Chapter Forty-Four
Cruelty is not without reason.
It stems from generations. A mother may despise her daughter because her own mother despised her.
Perhaps mothers that spit vile words in their daughters’ faces have never learnt what it might mean to hear and feel the soft caress of a kind word, or the tender kiss on the forehead at night.
How easy it would be to wipe cruelty from existence, if only we learnt to tenderly care for the new generations.
How easy it would be to erase from the world the very thing that poisons it.
Tabitha Wysteria
Ylva found it harder and harder to escape the dark place.
It came for her every night now, drawing her beneath its shadowed veil the moment sleep claimed her.
She always arrived in the same stretch of land.
A realm dim and silvered, where the air tasted of mourning and memory.
And she was no longer mortal there. Sometimes she would lope towards a river, its waters black as ink, and peer at her reflection.
A giant white wolf stared back.
The dreams were beyond strange, and yet she did not recoil from them.
In that other place she ran beside a man named Zagreus, and sometimes Kage would appear too, pale and thoughtful, like a ghost who had forgotten he was one.
Over time she had begun to know them, to understand their sharp edges and quiet sorrows. To enjoy them.
They never called her Ylva.
It was always the other name.
Wren.
Ylva was not foolish. She had already pieced it together: in another life she had been called Wren, and she had been wolverian.
It had not taken her long to suspect that she had once been princess Wren Wynter.
But she forced such thoughts down whenever she was awake.
The runes carved into her skin would burn if she lingered too long upon the past—a cruel warning not to tug at threads better left buried.
Yet in these dreams, the runes were silent.
There, she could listen freely.
She had heard Zagreus and Kage speaking with Rio about Eris, about plans to move against Velunthar. The knowledge coiled inside her like a scream. If it were true, if Eris meant to drive the witches into Fae lands, then the drakonian keep stood dangerously close to that border.
And if the witches were to move…
If the prisoners were moved with them…
A spark flared in the darkness of her thoughts.
Perhaps this nightmare could be turned to her advantage.
If Eris gathered them all and marched them elsewhere, then perhaps, just perhaps, Arden and her might find their moment.
And run.
The moment Ylva woke, pain throbbed behind her eyes.
It always did after the dreams, after running beneath that dim, mournful sky. It did not come every night, but lately it had begun to claim her more often than not. The ache lingered, deep and splitting, as though part of her had not entirely returned to her body.
A terrible thought had begun to haunt her.
What if one night she did not wake at all? What if she remained there, fur and fang and white shadow trapped in the Underworld, unable to claw her way back into her own skin?
‘I think we might be moving soon,’ Ylva said, leaning her head against the warm stone of her cell, eyes half-closed.
‘Moving?’ Arden’s voice sharpened with concern from beyond the wall. ‘Why would we be moving?’
‘I think they may try to attack Velunthar.’ She swallowed. ‘I heard Eris is planning to go there. I don’t know if she means to take the witches with her or not.’
She had told Arden everything about the dreams. Every whisper overheard. Every shadowed exchange. She kept him tethered to the outside world through fragments of sleep.
‘Why wouldn’t she take the witches with her?’ Arden asked.
‘Because she’s after her mother,’ Ylva replied. ‘She may prefer to go alone.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘I could tell Hagan. If he knows what she’s planning, he’ll want to go as well.’
A beat of silence.
‘Ylva… That’s risky.’
‘I know.’ Her fingers curled against the stone. ‘But we’ll never escape from here. Not like this. We need movement. Chaos. An opportunity.’
Before Arden could argue further, light poured into the darkness as the heavy doors to the cells groaned open. A witch strode in, sharp-eyed and impatient, come to fetch her.
Ylva did not resist.
She rose calmly and followed, her steps quiet against the warm floor. They did not even chain her any longer. There was no need.
They knew she would never run.
Not while Arden remained caged below.
Ylva crossed the chamber swiftly and changed into the gown Hagan had laid across the bed, its fabric cool and foreign against her skin. She no longer protested the ritual. There was no point. He summoned her every day, and she had learnt that obedience, at least on the surface, made things simpler.
When she returned to the desk, she seated herself without being told. As always, Hagan hooked the leg of her chair with his boot and dragged her closer until their knees nearly brushed.
He slid several scrolls towards her without glancing up.
She did not mind his indifference. It was safer when he pretended she was nothing more than a tool.
Silence settled, broken only by the whisper of parchment beneath her fingers.
After a time, she spoke.
‘If the gods can be killed by the God-Killer, does that mean the God-Killer can also be killed?’
Hagan answered at once, as though he had been waiting for her to ask something of interest.
‘Of course. Nothing is eternal.’
Ylva’s eyes moved steadily across the inked lines. ‘Then how does one kill a God-Killer?’
‘No one seems to know.’
She tilted her head slightly. ‘If no one knows how, how can you be so certain it can be done?’
That made him look up.
Those purple eyes, sharp and bright as amethyst struck by flame, fixed upon her with something dangerously close to fascination.
He liked when she pressed him, when she forced his mind to move.
At first her questions had irritated him; he had demanded silence, insisted he required quiet to think. But time had revealed something else.
He enjoyed it.
He enjoyed her.
And Ylva, watching the flash of intrigue in his stare, wondered whether Hagan’s greatest weakness might be his loneliness.
Ylva lowered her gaze once more to the scrolls, letting the scratch of parchment and the hush of turning pages steady her pulse. After a while, as though the question had simply drifted into her mind, she asked softly, ‘Why is Eris travelling to Velunthar?’
The air shifted.
Not dramatically. There was no crash, no flare of magic, but something in the room tightened, as if the very stones had drawn breath.
