Chapter 12 #2
Something is deeply wrong with her. More than the usual cruelty and calculation. Something broken in a way I’ve never seen before.
Her grip on me is fading. Her attention fragmenting.
“How am I bound to you?” I take the chance, hoping to catch her in this dissociated state.
“After your parents died.” She whispers it like a secret. Like a confession.
“I denied you.” The memory of that night is far from forgotten, it burns through me, sharp and vicious and raw. Her standing over me in the aftermath of the execution. Offering her hand. Offering more.
Me refusing.
“You denied me.” She smirks, coming back to herself all at once, and bites my ear hard enough to draw blood. “And yet, I was so generous. Allowing you to live after your parents died. I could have had you executed right alongside them.”
I thought it was mercy. Thirty years, I thought some small part of her was capable of kindness.
I was a fool.
She sits in my lap.
Every nerve in my body screams. My skin crawls where she touches me, revulsion rising like bile in my throat. I can smell her, roses and something rotting underneath. The scent of a garden left to die.
I want to shove her off, want to run, want to scrub myself raw until I can’t feel her anymore.
I can’t move.
“Amarantha.” My voice comes out hoarse. “I don’t want this.”
“I know.” She smiles. Straddles me. Rolls her hips against me like she has any right to my body, like my consent is an inconvenience she’s already dismissed.
“Stop.” The word tears out of me. “Amarantha, stop!”
She laughs. Rolls her hips again. Watches my face for a reaction I refuse to give her.
Inside, I’m screaming. Outside, my body sits frozen in her power, a puppet she’s decided to play with.
The bond at my wrist pulses. Faint. Warm. Ash.
I close my eyes and fall into it.
Not metaphor. Choice. I pour every scrap of awareness I have left into that golden thread, into the memory of Ash’s laugh, Ash’s fury, Ash’s hand in mine when she chose me back. I build a wall out of her and hide behind it.
Amarantha can have my body. She can make it move, make it respond, make it perform for her twisted satisfaction.
She will never have this.
“Yes, Summer Sword.” She pauses, laughing at something only she finds funny. “You denied me. And the magic of me saving your life had to go somewhere.”
“That was...” I can’t even count. Can’t think past the horror of what she’s telling me.
“Thirty years ago.” She slowly stands, walking toward a door I hadn’t noticed. She pauses before it, glancing back with a smile that makes my blood run cold. “You may sit on the couch and watch.”
My body moves without my consent. Muscles twisting. Limbs carrying me to a velvet settee in the corner. I sit because I have no choice.
She let me live all those years ago. When my parents were executed for crimes she probably fabricated. She let me live.
I thought, gods, I actually thought it was mercy. That somewhere beneath the ambition and cruelty, she was still the girl who used to steal pastries from the kitchen with me.
There is nothing good in this woman. There never was.
I sit on the couch and watch as Amarantha twists the doorknob, swinging open a door that squeaks on its hinges. She crosses to her bed, sitting on the edge, raising her knees with theatrical grace.
“I’m getting everything I want.” She leans back on her elbows, eyes glittering.
I’m silent. Cataloguing exits. Calculating options. Finding none.
A man walks out of the doorway. Blinking. Adjusting to the light.
His eyes zero in on Amarantha with an eagerness that makes my stomach turn. His body moves toward her, tongue lapping at his lips.
“Amarantha, don’t.” The warning is pointless, but I say it anyway.
She laughs, enjoying my discomfort. “You think he doesn’t want this? No, cousin. Unlike you, Davis wants to worship me.”
Davis steps to the edge of the bed.
The human looks over at me.
And smirks.
There’s no blankness in his eyes. No magical compulsion glazing his features. Just cold, clear awareness, and satisfaction.
I interrogated this man. Searched for cracks in whatever conditioning Graves used on him. Felt guilt for the methods I employed.
He was never a victim. He was bait.
“Finnian, was it?” Davis’s voice is different now. Sharper. The simpering human act stripped away to reveal something far more dangerous. “The scholar who thought he was too good for court politics.”
He knows exactly where he is. What he’s doing. Who he’s allied with.
He chose this.
“Ash trusted you.” The words escape before I can stop them.
Davis’s smile widens. “Ash trusted everyone. That was always her problem.” He turns back to Amarantha, dismissing me like I’m furniture. “Now. Where were we?”
“You were just about to fuck me.” Amarantha’s voice is as sweet as honey.
“He tortured me.” Davis’s voice shifts to something simpering, performative. Playing a role for Amarantha’s amusement. “Your sword. He asked me so many questions.”
“My poor boy,” Amarantha coos, taking his hand and pulling him closer.
I close my eyes. I can’t watch this.
“Tell me everything,” she gasps. “How did he torture you?”
This is fucked on levels I don’t have words for. I tune them out, turning inward, focusing on everything the Crown knows about the Summer Sword.
There has to be a way out. Ancient bindings have loopholes. They always do.
But after thirty years of magic settling into my bones, rooting itself in my very essence, is there even a way out anymore?
The Crown pulses. Searching. Hoping.
The bond at my wrist pulses back. Warm. Stubborn. Refusing to fade.
Ash is alive. Ash is fighting.
And against every odd stacked against me, so am I.