Chapter 17 | Anna
Two guards dragged me from the cell block. I was gawked at like some pretty pet they wanted to get their hands on. And I hated it. I hated every single person standing between me and Kincade.
I hated more he saw my ruined face.
The first time the doctor started to clean and dress it, Sebastian stopped him. Let him see, he’d said.
He wanted Kincade to know. He wanted to plant that rage inside him. He wanted to see how far he could push him before he’d snap.
But I knew him better than anyone. I knew he would continue to control that wrath until he was ready to use it.
After leaving the cell block, they deposited me in a treatment room with a cold metal table.
Dr. Vormund entered, snapping on gloves. He tilted my chin up, examining the damage with clinical detachment. This time, he wasn’t going to let Sebastian stop him. The nurse hovered nearby.
“High risk of infection,” he said. “Clean it thoroughly and dress it properly. Start her on antibiotics as a precaution.”
Then Sebastian entered. He leaned against the wall, arms folded over chest. Watching. Like he was making sure his prize was cared for.
The nurse worked faster. Antibiotic ointment. Gauze. Careful bandaging that covered the wound without obscuring my face.
“There,” she said. “That should hold.”
But I was pretty sure the bone was fractured, and I needed stitches.
Sebastian pushed off the wall. Circled me like a predator. “Much better. Can’t have her falling apart before the main event.”
Sebastian led me out. Two guards flanked me, hands on my upper arms. Back in the hallway, Vormund motioned for the guards to follow him. My feet were cold on the tile floor.
“We’ll take her to the room, now,” Vormund said. Like I wasn’t listening.
“And how long will it take?” Sebastian asked.
“A few hours. It’s not a simple procedure.”
A few hours.
Not to fix me. Not to heal me.
To finish breaking whatever resistance I had left.
“I need her ready to deploy, doctor.” There was a tightness to his voice I didn’t like. Like he was impatient to do it the second I was out of recovery.
“She’ll be ready,” he replied, cool, calm. “Perhaps not as quickly as you like.”
“Fine,” he said after a long beat. “The longer he’s in chains, the angrier he’ll be. Should make for a good fight.”
The sick part was he sounded delighted.
And my stomach clenched tight.
“You sure it will work?” Sebastian asked.
“She’ll respond to any threat,” Vormund said. “But she’s calibrated for one target specifically.”
Sebastian’s mouth curved. “Him.”
“Yes. The closer he is, the sharper the response. It’s elegant. Turning his proximity into the thing that destroys him.”
The words landed like a physical blow. They weren’t going to alter me. They were going to make me kill him.
They took me to an operating room. Bright. Sterile. And I was supposed to willingly get up on the table. Every instinct in me revolted.
The only other time this had happened I’d already been unconscious. I’d woken up strapped in, IV in my arm, my blood being drawn without my consent. There had been no choice then, either.
A scrub nurse stood off to one side. Young, pretty, eyes too blue behind her mask. The assistant hovered near the instrument tray. The anesthesiologist waited by the head of the table, hands folded like this was routine.
Like this was nothing.
The scrub nurse moved toward me. “Jewelry needs to come off.”
My hand flew to my throat, to the necklace—the one he gave me. The one I hadn’t taken off since then. “No.”
She didn’t argue. She nodded once to one of the guards. He pried my fingers away while she reached around my neck. The clasp gave with a tiny click.
Gone.
The absence of it felt like losing a part of myself.
“Get on the table,” someone said.
I didn’t move. My feet rooted to the floor. My pulse thundered in my ears.
“No,” I said. The word louder than I expected.
The scrub nurse’s eyes went wide as she glanced from me to someone behind me. Hands reached for me, clamping down on my arms.
I lashed out on instinct. A shove. An elbow to the gut. Desperation.
It bought me nothing.
A prick into the side of my neck. Cold. Precise.
The room tilted.
The last thing I heard was someone sighing.
I don’t know how long I’d been under the lights.
Time had stopped behaving the way it should—stretching, folding in on itself. My thoughts came too fast now, stacking over one another like cards I couldn’t put down. Every instinct screamed move, act, end it. I was running out of space between the scream and the doing.
This was the line.
I felt it shrinking.
A pressure bloomed behind my eyes. Not pain. Something like being overridden. A narrowing. Like the world was trying to decide for me.
And then—
The room went still.
Not silent. Still.
The machines hummed on, lights blinking, bodies moving around me but the space between moments stretched thin and sharp, like glass.
“Anna.”
The voice wasn’t in the room. It brushed that deep, dark part of me that wasn’t awake. The place between breath and action.
It was inside the pause.
I knew that voice.
My breath hitched. “Uncle?”
Cashiel stood at the edge of my vision. His white wings threaded with gold spread behind him. He was here but not. A presence on the threshold, not a body in the room. Light folded around him. His face was grave, carved from patience and regret.
“I can’t stop this,” he said.
I laughed weakly. “Figures.”
“This path is bound by mortal choice,” he continued. “I cannot intervene.”
“Then why are you here?” My heart hammered. The urge to act clawed at my skin.
His gaze softened. “Because there is still something they cannot take from you.”
The pressure surged again, sharper this time. I gasped, teeth gritting as the instinct to strike—to destroy—to finish—flooded my veins.
“What is it?” I snapped.
Cashiel stepped closer. The light around him dimmed, focusing, narrowing.
“They are trying to erase the space where you choose,” he said. “To shorten it until instinct replaces will.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I know.”
“But you can anchor it,” he said. “Choose something to protect. Something they cannot touch. Hide it in you. Bury it so deep they’ll never find it.”
My vision blurred. “How?”
He didn’t answer right away. That’s how I knew it would leave its mark on me.
“Choose now,” he said softly. “Choose something to anchor you. To hold on to.”
Images flashed—too fast, too sharp.
My mother’s eyes.
Kincade’s hands. Steady. Warm. Unmoving. The way he never forced—only held.
The pause. The breath before action.
The no that mattered.
“I choose,” I said, voice breaking, “his hands.”
The pressure spiked then twisted.
I pulled.
Not with power. With memory. With will. I folded that fragile, precious image, wrapped it around a single truth and locked it deep inside myself.
I decide.
Cashiel exhaled, relief and sorrow braided together. “That’s all I can give you.”
The world rushed back in—noise, motion, sensation slamming into me at once. The machines surged. The instinct roared.
But something held.
Not untouched.
Not whole.
Held.
As the light faded, Cashiel’s voice brushed against my mind one last time.
“They will think they succeeded,” he said. “And in some ways… they have.”
The room snapped back into focus.
Hands restrained me. Voices barked commands.
And beneath it all, the fire burned hot and ready.
But the pause—
The pause was still mine.