She felt Hagan go still. Utterly still. The scroll in his hand crinkled faintly as his fingers curled into it.
‘What do you mean?’ His voice was quiet. Too quiet.
‘She told me.’
‘You?’ His head turned sharply. Ylva nodded, keeping her expression open, mild. ‘Why would she tell you that?’
She lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. ‘She mentioned it casually the last time she was here. She came to the cells to say goodbye. Said later on she’d be going to Velunthar.’ Ylva let a beat pass. ‘She directed that part at Arden Briar. He’s Fae.’
She prayed the lie felt natural. It did sound like Eris. She was theatrical and cruel enough to whisper such things simply to watch someone squirm.
Hagan’s silence stretched, then eased.
‘I’m the one who is meant to attack the Fae lands,’ he muttered, more to himself than to her. ‘Not her.’
Ylva traced a finger along the edge of the scroll. ‘Maybe she’s suspicious of you.’
Of course she would be. He was, after all, rifling through ancient texts in search of a way to kill her.
Hagan pushed abruptly to his feet. The legs of his chair scraped against the stone. He called for a servant, and within moments two witches appeared, heads bowed.
‘Prepare everything,’ he ordered. ‘We leave in two days.’
Ylva forced her face into stillness. Could it truly be so simple? Was he genuinely about to abandon the drakonian keep and march towards Fae territory because of a whisper she had planted?
‘Erase the joy from your face,’ Hagan said suddenly.
She stiffened, not daring to turn.
‘We’re not leaving because of you,’ he continued coolly from the centre of the chamber. ‘I always intended to attack the Fae next. I’ve merely delayed. This keep holds a wealth of scrolls I wished to read.’ He sighed, irritation lacing the sound. ‘I suppose I can take them with me.’
Ylva inclined her head, meek and obedient.
Inside, however, her thoughts raced.
If he moved the witches, if he uprooted them all, then perhaps the prison would shift. Perhaps the walls that caged Arden would weaken. Perhaps movement and chaos would create a fracture wide enough for them to slip through.
She kept her expression blank.
And waited.
She did not dare look at him.
She could not see where he stood, nor what he was doing, but she felt him in the room. There was a sudden shift in the air, a tightening of the silence. Instinct screamed at her to turn, to defend herself, yet she remained rigid in her chair, eyes fixed on the parchment before her.
It would be worse if she moved.
He came from behind.
Her hair was seized in a brutal fist and wrenched backwards. The force tore her from the chair and she struck the stone floor hard, the breath knocked from her lungs as the warmth of the chamber seeped into her cheek.
Ylva cried out, more in shock than pain.
She tried to twist, to kick, to fight but her limbs locked. Turned to stone. Heavy and unresponsive.
Blood magic.
Of course.
Hagan still held her hair as he stepped over her, straddling her body, his shadow swallowing her. He leaned down until his face hovered inches from hers. The fury in his purple eyes was not fire. It was a storm at sea, violent and endless, ready to drown anything in its path.
He lowered his mouth.
Closer.
Closer.
Then his teeth sank into the flesh of her jaw.
Hard.
Ylva screamed as pain exploded across her face, white and blinding. She felt the pressure of his bite, the deliberate cruelty of it, as though he meant to mark her.
‘Do you think I don’t know what you are doing?’ he growled against her skin, breath hot and savage. He pulled back just enough to bare his teeth at her. ‘Do you think I won’t notice you sneaking off in the night with the Fae while we travel?’
His hand released her hair only to clamp around her throat. His fingers tightened, cutting off air, pressing her skull harder into the stone.
‘Do you take me for a fool?’ he hissed. ‘Do you think me stupid enough to trust you?’
Ylva felt the air flee her lungs, felt her body strain and yearn to convulse, to fight, to claw at him, yet she could not. His blood magic held her fast, pinning her more cruelly than chains ever could. She was trapped within herself, suffocating in stillness.
She knew.
Less than a minute more and her windpipe would collapse.
‘You’re just like the rest,’ Hagan spat, his voice thick with something far uglier than rage.
Darkness began to creep along the edges of her vision, soft and insidious. The chamber blurred. The candles smeared into streaks of gold. Sound dulled, as though she were already slipping beneath deep water.
Then suddenly the pressure vanished.
Air rushed into her lungs in a ragged, violent gasp.
She lay there, choking on breath, dragging it in greedily as though it might disappear again. Her chest burnt. Her throat throbbed. Each inhale scraped like broken glass.
Minutes passed. Or perhaps seconds. Time lost its shape.
Hagan lowered himself beside her on the stone floor, watching. He did not move. Did not speak. He simply observed her as she fought to breathe, as if she were some curious creature struggling beneath a magnifying lens.
When at last her lungs obeyed her again, she kept her gaze fixed on the ceiling. She would not look at him.
That, apparently, amused him. As though her refusal confirmed something. As though fear tasted sweeter when unspoken.
His hand lifted.
Ylva hated the way she flinched.
He saw it. Of course he saw it.
His fingers came down gently, too gently, brushing along her cheek.
She braced herself for pain, for nails digging into her eyes, for some new cruelty.
But none came. Instead, he traced the line of her jaw where his teeth had bitten.
Followed the curve of her throat where bruises were already blooming, dark and ugly beneath her skin. His touch was slow. Almost reverent.
Tender.
The contrast made her stomach turn.
He lingered there, fingertips ghosting over damaged flesh, as though he had not been the one to cause it. As though he were studying his own handiwork.
Then, without a word, he rose.
His footsteps retreated across the chamber.
The door shut.
And Ylva remained on the warm stone floor, limbs still bound by magic, staring at the ceiling as tears slid silently into her hair.
She did not make a sound.
She simply cried quietly and helplessly while the room swallowed her whole.