Chapter 23
NARYA
Something inside me broke apart.
I twisted and thrashed against him, clawing for any flesh my nails could land. When I caught his face, Daigen’s fingers bit into my shoulders with bruising force. Still I continued to fight him. I couldn’t let him look. I couldn’t! No! NO!
I slipped down, trying to wrench myself free, but he caught my wrist and hauled me back, crushing me face-down against the wall. The sconces rattled; portraits swung on their chain. My breath burst out of me as my cheek struck the stone.
Daigen’s hand pressed hard on my neck, fixing me in place, while the other slid to the beginning of my scars.
My tears came hot and fast, rage and betrayal running quicker than I could hold back.
I spat and cursed Daigen to every god I knew.
His and mine. Old and New. The Moon and the Sun and the Stars that bore him.
I cursed him until the words faded into harsh, incoherent sounds throttled by my humiliation. How could he do this?!
His grip on my neck tightened in silent warning.
I did not heed it. Shame reared inside me, urging me to fight back.
I tried to. He ground my cheek harder against the stone while his hand moved slowly between my shoulder blades.
His breath was just as fast and harsh against my skin.
His fingertips traced every puckered line that marred my skin, every ridge the blade had left in me that night.
Anger burned until it broke inside me. What came next was worse. My sobs. I had trusted Daigen—fool that I was—to let me choose when to reveal my shame. He hadn't honoured his word before; why had I believed he would do so now? The betrayal cut deeper than Graven’s knife.
I wanted to rake my nails down Daigen’s face until I felt his blood.
“I’m a fool,” I cried into the stone, my vision glazing over with tears.
“For fighting me?” His breath skimmed my neck. “Yes. You are.”
His voice was low, betraying the rage he kept barely contained. I felt it in every brush of his fingers, every tremor.
“For trusting you!”
He said nothing. He kept mapping every scar while I cried into the wall.
Shame, or fear? My naked body trembled; my face burned.
It felt like both. I was ashamed of what he was reading in my skin, and terrified of what would come next.
Would he finish what Gravyn tried to do that night?
Would he banish me? Lock me in a dungeon?
If the scars didn’t damn me, would they disgust him? Would he still want me?
His hand brushed the lower side of my ribs. “Cease your trembling.”
“Get — off me!”
He stilled, then removed his hand from my neck. “Hold still.”
The pressure moved to my shoulders. His fingers mapped my scars, every ridge and notch, as if cataloguing what had been done to me.
His breath rasped against my skin as his fingers worked slowly, tracking to where the first of my scars began—where the shame had first been carved into me, below my neck.
Graven’s voice suddenly cut through me, as if unlocked by Daigen’s scrutiny.
“Don’t gag her. I want to hear her scream.”
My panic rose, the memories of that night choking me. Leather biting into my wrists. Hands pinning me down, laughter echoing over me as Gravyn carved into my back. The taste of my own blood as I bit back my scream.
“Let me go, let me go!” The words scraped my throat raw. “LET ME GO!”
He didn’t. Daigen’s hand kept moving slowly, as if reading every scar. Down and across he went, tracing every line, careful to avoid anything else. Until his hand slipped over my behind, and he pulled back with a sharp breath.
Even now—angry, humiliated, and panicked as I was—heat flared low in my belly. I despised its treachery. Despised myself for feeling it in the first place.
Gods, I was sick. How could I feel anything other than loathing when he’d stripped me so open like this? How could my body not tell the difference between my lust and his violation? He had violated my trust again.
He drew another sharp inhale, as though he felt my desire for him burning underneath my skin, and then he stepped back.
Released from his hold, I should have run from him and never looked back.
Instead I stared at the floor, wishing the stone would split open and drag me under.
My chest still heaved with the remnants of my sobs, but I lifted my cheek off the stone wall and forced my eyes over to him.
I had to know what he planned to do with me.
“Now you’ve seen them,” I rasped, my voice hoarse from shouting, as I looked him dead in the eye. “Be done with it.”
His eyes widened, his nostrils flared. I anticipated the worst—to be dragged away and thrown in his dungeon.
But my words struck him like a blow he hadn’t expected.
Rarely was there a breach in Daigen’s armour, but for the briefest moment, I saw the disbelief in his eyes.
The shock that I’d think he’d hurt me. Then his armour clinked back into place, and the rage that ever simmered beneath his surface returned tenfold.
He took a step; I took one back. His jaw worked, teeth grinding hard as he looked at me.
“I vowed before; I vow it again: I will find every man who dared hurt you.” His voice was low, terrifyingly low, and sincere. “And lay all their bones at your feet for what they’ve done to my mate.”
