you go, promise to take me with you.” Elodie’s whisper drifted through the bars.
She was more observant than Alaire gave her credit for. Elodie was nothing if not relentless.
“I don’t?—”
The words tasted bitter on her tongue for the lie they were. Getting out of Grimstone would be dangerous. But so was staying.
“You will,” she interrupted. “And when you do, I’m coming with you.”
Alaire huffed out a breath. She didn’t do this. Complications. Baggage. Alaire had learned to trust no one. Survival demanded it.
But Elodie… Elodie was different. Months of conversations in the dark had worn down her defenses.
If I leave her, she’ll die here .
Alaire knew Elodie’s kindness was as rare as a null. Somehow, since her arrival at Grimstone, what started as an ally had become a friendship cultivated through a wall of stone.
Hope sprouted even in the darkness.
Despite Alaire’s best efforts to keep her friendship with Elodie from him, Captain Verran had discovered their tie and scheduled them on alternating yard shifts, never allowing them the chance to meet.
Another one of his games.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep. If you can’t keep up?—”
“Deal,” Elodie answered with certainty.
Alaire chewed her bottom lip. “Don’t mistake practicality for kindness.”
“Sure, Alaire. Whatever you say.” She chuckled under her breath.
Like Alaire thought—relentless.
A metallic clang shattered the night’s silence. Alaire jolted awake at the sound. The heavy creak of rusted iron groaned as a cell door opened—much too close for comfort. The next sound was worse: a sharp, muffled cry.
Her body moved on instinct. Alaire scrambled to her feet and pressed herself against the bars, trying to see what was happening. The guards usually stationed along the wall weren’t there. Alaire’s gut screamed something wasn’t right.
Captain Verran emerged from the cell, dragging something—no, someone—by the hair.
Elodie.
He yanked her into Alaire’s direct line of sight. Blood matted her dark curls, her left leg bent at an angle that made Alaire’s stomach lurch. Another guard, one Alaire didn’t recognize, hauled her up roughly.
Elodie didn’t give in. She struggled against their hold, a whimper escaping her lips.
Alaire threw herself against the bars. “Elodie!” The scream tore from her throat. The world around her flashed red.
“Leave her alone!” she demanded.
Captain Verran smiled. “You should’ve accepted my offer when you had the chance.”
“She’s done nothing!” Alaire’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the iron, trying to pry the bars apart. “It’s me you want!”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Verran said smugly. “You’d come to me willingly eventually.”
“Please.” The word scraped like sand in her throat. She could take whatever he wanted to dole out, but Elodie had done nothing wrong. Obeyed every rule. Caused no problems. Not like her. She’d sworn never to beg, never to give in to what he wanted. But for Elodie… “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Even though they’d never spoken face-to-face, never hugged… even though they’d barely met, a bond had already sprouted between them. A bond forged by surviving something wretched together.
Elodie’s eyes widened. Even through the blood and pain, she managed to shake her head. “Don’t?—”
The baton connected with her temple. The crack echoed off the stone walls. Elodie went limp.
“No!” Alaire rattled the bars.
The captain looked positively elated.
Alaire gritted her teeth around the word. “Please.”
Verran smoothed his uniform, adjusting his cuffs. “I think I’ll let you sit with this for a few days to remember what happens when you continue clinging to your defiance. Something that could’ve been prevented if you’d given in sooner.”
They dragged Elodie away, her body painting dark streaks across the floor.
“Elodie!” Alaire’s voice broke on the last syllable.
Helplessness gnawed at her. The cage around her was a brutal reminder that she was truly trapped.
Silence, thick and suffocating, closed in like a noose, leaving her with nothing but rage.
She sank to the floor, hands still gripping the bars. All her planning. All her careful observations. Verran didn’t need to break her body.
He found something better to destroy.
Alaire didn’t know when or how, but she vowed: Captain Verran would die. Not tonight. Not quickly. But screaming. She would make sure of it.
Time moved differently after that night.
Days bled together. Weeks. Her once muscular form atrophied. She was slight and frail.
A slip of a thing waiting to die—that’s what life at Grimstone was. Waiting for the misery to end.
She woke expecting to hear Elodie’s voice. Silence answered her.
Dreams and nightmares merged into an unending cycle. Memories of smoke blurring the stars and the relentless crackling sound as the world burned around her—a reminder of what had been taken, of what she had so desperately lost.
Each day, she clung to her defiance. But that, too, felt like it was slipping away piece by piece, just like her.
Alaire sat against the rough stone of her cell, waiting patiently for the one hour a week when she didn’t feel like the walls were closing in on her, when the weight that had pressed so tightly over her chest eased a fraction.