CHAPTER 28
When I wake again, the world is white. Not the white of memory, not the blinding rupture of my own mind being split open by my mate, but something colder, sharper, and entirely without mercy.
The last thing I remember is my chamber. My knees pulled against my chest as I tried to make sense of everything I’d learned.
After that, there’s nothing.
My eyes burn before they fully open, and for a few disoriented breaths I lie still, trying to understand why the floor beneath me is so smooth and cold.
Not stone. Not wood. Not the thick rug in my room or the hard garden path beneath my knees.
Whatever I am lying on feels polished and lifeless, like ice that has forgotten how to melt.
Glass.
The realization comes slowly at first, then all at once.
I push myself upright too quickly and immediately regret every choice I have made since birth.
My head throbs. My mouth tastes metallic and my limbs feel heavy, as though someone has filled my bones with wet sand.
Around me, the room bends in a perfect circle, walls curving upward into a domed ceiling that reflects my face back at me from every possible angle.
The walls are glass. The floor is glass.
The ceiling is glass. Everything is transparent and warped, so every version of me staring back looks slightly wrong—my silver hair too bright, my eyes too wide, my face too ashen beneath the cold white glow pulsing through the chamber.
I finally learn my entire life was built on a lie, cry myself into a state no woman should ever be seen in, and now apparently I’ve been placed inside a glass cage.
I press one hand to the floor and force myself to stand. Where am I?
The room hums. The sound is low and constant, not loud enough to hurt, but impossible to ignore.
It vibrates through my bare feet, up my legs, and into my chest, where it settles unpleasantly behind my ribs.
The air smells clean in the way knives look clean before they cut you, sharp and metallic and wrong.
No smoke. No damp stone. No cedar. I don’t feel the familiar pulse of shadows.
Nothing of Andell. Nothing of Thorin. Panic surges through me, and I force myself to take slow, steady breaths.
A dull ache settles beneath my wrist, growing hotter with each heartbeat.
Then the pain ignites. I hiss and yank back my sleeve.
The faint mark that appeared after the bond between Thorin and me settled into something neither of us could deny pulses beneath my skin, dark gold against bronze flesh.
It isn’t steady. It’s furious. The pain flares once, sharp enough to make my fingers curl, before fading until only heat remains.
“What now?” I whisper, because apparently my own body has decided to become another person in this story who refuses to explain itself. I reach for my magic. Nothing answers.
No warmth flooding my veins. No gold light gathering in my palms. No familiar pressure, no soft pulse of life waiting beneath the surface.
I reach harder, panic clawing up my throat, and the hum in the glass deepens.
For one breath, light flickers under my skin, thin and weak.
The cage brightens immediately, swallowing it before it can form.
The glow vanishes from my hands as if someone has pinched out a candle.
My stomach drops.
“No.”
I try again. Nothing. Again. And again. The same thing happens every time. A flicker of gold stirs beneath my skin. The glass brightens, humming louder, and I feel my magic ripped away before I can touch it. It’s like trying to breathe while someone keeps stealing the air from my lungs.
“No,” I say again, louder this time, as though volume has ever convinced magic to cooperate.
I slam my palm against the nearest wall.
The glass doesn't crack. It doesn't shudder. It doesn’t even have the decency to leave a smudge.
The impact ripples through the curved wall in a faint pulse of white light before disappearing entirely, as the chamber effortlessly absorbs the blow. Seven hells, where am I?
“Let me out! Is this some twisted game? Let me OUT!”
My voice ricochets around the dome, splintering into warped echoes that chase one another through the glass until they no longer sound like mine. It’s like being trapped inside the hollow shell of a bell, listening to my own panic ring back at me from every direction.
My heart begins to pound, and I force myself to breathe as I look around the chamber again.
This isn’t my room, and this isn’t the palace.
It isn’t even Andell. I know because ever since I arrived, I felt the city pressing against my magic.
It’s always there, a quiet pull beneath my skin, constantly trying to siphon something from me.
I learned to place a transparent shield between myself and the palace’s strange hunger, dulling the sensation without ever silencing it completely.
Here, there is nothing.
The absence settles heavily in my chest. The city is gone. The pull is gone. Every time I reach for my magic, the chamber strips it away before it can answer me.
Someone didn’t just move me. They took me somewhere beyond Andell.
Worse still, I can’t feel Thorin. Ever since I accepted the mate bond between us, there’s always been the faintest awareness of him at the edge of my thoughts.
I spent days pretending it wasn’t there, convincing myself it was only my imagination, but it never disappeared.
Now it has and I know something is terribly wrong.
Does Thorin know where I am?
Has he realized I’m gone?