I let out a thin breath. “How romantic of you. A pity it comes on the heels of your betrayal," I spat, too enraged to be swept up in his promise.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away from me, either. Daigen had made vows before—to kill the men on my list. But until this moment, I hadn’t fully believed him. Now I could see their blood at my feet and a throne raised from their bones. But first I had to find what they carved into me. And why.
“Today, in the archive—”
“You were trying to translate them,” he said, finishing my thought. I nodded. “You would not have succeeded. There are few who speak the Forgotten Tongue. Fewer still who would dare translate the runes carved on your back.”
Runes. Forgotten Tongue. My heart lurched. “Can you? Translate them?”
Silence stretched between us until the only sound left was the pounding of my own pulse.
Years I had twisted before mirrors, trying to make sense of what I could not see.
Years Gravyn had let me starve on questions.
Why carve ancient runes into me only to leave me for dead—then later try to finish the job?
What purpose did these words serve? I knew answers would open more questions, but I needed to face them so I could finally be free of them.
“Some of it,” he gritted out.
It was clear from his tone that it was unpleasant. I’d always suspected as much.
I turned just enough to search his face.
Scratch marks covered his cheek where I must have struck him.
I did not feel any remorse. Every muscle in his jaw twitched as he stared at me as if weighing his next move.
The lines around his mouth drew tight. His fists opened and closed at his sides, his knuckles strained white.
Part of me wanted to reach for him. The wiser part wanted to run away.
“Will you tell me what you do know?” I asked, my voice barely a breath.
“Is that what you truly seek?”
I had thought it was. I’d spent years speculating in the dark.
Now that the door stood open, ready for me to step through, fear reared inside me.
Somewhere deep, something answered: no. And it was right.
I wasn’t ready. Because what if the truth broke me in a way I could never recover?
I had always wanted to know what was written on my back, but now, actually faced with it… I was scared.
“No,” I said, shocked by the admission. “I want to do it myself.”
With my own eyes. On my own terms.
It was like a weight had been lifted off me then. Daigen knew my secret now. I did not have to hide from him. It felt, despite everything, like breathing properly for the first time in weeks.
His chest lowered on an exhale. “I will have them translated for when you are.” He stooped, picked my shift from the floor, and held it out at arm’s length. “For now, you will dress. Then you will eat.”
I didn’t want to do either. I wanted to curl up in the bed and pull the blankets over me. I glanced at the bed. Daigen watched my hesitation, and the crease between his brows deepened.
“You will dress,” he said again, slower. “And then eat.”
It was not a suggestion. Yet the thought of eating turned my stomach. He draped the shift over the chair.
“You barely ate at court,” he said, crossing his arms. The ring on his finger—his crystal—pulsed in the moonlight.
“I was too busy feeding you,” I replied, heat rushing to my cheeks. “Amongst other things.”
He didn’t rise to it, though his nostrils flared again as he drew one long breath.
“If you think I will let you starve yourself to spite me, think again.” His eyes narrowed into black slits. “Hasàek tells me you’ve eaten little since you arrived. I will not abide it.”
“But you’ll abide his spying on me?”
Anger flared inside me again. I snatched the shift up and hauled it over my head with fast, jerking motions. They were his staff. Of course they watched me. How could I blame them for serving their king?
My eyes slid to the tapestry. Was Mouse his spy as well? She would be an unmatched one—quick in the walls, slipping through secret passages I hadn’t yet mapped. I prayed she wasn’t. I had so little that was mine. I needed someone I could trust.
The linen fell over me. It barely covered anything, but it was still a mercy.
His gaze tracked the fabric as it hid my skin.
A shiver slid through me when I met his eyes.
It was the same murderous look he’d worn the instant he saw my scars, but there was a second flicker there, one that looked a lot like concern.
Hope tried to lift its head again. I pushed it down. Hope had never saved me before. Not at the altar, nor when I was a child. Hope had only ever kept me waiting on something else to save me. I was done waiting. It was time to save myself. And it started not with hoping, but by taking action.
He tilted his head, glancing at my bare feet on the cold stone. “If you continue to defy me, Narya,” he said, his voice cold, “I will have them do more than watch.”
But his eyes told a different story: rage and want, yes—but threaded with something I could not name, a flicker that might have been concern. Or the resentment of a man who hated that he cared in the first place.
The cold air licked at my skin, reminding me of how exposed I was.
I wrapped my arms around myself, and squeezed.
“Leave me,” I whispered, looking away from him. “Just leave me, please.”
I needed to be alone.
“No.” His answer came quickly. In two strides he moved over to the tapestry by the dresser and had pulled it aside, revealing the hidden passage. “You will come with me. Fetch a cloak.”
So he knew about the passageway.
“Where are we going?” I asked, unable to move after him.
He lit the sconces inside the hidden passage with a flick of his hand, his shadow stretching over the wall.
“To eat,” he said, the light catching his dark eyes. “Then I hunt.”