Chapter 16 | Kincade
The cell door scraped open. A slash of light pierced the darkness. The thump of feet.
And then she was dumped onto the floor at my boots—boneless, breathless.
They hadn’t brought her to me. They’d thrown her down.
“You have five minutes,” the guard said, then slammed the door.
Anna huddled on the floor wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital gown. Bare legs. Bare feet. A curtain of white hair hiding her face as she braced herself on trembling arms. Her skin pebbled with gooseflesh.
Attuned to her, I heard her ragged breathing.
She was shaking.
And I wanted to murder everyone who’d laid a hand on her.
There wasn’t a damn thing I could do. I was chained to the wall. Arms pulled taut. Muscles straining. Wrists bloody.
“Look at me.” My voice came out rough. Raw.
“No.” Hers, quiet. Defiant.
She didn’t want to lift her head. She didn’t want me to see what they’d done to her.
“Look at me, dammit.”
“I can’t. I won’t.” Her voice warbled.
Because she knew if I saw—
“You were right. About everything.” Her arms shook as she said it. She fought to keep herself upright.
This wasn’t about being right. This was about what they were turning her into.
“What did they do to you?” The words came out a controlled growl.
Her breath hitched. She choked back a sob. Then she lifted her head, letting her hair fall away.
In the faint light, it was unmistakable. Her ruined cheek. Blood caked to her skin. Face streaked with sweat. Eyes shiny with defiance.
Fuck.
They’d beat her.
Because she resisted.
I cataloged the damage without meaning to. The way one eye was already swelling shut. The slight tremor in her hands that had nothing to do with cold. The way she held her jaw too carefully, like any movement sent pain spiking through her skull.
But beneath it—beneath the bruises and blood—she was still here. Still herself.
And that was what they were testing.
They hadn’t beaten her to punish her.
They’d beaten her to measure her.
My vision tunneled. The chains pulled tight as I leaned forward anyway, every muscle screaming in protest. The iron cuffs bit into my wrists, skin already split and sticky with blood.
“Don’t give them what they want.” Her voice was a strained whisper.
And I knew what that meant.
Not surrender.
Not information.
Choice.
“And let them take you?” I said. “No.”
“They’re going to do it, anyway. Whether you agree to return or not.”
Heated fury spread through my chest, sharp and precise. The kind that planned.
“They won’t,” I said. It came out like a vow. Like something I could still make true.
She shook her head once.
“They’re not trying to kill me,” she said. “They’re trying to weaponize me. Like my mother.”
My breath stalled.
Not because I didn’t understand.
But because I did.
“The Brotherhood handed me over to the Knights,” she went on. “They’re going to use me like they did her. They’re going to alter me like they did her.”
Alter.
Not break. Not destroy.
Her violet eyes met mine then. Clear. Terrified. Enraged.
For one sickening moment, I imagined her standing here again—unafraid, unbroken—looking at me like a stranger. Like her mother looked at her.
Rage like I had never known filled my chest. Cold. Surgical.
“Then they’ve already signed their own deaths.”
“Not in time,” she said. Her voice was ice. Furious. Final.
“They don’t need to survive you,” I said. “Just me.”
“He asked about you,” she said. “What you’d do.”
Of course he had.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
A faint, humorless huff of breath. “That you’d do what you do best.”
That eventually I’d end him.
Or damn us both trying.
The bond between us hummed—tight, strained. I felt the tremor in her body, the way she was locking everything down through sheer will, burying fear so deep it might never come back the same.
The lock on the door clanged.
Light spilled in again. Boots. Hands.
“Time,” the guard said.
She flinched as they grabbed her arms.
“Don’t give them what they want,” she said urgently. “Promise me.”
The word lodged in my chest like a blade.
Because I already knew—
if it came down to her or the world, I would choose her.
“Anna—”
They hauled her upright. She cried out, pain flashing across her face before she crushed it down.
“Promise me!”
The door slammed shut between us.
The chains bit into my wrists as I lunged forward, anyway.
After centuries, I knew what it meant to be too late.