Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Consciousness returned in fragments, like pieces of a shattered mirror slowly reassembling.
First came awareness of warmth—not the oppressive heat of Malus's chambers or the cold bite of healing magic, but something alive.
A heartbeat that wasn't hers, steady and strong beneath her ear.
Arms wrapped around her middle, holding her against a chest that rose and fell with each breath.
The scent of forest and rain and something darker, something that made the warmth in her chest pulse with recognition.
Eliam.
She kept her eyes closed, not ready to face whatever came next.
Not ready to see his expression, to deal with questions or the aftermath of everything that had happened.
Her throat ached where Malus had bitten her, where Eliam had fed.
Her body felt heavy, disconnected, like it belonged to someone else entirely.
The room around them was quiet except for their breathing. She could hear wind beyond windows, the soft crackle of a dying fire. The bed beneath them was impossibly soft, furs and silk that smelled of winter flowers. Star Court chambers, then. Safety, or at least the illusion of it.
She felt the moment Eliam's breathing changed, the subtle shift from sleep to waking. His arms tightened around her reflexively, pulling her closer, and she heard him draw in a sharp breath through his nose. His whole body went rigid against her back.
"You're awake," he said, his voice rough from sleep but carrying something else underneath. Not quite relief. Not quite anger. Something raw that she couldn't name.
She didn't answer, couldn't find words. The silence stretched between them, filled only by the crackle of dying embers and the wind beyond the windows.
His hand moved from her waist, sliding up to her throat with careful deliberation.
His fingers found the bite marks—both of them.
Malus's on one side, his own on the other.
She felt him go completely still as he traced the wounds with his fingertips, mapping the damage with a gentleness that felt wrong coming from him.
"How long?" Her voice came out cracked, barely recognizable.
"A day and a half." His hand didn't leave her throat, fingers resting against her pulse. "Your body needed time to recover from the blood loss."
From feeding him. From giving him enough of herself to break those chains, to shadow-walk them all to safety. The memory made her throat tighten, made the marks pulse with a dull ache.
"The others?" she managed.
"Alive. Recovering." His thumb stroked along the side of her neck, almost absently, like he was reassuring himself she was real. "Karse's arm is healing. Thaine is being insufferable about his heroics. Ferria is... present."
The way he said Ferria's name carried weight. They would deal with her betrayal later. There were too many other things to process first.
She tried to sit up, needing to see him, but his arms locked around her like iron bands.
"Don't," he commanded, his voice dropping to something darker. "Don't move."
"Eliam—"
"I said don't." His grip tightened almost painfully before he forced himself to loosen it. She could feel the tremor running through his muscles, the barely controlled violence of whatever he was holding back. "Just... stay still. Let me—"
He didn't finish. His hand remained on her throat, fingers pressing against her pulse like he needed to count each beat, to confirm she was alive and whole and here.
The silence stretched again. His breathing was too controlled, too measured. The kind of control that came from holding something massive back, from keeping emotions at bay through sheer force of will.
"I fed on you," he said finally, the words coming out flat, emotionless in the way that meant he was feeling too much.
Her heart lurched. Here it was. The thing she'd been dreading. The acknowledgment of what had happened in that cell, when she'd tilted her head and offered her throat and let him drink from her.
"I know," she whispered.
His hand on her throat tightened slightly, then loosened again. "I've never—" He stopped. Started again. "Human blood. I don't take human blood."
"I'm sorry," she said, the words escaping before she could stop them.
His whole body went rigid. "What?"
"I—I didn't know what else to do. How to save you." Her voice cracked. "Malus said it made him feel stronger so I thought that it would help—but after everything he did to me, my blood was—was ruined. Tainted. I'm—"
He moved so fast she didn't have time to finish. One moment he was behind her, the next he'd turned her roughly to face him, his hands on her shoulders, his face inches from hers. His eyes were completely black, pupils blown wide with rage or anguish or both.