Is he looking for me?
…Or is he relieved?
My wrist burns again. Fiercer this time, the heat shooting up my arm before settling beneath my skin.
I stagger, pressing my hand over it until the pain dulls.
I don’t know what it means, but I want it to mean something.
I want it to mean he knows. That somewhere beyond this glass, beyond the white light and the humming walls, Thorin has realized I’m gone.
The thought steadies me.
He knows.
He has to know by now.
He is always aware of me. Somehow, he always knows where I am.
Or at least…
I pray he still does.
* * *
A thin movement beyond the glass draws my attention.
I spin toward it, heart jumping, and for a moment I see only my own warped reflection.
Then shapes gather on the other side of the wall—figures blurred by the strange material, shadows of people standing where I cannot reach them.
Their voices seep through distorted and low.
“She’s awake.”
“Yes, and the chamber is draining her.”
“The cage will hold. There is no way she can break free.”
I slam both fists against the glass so hard pain shoots up my arms. “Let me out of here!” I scream, pounding the barrier again.
The glass ripples faintly beneath the impact, the white light brightening and then settling again. One of the figures steps closer. He’s tall and thin, cloaked in a heavy gray robe. When his face comes into focus through the distortion, I find eyes that glow a deep, unnatural crimson.
They remind me of something that should have burned itself out long ago but never did. And they look oddly familiar.
“Where is my magic?” Panic flares in my chest. “Who are you?”
The man smiles. “We are The Rebellion.”
His head cants to one side with unsettling fluidity, the movement slow enough to make my skin crawl.
“Not what do you want with me?” His crimson eyes hold mine. “Not where am I?”
“Your first question is about your magic.” He smiles again.
Something unreadable flashes across his face, twisting my stomach into knots.
“I find that very interesting. I assume you are well acquainted with what the gods have placed in you.”
I don’t mean to ask that first. I don’t care where I am if I can’t defend myself. Panic surges higher, instinctively reaching for the familiar warmth that always rises to meet it. Nothing comes.
What is he trying to get from me? Why does everything come back to my magic? I reach for my magic again and again, but there’s nothing. The emptiness is worse this time because I know why. The cage has already taken it.
“You should not waste your strength,” he says. His voice comes through the glass more smoothly than the other voices, as if the cage has chosen to honor him with basic acoustics. “It will only make the chamber feed faster.”
I stare at him, breathing hard. “How considerate. Kidnapping followed by advice. Your mother must be proud.” Where the fuck am I? And why does his voice sound so familiar? I know it from somewhere—I just don’t know where.
His head tilts faintly. “Still sharp. Good. The mind has not dulled yet.”
I bare my teeth. “Come inside and I’ll show you exactly how sharp I am.”
Beneath the shadow of his hood, only the lower half of his face is visible. Sickly pale skin stretches over sharp bones, and the corners of a deeply lined mouth curl upward.
“You could try,” he murmurs. “The Cursebreaker has teeth. That will not save you here.”
The word sends a chill through me.
Cursebreaker.
He doesn’t say it like a title. He says it like a fact. Like there has never been any question that this is what I am.
A slow, vicious smile spreads across my face. “Call me that again and I'll make sure you leave with fewer teeth than you arrived with.”
“You cannot reach me.”
“Not yet.” My smile widens. “But he can.”
The smile disappears from his mouth. His crimson eyes narrow, the red within them brightening for the briefest heartbeat.
“The cage feeds on your energy. If you fade, so does your usefulness. Eat when food is brought. Drink when water is given. Sleep when the lights go out. Resistance inside this chamber is mostly theatrical, and there is no use for it here.”
“Then I’ll be fucking theatrical. I’ve been told I have a gift for it.”
“Yes,” he says softly, watching me with an interest that makes my skin crawl. “You have many gifts. More than the Shadow King understands.”
The Shadow King.
Something tightens painfully in my chest. “Watch your next words.”
“I know he will look for you. I know he will send shadows tearing through the wrong corners of the continent until his precious kingdom begins to wonder whether its monster has finally slipped its leash.”
My wrist flares so violently I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. His crimson eyes drop to my hand, and he goes very still.
“You feel him,” he observes.
My body goes deathly still, unwilling to betray the bond between Thorin and me.
The man smiles coldly. “Not clearly, no. Your cage prevents that. But rage is difficult to silence when it has divine roots.”
I don’t ask what he means. Some answers are too dangerous to hear from the wrong person. Not here. He studies me for another long moment, as though committing every reaction to memory. Then he turns away, dismissing me as effortlessly as though I cease to exist the moment I leave his attention.
“You will understand soon enough.”
He leaves me with the hum and my reflection.