"Stop," he said, the word coming out harsh. "Stop talking."
She stared at him, her heart hammering. His grip on her shoulders was almost painful, his whole body tense like a coiled spring ready to snap.
"You think—" He stopped, his jaw clenching. "You think that I'm disgusted by what I tasted?"
"Aren't you?" The question came out small, broken.
His hands moved from her shoulders to her face, cupping her jaw with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the violence she could see barely contained in his expression.
"I'm furious," he said, each word deliberate and controlled. "I'm so angry I can barely think straight. But not at you."
She blinked, confused. "Then—"
"At myself." His thumbs traced her cheekbones, his touch achingly gentle. "At my brother. At every single lord who supported his claim to the throne, the entire situation that put you in his chambers in the first place."
The rawness in his voice made her chest tighten. This wasn't the cold, controlled Forest King. This was something else entirely. Something wounded and furious and barely holding together.
"When you were there," he continued, his voice dropping lower, rougher, "I felt it. Here.” He brought her hand to his chest. “I could feel your fear.
Your pain. Something was hurting you, terrifying you, and I couldn't reach you.
Couldn't stop it. I was going mad trying to understand what was causing it, trying to break free, and I couldn't." His hand tightened on her face.
"And now I know. Now I know exactly what he did, what you had to endure, and I want to tear him apart.
I want to make him suffer for every second of fear I felt from you, for every moment of pain. "
Not at you. He wasn't angry at her, wasn't disgusted or blaming her for what her body had done, for the choices she'd made to survive.
The tears came without warning, hot and fast, spilling down her cheeks before she could stop them. Great, shaking sobs that tore from her chest and made her whole body tremble. She tried to pull away, to hide her face, but his hands held her steady.
"Briar—" His voice held uncertainty now, the kind that came from someone who didn't know how to handle this. "Don't—you don't need to—"
But she couldn't stop. The tears kept coming, days of fear and violation and shame finally breaking through the walls she'd built around herself.
For a moment he just stared at her, his hands still cupping her face, clearly at a loss. Then he pulled her against his chest. His arms wrapped around her, crushing her close, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head.
"Stop crying," he commanded, but there was no force behind it. Just helplessness. "I don't—I can't—" He made another frustrated sound. "Just stop."
But he held her tighter even as he said it, his hand stroking her hair with unexpected gentleness.
Eventually, the tears began to slow and his hand continued stroking through her hair, like he was petting something wild that might bolt if he stopped.
"Humans," he said finally, "are absurdly fragile. Emotionally and otherwise. I should probably just keep you wrapped in cotton and locked in a room somewhere."
Despite everything, Briar huffed a laugh. "Deal with it," she managed, her voice muffled against his chest.
"I'm trying." His hand moved from her hair to her jaw, tilting her face up to his. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks blotchy and wet, and she probably looked terrible, but he just studied her with that intense focus he brought to everything. "You're a disaster."
"Your disaster," she said without thinking.
Something shifted in his expression. His thumb traced along her jaw, then lower, finding the pulse beneath the bite marks. For a moment they just looked at each other, and she could see him weighing something, deciding something.
Then he kissed her.
It wasn't gentle, it was desperate and claiming and full of everything he couldn't put into words. His mouth moved against hers with an intensity that spoke of fear and relief and possessive need.
Her body went rigid.
She couldn't help it. The memories crashed over her without warning—Malus's mouth on hers, his hands holding her in place, the wine making her body respond while her mind screamed.
The taste of autumn and rot and wrongness.
The way he'd smiled against her lips, knowing exactly what he was doing to her.
Eliam felt it immediately. He pulled back like she'd burned him, his hands releasing her face, his whole body going still.
"Briar—"
She stared at him, her heart hammering, her breath coming too fast. The fear was still there.
The memory of Malus's violation, the way he'd taken her choice, her control, her body's responses and twisted them into weapons against her.
She could still feel the phantom weight of him, still taste that wrong autumn sweetness.